Acceptance Rates?

[OatMilkLatte]

I've applied to a bunch of schools this cycle for a Ph.D and am waiting to hear back from most of them. I know there really aren't 'safety schools' for philosophy, but does anyone have an idea of schools that generally take more number of students than others? I think I saw on another thread that DePaul takes maybe 4 a year, and I believe Oregon does too. Anyone have any idea about others? Some that I've applied to are Villanova, Boston College, SUNY Stony Brook, UWashington, Georgetown, UNC Chapel Hill....

Thanks!

[MtnDuck]

On 2/16/2021 at 1:31 PM, OatMilkLatte said:

I've applied to a bunch of schools this cycle for a Ph.D and am waiting to hear back from most of them. I know there really aren't 'safety schools' for philosophy, but does anyone have an idea of schools that generally take more number of students than others? I think I saw on another thread that DePaul takes maybe 4 a year, and I believe Oregon does too. Anyone have any idea about others? Some that I've applied to are Villanova, Boston College, SUNY Stony Brook, UWashington, Georgetown, UNC Chapel Hill....

Thanks!

This year it's going to be...different potentially. U of O apparently is accepting 1 person it seems. University of Washington has historically had cohorts around 4-5 in size but for two years in a row we've gotten lucky with some funding elements that allowed us to bring on more folks. Schools also tend to have a limit on how many international students they can admit every year so, for some folks, that might also make things more chaotic. 

After a quick look at past trends (which are rough since we don't always have the number of how many students get accepted each year for all the schools) I would expect that places will be forced to reduce their incoming cohort sized by at least 1-2 folks at minimum and/or they will only be able to make initial offers but not pull from a waitlist in some cases (hopefully rare cases but it did happen last year).

[PolPhil]

On 2/16/2021 at 1:31 PM, OatMilkLatte said:

I've applied to a bunch of schools this cycle for a Ph.D and am waiting to hear back from most of them. I know there really aren't 'safety schools' for philosophy, but does anyone have an idea of schools that generally take more number of students than others? I think I saw on another thread that DePaul takes maybe 4 a year, and I believe Oregon does too. Anyone have any idea about others? Some that I've applied to are Villanova, Boston College, SUNY Stony Brook, UWashington, Georgetown, UNC Chapel Hill....

Thanks!

Most programs take 5-7 students in normal years. That number is likely reduced at almost all programs this year. I know that Toronto takes 12 in normal years. Other programs with a large faculty likely do the same.

[Hans_Chou]

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 300+ applicants for 4 spots

Carnegie Mellon University: 170+ applicants for 8 spots (reported on Jan.29)

SUNY Stony Brook: 136 applicants for 4 spots (reported on Feb.18)

[HomoLudens]

UCSD has numbers on their page. One year they had like a 17% acceptance rate due to a lower number of applicants and a high number of spots. But I think is probably the highest rate there has ever been.

[rivermoon]

1 hour ago, Hans_Chou said:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 300+ applicants for 4 spots

Carnegie Mellon University: 170+ applicants for 8 spots (reported on Jan.29)

SUNY Stony Brook: 136 applicants for 4 spots (reported on Feb.18)

DePaul was 5 slots out of 166 applicants this year.  

Oregon is going to be very low this year given they are accepting just 1 student.

[lurkingfaculty]

I don't think the OP was suggesting otherwise, but just wanted to clarify since there are different kinds of numbers being thrown out in this thread. The acceptance rate (which you're unlikely to find out from departments other than UCSD) is how many people a given dept accepts, not percentage of students that enroll out of the applicant pool. My department typically accepts about three (sometimes up to four) times the number of students they enroll. This year we got about 300 applications (slightly more than usual), and are aiming to enroll 5 students (which is normal), so we will probably (if history is a good guide) end up admitting about 15-20 students, which is a 5-7ish % acceptance rate. (My department is ranked below 30 on the PGR, though I think we get an unusually high # of applications in general, especially now that I've seen UCSD's acceptance rate.) When I was in grad school at a PGR-top-five place, they typically accepted about two times the number of students they enrolled. (UCSD is definitely listing this, not percentage of students that enroll out of their applicant pool; but that means you can't compare it to places where you just know how many students enroll and how many applications there are.)

 

 

[Mischief]

3 minutes ago, lurkingfaculty said:

I don't think the OP was suggesting otherwise, but just wanted to clarify since there are different kinds of numbers being thrown out in this thread. The acceptance rate (which you're unlikely to find out from departments other than UCSD) is how many people a given dept accepts, not percentage of students that enroll out of the applicant pool. My department typically accepts about three (sometimes up to four) times the number of students they enroll. This year we got about 300 applications (slightly more than usual), and are aiming to enroll 5 students (which is normal), so we will probably (if history is a good guide) end up admitting about 15-20 students, which is a 5-7ish % acceptance rate. (My department is ranked below 30 on the PGR, though I think we get an unusually high # of applications in general, especially now that I've seen UCSD's acceptance rate.) When I was in grad school at a PGR-top-five place, they typically accepted about two times the number of students they enrolled. (UCSD is definitely listing this, not percentage of students that enroll out of their applicant pool; but that means you can't compare it to places where you just know how many students enroll and how many applications there are.)

 

 

To throw in one example: places like Michigan are transparent about these things. See here and sort for philosophy: 
https://tableau.dsc.umich.edu/t/UM-Public/views/RackhamDoctoralProgramStatistics/ProgramStatistics?:embed=y&:showAppBanner=false&:showShareOptions=true&:display_count=no&:showVizHome=no&FOSDParameter=All+Rackham

I haven't encountered many schools who are like this, but they do exist. I, for one, think departments in every discipline should aim for this kind of transparency, but that would take an institutional change I imagine.

[coreaffect]

39 minutes ago, Mischief said:

I haven't encountered many schools who are like this, but they do exist. I, for one, think departments in every discipline should aim for this kind of transparency, but that would take an institutional change I imagine.

I agree with the point about transparency. Moreover, I wanted to note that the University of British Columbia also makes this information public: https://www.grad.ubc.ca/prospective-students/graduate-degree-programs/phd-philosophy. If you scroll to the bottom of the page and click the "Enrolment, Duration & Other Stats" dropdown link, enrolment data from 2015-2019 for their Ph.D. program is available. This also holds for their MA program.

 

[MtnDuck]

2 hours ago, lurkingfaculty said:

I don't think the OP was suggesting otherwise, but just wanted to clarify since there are different kinds of numbers being thrown out in this thread. The acceptance rate (which you're unlikely to find out from departments other than UCSD) is how many people a given dept accepts, not percentage of students that enroll out of the applicant pool. My department typically accepts about three (sometimes up to four) times the number of students they enroll. This year we got about 300 applications (slightly more than usual), and are aiming to enroll 5 students (which is normal), so we will probably (if history is a good guide) end up admitting about 15-20 students, which is a 5-7ish % acceptance rate. (My department is ranked below 30 on the PGR, though I think we get an unusually high # of applications in general, especially now that I've seen UCSD's acceptance rate.) When I was in grad school at a PGR-top-five place, they typically accepted about two times the number of students they enrolled. (UCSD is definitely listing this, not percentage of students that enroll out of their applicant pool; but that means you can't compare it to places where you just know how many students enroll and how many applications there are.)

 

 

I'm interested to see what happens this year with "over accepting" while expecting a certain number to decline. I know one place did this last year and almost everyone accepted (whoops) which contributed to a closed admissions cycle this year.

 

2 hours ago, Mischief said:

To throw in one example: places like Michigan are transparent about these things. See here and sort for philosophy: 
https://tableau.dsc.umich.edu/t/UM-Public/views/RackhamDoctoralProgramStatistics/ProgramStatistics?:embed=y&:showAppBanner=false&:showShareOptions=true&:display_count=no&:showVizHome=no&FOSDParameter=All+Rackham

I haven't encountered many schools who are like this, but they do exist. I, for one, think departments in every discipline should aim for this kind of transparency, but that would take an institutional change I imagine.

The extension of the spreadsheet is putting together a 1 page summary outline that departments can use/adapt that captures this type of information along with pertinent application information (e.g., what does "official" transcript mean for your application, what is the application fee, are there fee waivers available, deadlines since a few too many departments ended up having 2 different ones listed this past cycle across pages on their websites, etc.). At this point transparency in the process will make everyone happier I imagine and in a digital age having folks update their information (e.g., Stanford may no longer want 2 official hard copies of transcripts but still had that one their website until this year) would be kinda nice.

[Marcus_Aurelius]

3 hours ago, MtnDuck said:

I'm interested to see what happens this year with "over accepting" while expecting a certain number to decline. I know one place did this last year and almost everyone accepted (whoops) which contributed to a closed admissions cycle this year.

My guess is that, because (unfortunately, as has been noted recently) the same folks tend to get accepted to the top programs, even this year, those programs will have a relatively similar yield to usual. On the other hand, lower-ranked programs, which some applicants are in some years less keen on, might see more interest and thus higher yield.

Edited February 18, 2021 by Marcus_Aurelius