MA Acceptance Stats

[Pinecone]

Hello all, I've just found this forum and thought maybe someone here could help put my mind at rest. I've applied to a few masters programs this year hoping to study urban historical geography and popular media. I've been watching the acceptance forum and it's starting to drive me nuts because the people contributing aren't geography or masters applicants. I'm assuming at this point that schools accept PhD students first, but could anyone tell me what kind of stats schools (UofA, UK, KU, UNC) look for in masters geography students? I have a BA in Geography, 3.6 GPA, and my GRE was V670, Q630 and AW4, and 3 decent LOR. Also, how many applicants are there and how many do they usually accept? I only applied to programs where I thought I was a good fit, but I'm really starting to second guess myself (I might just be comparing myself to too many biomedical engineering PhD applicants at Stanford though ). Thanks!

[tommy421]

Hi Pinecone,

I had very similar stats to yours when I applied last year (3.6 GPA, V620 Q640 and AW4). I was accepted at Kentucky (which is where I am right now) and I was rejected at Arizona. I also got rejected at Clark, Syracuse, Minnesota, Rutgers and Washington and I was put on the second-tier wait list at Penn State. From what I heard, the Arizona and Rutgers ones were largely based on the fact that they had almost no funding, since the stats that I had were significantly higher than what they reported on their website. I don't know if funding is any different this year (I would venture it might be even worse). There is one P.hD. student at UK who got his master's at Kansas, which based upon what he has implied, it is easier to get into and not as rigorous as UK. I know one person who applied to UNC, who had slightly worse stats than I did, and she didn't get in. Schools do tend to look at P.hD. first, especially in terms of funding. I regretted not applying to some schools that I absolutely knew that I would get into. From what I hear, it is much easier to trade up to a top tier P.hD. after your master's than it can be to get in at the master's level. Hope this helps.

Tom

[encephalization]

Many of the grad schools have statistics for previous years if that is any help. An example:

UNC 2009 Geography Grad (no info on Ph.D vs. MA) - 112 applied, 14 were accepted, 7 enrolled.

Average of accepted students

GRE: V625, Q705, W4.8

GPA: 3.515

Good luck to you!