% Accepted from those interviewed

[rsandler]

I am going for a BME PhD and got accepted to visiting weekend and an interview at Columbia. I was wondering what my chances are of getting in?

I hkeepo hearing different things. My friend who did bio phD said 40% of interviewees are rejected while 60% are either waitlisted or accepted on average. My friend doing a materials engineering PhD said the vast majority of those interviewed are accepted...

Can anyone please try to explain/quantify?

Thanks!

[hejduk]

I got accepted to a campus interview, with all hotel and airfare paid for (which is rare in my field), but I ended-up getting onto an unranked waitlist. While i'll say the visit obviously didn't get me in, it probably didn't hurt either. The grad coordinator said I did great and everyone loved me, but the other applicants had more research experience.

Put your game face on, best foot forward, and bribe where necessary.

[jaxzwolf]

Like everything else in graduate admissions, acceptance rates after interviews vary depending on the school, department, program, etc. If you're going into a program that has students do rotations, then there is likely a set number of individuals the department admits each year (such as 5, 10, 15, 20, etc.). Then the percentage of admits will depend on the number of people they decide to interview. If you're entering a program directly into a specific professor's lab, then it depends entirely upon a.) how many spaces are available in the specific lab you want to work in and b.) how many individuals the professor is considering.

It is often difficult to find out just how many students a department/professor is considering, but oftentimes the program's website will have a blurb somewhere about the average number of candidates admitted to the program each year. Try checking the FAQ, if the department's website has one.

I have heard estimates of different programs accepting anywhere from just 15% to 95% of interviewees. Some programs decide who they want to admit beforehand and use interviews to make sure the candidates are the same in person as on paper. As long as this is the case, acceptance afterward is a formality, and the interview is used more as a recruitment event. Other programs bring far more candidates than available spots to interview, with three or four individuals competing for each open spot. If that's the case, the interview is likely more about judging experience, maturity, and how well your research interests fit within the current paradigm of the department, as well as gauging how well you get along with faculty and other graduate students.

Unfortunately, there is no way to really quantify your chances, unless you know the exact number of candidates they're interviewing and the number of spots available. Even then, the odds can shift one way or the other depending on the skill sets/experiences/etc. each interviewee is bringing to the table. The best thing to do is make sure you're prepared, be excited and knowledgeable about your own research interests as well as the current research going on in the department, be friendly to everyone, and take some comfort in the fact that they certainly wouldn't have invited you to interview if they weren't interested in you. They like your application-- now they just want to see if you're a good fit for the department.

Good luck!

Edited February 28, 2011 by jaxzwolf