How competitive are funded MAs?

[Happybuddha]

I have heard both "MAs are much easier to get int than PhDs" and "MAs are only slightly easier to get into than PhDs." Does anyone have any knowledge as to just how much easier it is to get into a funded MA than PhD? Clearly the pool will generally be smaller for MAs, but does it make a notable difference? 

The only data I could find was from Georgia State University, which accepted 41% of their applicants. This is clearly much much higher than the 5-10% admissions rates for top-20 PhD programs, but is that normal? Is GSU significantly larger than Simon Fraser or Texas Tech, or is it possible this is an outlier? If not, it would seem like applying to 5-6 MA programs would most likely yield success for a philosophy major at a decent school with good grades, solid letters, and a strong writing sample. Right? Especially considering many people applying to MAs do so because they didn't have great grades, weren't philosophy majors, come from a small department, etc. 

[Olórin]

Well, I think there's a difference between philosophy MAs and fully funded MAs, which tend to be on the competitive side. If an MA program only has 3 funded spots, and 60 applications, that's a 5% acceptance rate. They might admit double though, or move through a waitlist, so the final acceptance rate is higher. My experience with funded MAs is that they have between 3 and 5 spots a year, and they probably receive more than 60 applications.

As for your record, it might be hard to convince them that you are better suited to an MA than someone who is transitioning into the field, since MAs have a higher "ROI" so to speak for students who need to build a transcript that proves philosophical competency. Some MA adcoms ask, "Could we get this student into a PhD program? Could this student get into a PhD program without us?" to help make their decisions. (Not everyone! Just some.) If the answer to the second question is Yes, they might be less likely to admit you over a non-philosophy major transitioning into the field. Basically, there are no sure things, and fully funded MAs are also very competitive.

[PolPhil]

I would say that the difference is that there is a wider range between the competition to get into programs worth getting into at the MA level. That is, unless you're independently wealthy, it's generally not a great idea to go to a PhD program outside of the top 30. That is, even at the lowest-ranked programs worth attending, the acceptance rate is typically ~8-12%, while at the top programs it's closer to 2-4%. For funded MA programs, on the other hand, the top programs will have acceptance rates of ~5-20% (which is already a much bigger range), but other MA programs that are maybe not 'top' but do decently at placing their students into PhD programs might have acceptance rates much higher than that, e.g., 25-40%. For this reason, at the MA level, it's often a good idea to take the better-funded offer over the higher-ranked offer. Another way to think about it is that there are, at best, 30 PhD programs worth their salt (for getting you a job post-graduation), while there are more MA programs than that, often with larger cohorts, consistently placing their top students in decent PhD programs. Even though more people are applying at the MA level, the larger numbers make it less competitive, as long as you take into account that the number of applicants is inflated by students who wouldn't have made it into a PhD program.