Numbers??

[captiv8ed]

Would anyone like to try to start figuring out percentages and if this was a more difficult year?

Oregon got 135 applications for 8 spots. Does that mean they only made 8 offers? If so, that is a 6% acceptance rate for a school that ranks 57 in USNWR. Does anyone have numbers from other schools?

[carolina45]

Would anyone like to try to start figuring out percentages and if this was a more difficult year?

Oregon got 135 applications for 8 spots. Does that mean they only made 8 offers? If so, that is a 6% acceptance rate for a school that ranks 57 in USNWR. Does anyone have numbers from other schools?

I'm not positive, but I would asasume '8 spots' means they have room for 8 students to matriculate. In that case they would accept several more than 8.

[whocanitbenow]

I'm not positive, but I would asasume '8 spots' means they have room for 8 students to matriculate. In that case they would accept several more than 8.

Informally, I heard that Northwestern applications were up (roughly ~300 this year), but they seemed to have offered about 20 people. That's more than I was thinking, having heard that funding was down this year and they were anticipating a smaller cohort, but still fewer than what their website says they typically admit. I get the 20 person admit number from the open house email that didn't BCC the names (poor move, but insightful).

[ilikemoney]

From what I've been told, Johns Hopkins gets a bit over 100, and accept 7 or 8 to try to net around 4. So I guess that would mean it's somewhere between 5-8% acceptance rate.

[myrrh]

I'm not positive, but I would asasume '8 spots' means they have room for 8 students to matriculate. In that case they would accept several more than 8.

I think they SHOULD accept more than 8 applicants. Even when it comes to some best-ranked schools, there could be about 50% admitted student who decide not to attend. Accepting only 8 students means a school could have perhaps 4 who really attend. You have space and funding for 8 and only get 4, it's not a very good thing.

[jacib]

I think they SHOULD accept more than 8 applicants. Even when it comes to some best-ranked schools, there could be about 50% admitted student who decide not to attend. Accepting only 8 students means a school could have perhaps 4 who really attend. You have space and funding for 8 and only get 4, it's not a very good thing.

I got a sense of the breakdown of Columbia's numbers: 300ish applications, there were officially about 8-10 slots, but they had a particularly small cohort last year (7, I think), and usually when a school has a small cohort one year, it can bump up the next year's cohort. I think last year they accepted about 12, this year they accepted 16, and a few of us admitted students were calculating rates and unofficially thought there would probably be 10-13 in the actual entering cohort next year. I get the sense that this situation is unusual though, and that yielding about 7/12 was unusually low, and that if they yield 13/16 it will be on the high side (though I think it would still make the university happy to get that many students). That's just the sense I got from the faculty at the reception/the grad students at the bar afterwards.

[jacib]

I got a sense of the breakdown of Columbia's numbers: 300ish applications, there were officially about 8-10 slots, but they had a particularly small cohort last year (7, I think), and usually when a school has a small cohort one year, it can bump up the next year's cohort. I think last year they accepted about 12, this year they accepted 16, and a few of us admitted students were calculating rates and unofficially thought there would probably be 10-13 in the actual entering cohort next year. I get the sense that this situation is unusual though, and that yielding about 7/12 was unusually low, and that if they yield 13/16 it will be on the high side (though I think it would still make the university happy to get that many students). That's just the sense I got from the faculty at the reception/the grad students at the bar afterwards.

That said, my father works at a smaller program that only admits two or three students, but its such a self selecting group who wants to be in that small of a program, they often enough yield all two or three students, so this year they aren't accepting more than 2, though I think they have a short wait list.

[focused]

These figures are directly from the respective programs listed below:

Stanford - about 240 applicants for a cohort of 9-10 (they didn't indicate how many they accepted, but I'm guessing around 14-15), for an acceptance rate of approximately 5-6% depending on exactly how many were accepted.

Harvard - 268 applicants, actually accepted 11 (indicated this is in anticipation of a cohort of 8-9), for an acceptance rate of 4%

UMichigan, Ann Arbor - accepted 8% (I don't know the # of applicants - a prof on the admissions committee just noted this percentage in a personal e-mail)