What's the deal with Peterson's?

[lxs]

When I find that I've read every post and response on this forum twice, I like to cruise on over to petersons.com and obsess over the acceptance rates and related data they post for the school's where I've applied. Does anyone have any idea how accurate that data actually is? I ask because for my top choice program, they have 329 applicants and a 33% acceptance rate. The first number I can see, but 110 acceptances seems...uh...a little high? I know that the program ends up taking in a little over 20 students per year. Is it possible that, between accepted students declining offers and the program extending offers to new people, this rate is actually feasible? Or is Peterson's just totally, sadistically off base?

[rising_star]

It's definitely off-base. I can't think of any program extending 100+ offers other than a law school...

[polisciapp]

Yea, I'm not so sure either. It also lists NYU as admitting 46% of their students in politics. That seems fishy. Maybe they admit people w/o funding--or are including MA students? Other school numbers, however, seem accurate. E.g., Harvard at 11%, Princeton at 7%, etc.

[dubitocogito]

They include master's and part-time master's students in those calculations.

[NO8DO]

Yea, it doesn't differentiate between acceptance percentages by degree (PhD, MA, full-time/part-time), so I imagine that if you're interested in just PhD statistics, it would be much lower - or at least a little bit.

Certain schools I applied to, take University of Delaware for example, only offer an MA in the program to which I applied (Dual MA Spanish & French), and so when I see statistics like 38 people applied (its really not a big program, but it is sort of one of those relatively hidden jem in the field), and 68% acceptance, I think it probably reflects reality. However, I do have a hard time believing that the Penn program to which I applied (PhD Romance Languages), receives only 97 applicants and also has a 26% acceptance rate (it seems like a big percentage for such an elite program and university) - its possible, but I'm not holding my breath, haha.

I will say that the waiting is killing me though - I somehow managed to apply only to schools that don't respond until the end of Feb/mid-March at the earliest, so I constantly find myself perusing through sites like Peterson's and my online applications, even though in reality it is really just a huge waste of time, being that I have 3 very large and important term papers due at the end of the semester!

[NO8DO]

on second thought, the Penn thing could be accurate, because the degree is technically PhD Romance Languages, which means within that category of Romance Languages, there will be people applying to Italian, French, and Spanish, which means that the stats would be split up, though not necessarily evenly depending on how many people apply to certain areas.

[Minnesotan]

I contacted the departments for admissions stats, and Peterson's is still high when including part-timers and MA-candidates.

It would be nice if 70% of applicants got into Yale, though.

[NO8DO]

It most likely varies by school and program.

[Quarex]

The thing is, you have to keep this in mind--the "acceptance" rate is not the "matriculation" rate. Now, the statistics may still be off somehow, based on faulty data, or something similar. But if you start to look at universities that are probably considered "safety" schools for the majority of their applicants, their ridiculously-high acceptance rates start to sound more reasonable. If 100 applicants show up, and they try to take the best 15, and only 1 of those 15 actually goes ... looks like the next 14 get in! Oops, only 2 of them came. And you can see how it might snowball from there.

Now, this could be completely wrong. But I have also seen several departmental pages differentiate between acceptance and matriculation rate, so there is definitely a hefty dose of logic and reason there.

[Cornell07]

Most seem believeable - from ~5% through ~20% for the majority of the schools I applied to. I just can't believe that Columbia History is over 40%! Too bad it is probably nothing close to that.

( http://www.petersons.com/GradChannel/co ... &sponsor=1 )