How accurate is Peterson's?

[woolfie]

I'm not sure how much other people rely on it, but I usually obsess over the stats that are on Peterson's website. Alot of schools have stats for number of applicants and % accepted. But I sometimes wonder if they are correct? For instance Illinois Chicago says on their website that they accept something like less than 10% of applicants, yet peterson's says 29%. Also, for University of Louisville it gives a 95% rate !! That seems almost impossible; Louisville admits almost every single applicant? I mean I know they aren't super competitive, but still.

And I know that Peterson's accounts for an entire department, while the stats given might be for the PhD program or another. I'm just wondering what other people think of Peterson's, and these kinds of stats. Do you use them in deciding which places to apply? Do you just look at them out of curiosity? I have found that I have used them somewhat. Obviously there are more important factors, but I have tried to cast a wide net using not just the rankings, but also these acceptance rates to try and even out my applications. Do other people do this? Am I stupid for trusting Peterson's and doing this?

[aaascootboy101]

I used Peterson's extensively this application season and I wish I hadn't. The numbers they give for acceptances and acceptance rates bear no relation to any I've found on any university website. The numbers game is fraught with difficulties, often from the departments themselves. There are many departments who give their own admissions statistics with their own flaws, for example making the difference between those accepted and those matriculated unclear. "We receive 100 applications for a class of 5 students" does not a 5% acceptance rate make. It could be as low as 5 or theoretically as high as 100%. Tricky.

But checking official university data (WashU, for example is very forthcoming about its admissions data), you'll find that Peterson's rarely if ever matches this information. I would be very cautious therefore about using it. As an additional side note, this year would have been hard to predict even without all the statistical red herrings. One program I applied to cut its admits in half and received slightly more applicants than last year. I would estimate that acceptance rates in the humanities could be 50% lower than last year across the board.

I did get into a program I found through Peterson's, which funnily enough I probably wouldn't have applied to otherwise. The actual acceptance rate last year was roughly 1/3 of what Peterson's said. If I had known it was so hard to get into, I wouldn't have applied!