Acceptance vs. Admittance

[Sociograd]

I am applying to a number of Sociology programs. One school, for example, receives about 150 applications and accepts about 20-30% of the applicants. This means between 30-45 applicants get acceptance letters. However, the cohorts are only between 8 and 12 students.

How can these programs accept so many students, but admit so less? Are that many people declining offers? I don't understand how this can balance out over the nation. If about 20%-25% of the accepts actually go to that school, and this happens across a number of programs, what's happening to the others?

Thanks for some clarification here.

[blaspheming]

Yes, they expect a certain percentage to decline their offer. It fluctuates year to year, but overall remains the same.

[lolnumbers]

all of the departments compete with their peers for a finite number of students that are the appropriate quality, so even top top programs get a lot of declined offers every year, b/c the best students get offers from all of the top programs and can only go to one.

[Hopin'-n-Prayin']

As many history applicants know, Michigan's history department actually suspended admissions for 2012 because an unusually high number of last year's admits actually enrolled this semester. They need a one-year moratorium to recoup the extra money they have committed to the 2011 cohort

[BrazilianGuy]

Remmember that, on average, people apply to more than 1 school... some people even apply for more than 10 programs. Hence, there is a natural difference between offers and enrollments.

[Eigen]

It's an old thread, but yeah- good students get offers from most of their applications, and have to choose.

Schools know this, and can either make a round of offers, wait to hear back, and then make more offers- or just make the number of offers that usually get the number of students they want. The latter method can result in too many students, but has the benefit of putting all the offers out early. If you wait until the deadline to move on to your next choices, most of them will have already accepted an offer elsewhere.

[kgumps2012]

I used to work in an admissions office for my undergrad institution and I can imagine it being a similar situation. They have a range of the number of students they actually want to arrive on campus so they definitely over accept students. I asked about this once and they said that they go on history and they do have an equation that helps them calculate how many students they need to accept. It does have to do with the number of students currently enrolled, the number of students graduating, and the optimal number of students the college can handle in the freshman class + transfers. I imagine this being similar in grad schools on a much smaller scale.