How many applicants

[SeriousDiver]

Hello, 

I was wondering if anyone knew how many people generally apply to top 7 political science programs?  Like is there a reliable count? While some do publish their data on tableau (Yale/Michigan), Stanford, for example, doesn't publish its numbers, nor does Harvard. I am also interested in knowing how many applicants there were for Columbia. 

[uchenyy]

Although this information is often not available on departments' websites, you can sometimes find it in databases published on the website of the university graduate school. 

I would say anywhere between 300-500 applications for the places you've mentioned. Perhaps even up to 600-650 at some.

[Dwar]

I would agree with the previous poster. At least over 300 for top 7 schools. There are even super high numbers for lesser ranked schools. I applied to two schools in the 30-40 range and both of them receive well over 150 applicants a year while accepting on average 20-30 students.  

BUT, i would caution against not applying due to the massive numbers. You have to remember that a lot of those schools have great name recognition, so they get a lot of random applications. Mostly from people who have zero fit, don't measure up to their average admitted student profile, or just don't understand political science. I would say that a conservative estimate is that anywhere form 40-60% of those applicants get sorted out before the committee even meets. So while they do receive a massive amount, the actual number of qualified candidates is much less. And like, shoot your shot, it's good to have a reach school. 

With that in mind though, you should never only apply to top 7 schools. The chance of admissions is still super tiny at those ones. 

[SeriousDiver]

1 hour ago, uchenyy said:

Although this information is often not available on departments' websites, you can sometimes find it in databases published on the website of the university graduate school. 

I would say anywhere between 300-500 applications for the places you've mentioned. Perhaps even up to 600-650 at some.

Yeah, Its almost certain that Harvard gets 600+. 

[uncle_socks]

Do you have the link for Yale's tableau? Very interested. 

I think Michigan was >400 last year. (They also publish that information but haven't published last year's yet but it's worth noting that their acceptance rate last year was a big anomaly.) Duke also publishes, but as we all know they're not accepting people this year. Both of these are at about 10-15% normally. 

MIT last year was "over 380 applicants" and "less than 9%" admitted.

Not sure how many Princeton apps there are but they admit about 40 each year. They'll lose like half of these admits to Stanford and Harvard. 

Programs like HYPS and Columbia probably have more applicants (and lower rates), but also likely more junky applicants who never had a chance ("I want to be president" types) just because of their prestige. Most people who get into a CHYMPS will get into Columbia, and most people who get into a HPS will get into another CHYMPS school; this stuff is highly correlated. 

Edited December 23, 2019 by BunniesInSpace

[Dwar]

1 hour ago, BunniesInSpace said:

Programs like HYPS and Columbia probably have more applicants (and lower rates), but also likely more junky applicants who never had a chance ("I want to be president" types) just because of their prestige. Most people who get into a CHYMPS will get into Columbia, and most people who get into a HPS will get into another CHYMPS school; this stuff is highly correlated. 

That's why fit is so important too, and prior contact. Those schools want to increase their yield, so sometimes they will decline otherwise great applicants because they do not think they'll commit. 

[SeriousDiver]

3 hours ago, BunniesInSpace said:

Do you have the link for Yale's tableau? Very interested. 

I think Michigan was >400 last year. (They also publish that information but haven't published last year's yet but it's worth noting that their acceptance rate last year was a big anomaly.) Duke also publishes, but as we all know they're not accepting people this year. Both of these are at about 10-15% normally. 

MIT last year was "over 380 applicants" and "less than 9%" admitted.

Not sure how many Princeton apps there are but they admit about 40 each year. They'll lose like half of these admits to Stanford and Harvard. 

Programs like HYPS and Columbia probably have more applicants (and lower rates), but also likely more junky applicants who never had a chance ("I want to be president" types) just because of their prestige. Most people who get into a CHYMPS will get into Columbia, and most people who get into a HPS will get into another CHYMPS school; this stuff is highly correlated. 

https://public.tableau.com/profile/ecf5839#!/vizhome/YaleGraduateSchoolofArtsandSciencesStatisticsWebNoBBS/Admissions

[Mixedmethodsisa4letterword]

5 hours ago, SeriousDiver said:

Yeah, Its almost certain that Harvard gets 600+. 

I don't think Harvard got 600+ last year.

[uncle_socks]

4 hours ago, Mixedmethodsisa4letterword said:

9 hours ago, SeriousDiver said:

Yeah, Its almost certain that Harvard gets 600+. 

I don't think Harvard got 600+ last year.

 

Someone from last year who got in to Harvard said "the letter said they admitted 25 of almost 500 applicants" so yeah probably that. 

Princeton says they get "well over 500" in the last 5 years but I think that probably just means around 500. Admit around 40, lots of which overlap with H and S. 

Stanford is harder to gauge as far as the denominator goes, but they admit around 20 for a class size of ideally 14. I can't imagine a world where they get significantly less or more than the ~500 P and H get so again we're at about 4%. 

I'm generally unsure about Berkeley both w.r.t. the numerator and denominator -- that information wasn't revealed in a recent admit letter that I saw. Same for Columbia. Both are very obviously higher rates than HPS.  Pretty much it's hard to get specifics from places that don't directly publish like Michigan does, but it's clear that we're working around ~5-15% everywhere. 

Edit: Also on Yale, now that I've been able to look at it on non-mobile (and wow that site's bad on mobile), it's worth noting that this year's cohort has like 10 people and last year's has like 11, while the Tableau (older data) shows 16+ but more frequently 18+ matriculants. No info if they have fewer admits, applications, or just yield in the last two years. For the record, people I've met who got into schools similar to Yale as well as Yale did not choose Yale so at least I'm quite sure their yield is not going up. 

Edited December 24, 2019 by BunniesInSpace

[SeriousDiver]

3 hours ago, Mixedmethodsisa4letterword said:

I don't think Harvard got 600+ last year.

Hmm. Maybe I'm overestimating, but seeing that Yale got 500 according to their Tableau, I figured harvard would get even more than that, perhaps a hundred more.

[Theoryboi]

12 hours ago, BunniesInSpace said:

Do you have the link for Yale's tableau? Very interested. 

I think Michigan was >400 last year. (They also publish that information but haven't published last year's yet but it's worth noting that their acceptance rate last year was a big anomaly.) Duke also publishes, but as we all know they're not accepting people this year. Both of these are at about 10-15% normally. 

MIT last year was "over 380 applicants" and "less than 9%" admitted.

Not sure how many Princeton apps there are but they admit about 40 each year. They'll lose like half of these admits to Stanford and Harvard. 

Programs like HYPS and Columbia probably have more applicants (and lower rates), but also likely more junky applicants who never had a chance ("I want to be president" types) just because of their prestige. Most people who get into a CHYMPS will get into Columbia, and most people who get into a HPS will get into another CHYMPS school; this stuff is highly correlated. 

"I want to be President types"

- I lol'ed as images of people from undergrad whizzed through my head.

[emwar]

22 hours ago, BunniesInSpace said:

I think Michigan was >400 last year. (They also publish that information but haven't published last year's yet but it's worth noting that their acceptance rate last year was a big anomaly.)

Anyone know why Michigan's rate was like this last year and how that will likely impact stats for the next two years? 

[uncle_socks]

1 hour ago, emwar said:

Anyone know why Michigan's rate was like this last year and how that will likely impact stats for the next two years? 

They overenrolled in 2018 so they accepted around 4% last cycle (2019). Yield was too high in 2018. So they had to accept way fewer in 2019. It should be pretty normal now, and it was just a 1-year 1-time correction.  

[SeriousDiver]

On 12/23/2019 at 8:37 PM, BunniesInSpace said:

 

Someone from last year who got in to Harvard said "the letter said they admitted 25 of almost 500 applicants" so yeah probably that. 

Princeton says they get "well over 500" in the last 5 years but I think that probably just means around 500. Admit around 40, lots of which overlap with H and S. 

Stanford is harder to gauge as far as the denominator goes, but they admit around 20 for a class size of ideally 14. I can't imagine a world where they get significantly less or more than the ~500 P and H get so again we're at about 4%. 

I'm generally unsure about Berkeley both w.r.t. the numerator and denominator -- that information wasn't revealed in a recent admit letter that I saw. Same for Columbia. Both are very obviously higher rates than HPS.  Pretty much it's hard to get specifics from places that don't directly publish like Michigan does, but it's clear that we're working around ~5-15% everywhere. 

Edit: Also on Yale, now that I've been able to look at it on non-mobile (and wow that site's bad on mobile), it's worth noting that this year's cohort has like 10 people and last year's has like 11, while the Tableau (older data) shows 16+ but more frequently 18+ matriculants. No info if they have fewer admits, applications, or just yield in the last two years. For the record, people I've met who got into schools similar to Yale as well as Yale did not choose Yale so at least I'm quite sure their yield is not going up. 

The tableau allows you to see the amount of applicants they received for the last five years. In 2019, they got 499, according to the “Social Sciences:political Science option”. Out of this, they admitted 50, and 10 accepted. To add a bit of nuance to this figure, it is likely that they admitted people on different terms. Maybe some with funding, and some without it (effectively waitlisting them, but still counting them as admitted). Perhaps they admitted 25 with full $ and admitted 25 with no money. It would then make sense for around 10 people to accept the offer.

[uncle_socks]

10 hours ago, SeriousDiver said:

The tableau allows you to see the amount of applicants they received for the last five years. In 2019, they got 499, according to the “Social Sciences:political Science option”. Out of this, they admitted 50, and 10 accepted. To add a bit of nuance to this figure, it is likely that they admitted people on different terms. Maybe some with funding, and some without it (effectively waitlisting them, but still counting them as admitted). Perhaps they admitted 25 with full $ and admitted 25 with no money. It would then make sense for around 10 people to accept the offer.

Oof I must've found a different old tableau through Google instead of looking at your link because mine hadn't been updated since 2017. 

With regards to your theory on not funding: they don't do that. Everyone gets full funding (about 28-29k I believe), and a couple get additional funding for internal awards. If you bring in your own funding (ie winning NSF or being sponsored by the military) your award terms might be a little different but you won't get less than the 28-29k. They also universally provide a few good benefits (insurance type) especially to families with children. This is quite enough to live pretty comfortably in New Haven. Every top program has minimum funding requirements and pretty much never admits without funding as a result. Yale just has relatively poor yield. 

If we want to speculate on their yield, I know it comes down to the following factors: getting into HPS, Yale having a weird visit day, Yale departmental politics, Yale still being in a weird qual-quant war, Yale being relatively weak in methods compared to Michigan and Berkeley, Yale being in New Haven, Yale's recent placement record. 

The only top schools who play this game are UCLA and occasionally Ohio State (might be missing one but it's certainly not CHYMPS), and even these cases are rare these days.

[SeriousDiver]

1 hour ago, BunniesInSpace said:

Oof I must've found a different old tableau through Google instead of looking at your link because mine hadn't been updated since 2017. 

With regards to your theory on not funding: they don't do that. Everyone gets full funding (about 28-29k I believe), and a couple get additional funding for internal awards. If you bring in your own funding (ie winning NSF or being sponsored by the military) your award terms might be a little different but you won't get less than the 28-29k. They also universally provide a few good benefits (insurance type) especially to families with children. This is quite enough to live pretty comfortably in New Haven. Every top program has minimum funding requirements and pretty much never admits without funding as a result. Yale just has relatively poor yield. 

If we want to speculate on their yield, I know it comes down to the following factors: getting into HPS, Yale having a weird visit day, Yale departmental politics, Yale still being in a weird qual-quant war, Yale being relatively weak in methods compared to Michigan and Berkeley, Yale being in New Haven, Yale's recent placement record. 

The only top schools who play this game are UCLA and occasionally Ohio State (might be missing one but it's certainly not CHYMPS), and even these cases are rare these days.

Wow, what a dismal yield then. The minimum stipend is $31,800 according to GSAS. Jasjeet Sehkon is coming to Yale 

 , and he and Josh Kalla might begin to beef up their quant/experimental capabilities. I also just looked up "what is wrong with new haven" and wowwwwww. OMG. Also yes, their recent placement record isn't very remarkable.

Edited December 29, 2019 by SeriousDiver

[uncle_socks]

Yeah Jas seems like a big move. Hopefully he'll be active within the department (not sure if he's keeping his side hustle at Bridgewater) because having him is really great for Yale and a massive loss for Berkeley. Yale has Aranow tenured too so it seems like a real possibility to come out as a real methodologist from Yale, though it's a little rough because their CS and Stats departments are not as high ranked as other CHYMPS. 

Kalla is cool but just as a general precaution I'd be a little worried about banking on pretenure folks -- they very easily move and don't get tenure. Everyone thought Jason Lyall was going to get tenure at Yale but Yale didn't end up giving it to him, for example. 

New Haven near the school is fine, it's not really worse than U Chicago's safeness of location. Columbia is right by a pretty dangerous park. I wouldn't let that stop me from going if it was otherwise the best school I got into.