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Percentage of applicants admitted


8in2009

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Is anyone aware of statistics about the percentage of applicants to graduate school who are accepted by at least one school? I tried looking at the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed, but I didn't find any stats. It would be nice too if those stats were broken down by discipline.

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I don't think it's possible to compile statistics like that. The variance in school acceptance rates is too broad, I think, for such a number to mean much of anything even if it existed (which it might, I mean, I'm talking out my ass here).

However, some schools list their acceptance rates on their department pages, or their grad school pages, or what have you. I know I saw them on Princeton and Rutgers, I'm sure other places have them too. You might be able to get an idea of your spectrum of likelihood if you check around for those.

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I figured that most of the programs I applied to have a 5-10% acceptance rate. Closer to 5 than 10. The highest acceptance rate of the programs I applied to is like 12%. Incredible.

Acceptance rates are much higher for "lower tier" programs though as well as master's programs. Surely the percentage of graduate schools applicants who get in at least one school can't be that low, right?

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Acceptance rates are much higher for "lower tier" programs though as well as master's programs. Surely the percentage of graduate schools applicants who get in at least one school can't be that low, right?

Ah, the way I figure, most of us apply to X number of programs. Some applicants get the nod across the board, but fortunately, they can only be at one place at one time, so that's when the waitlist comes into the picture.

I think the statistics I obtained from the schools do not include those on the waitlists. Probably their first round offers. (or so I hope) *gulp*

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thats about the percent of accepting but you must consider every place gets about 1-2 hundred unqualified applicats a year so it would be higher if you dont count that. Plus this is for anthropology, every field is different like chemistry has a much higher acception rate and I know business has a higher rate. Not sure about the other fields. Any know about the other fields?

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I think most of my schools are also around 5%, but my two least prestigious schools accept 40% and 70%.

The original question though, about what percentage of applicants are accepted by at least one school... there would way too many factors influencing each of their applications for a number like that to be meaningful, I would think. How many schools each applied to, how many months research experience, GRE scores, SES, prestige of UG inst., GPA... I should stop, I'm getting a very nerdy urge to build my own multiple regression analysis. :lol:

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I don't mean so much what are the odds of getting into a particular school, but what are the odds for anybody getting into at least one program. In other words, there are X thousand people applying to graduate schools, of whom Y thousand will actually matriculate in the fall.

It seems to me like someone would have those numbers.

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It seems to me like someone would have those numbers.

I don't think anyone has those numbers...this would mean that somehow everyone who applies to gradschool would have disclosed how many apps, and their results. I can't think of any outlet that would have these numbers.

It would also vary greatly from discipline to discipline. Plus, you would be comparing yourself to people with wildly different qualifications and wildly different schools applied to.

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I don't mean so much what are the odds of getting into a particular school, but what are the odds for anybody getting into at least one program. In other words, there are X thousand people applying to graduate schools, of whom Y thousand will actually matriculate in the fall.

Well, people are offering you statistics of particular programs because the statistic you're asking for doesn't exist, and furthermore, if it did exist, it would mean absolutely nothing because of the insane numbers of variables in the study. Like, (making this up,) pretend 10% of people who apply to grad school get in. What does that really mean for you? Squat. Because your programs might be more competitive, or less competitive, and you might have more experience than a lot of people in the study, or whatever. Plus, such information isn't readily able to be compiled. Every single graduate program would have to provide numbers of how many applicants it had for every single program versus how many actually wound up being accepted and then how many wound up being enrolled. You'd also have to take into account people applying to multiple programs, people who applied to programs and would have been accepted but their potential adviser wasn't taking anyone new.... blah, blah, blah. /windy

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Well, we're all budding researchers - someone should set up a study!

Seriously, the reason it hasn't been done is that it would be near impossible to get a denominator. THe only way I can see to get every applicant is to get data from every single programme and do some kind of data matching to get a list of applicants. So maybe not IMPOSSIBLE, but incredibly labour intensive.

And I think actually having the numbers would be more depressing!

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Seriously, the reason it hasn't been done is that it would be near impossible to get a denominator. THe only way I can see to get every applicant is to get data from every single programme and do some kind of data matching to get a list of applicants. So maybe not IMPOSSIBLE, but incredibly labour intensive.

Not to mention all the confidentiality issues! There's just no way an IRB would approve it if the data was taken from the applicants' schools and matched. Instead, they'd have to hunt down people who were applying, somehow get a representative sample of the population (which wouldn't happen), and ask them to give all of their stats, etc. Maybe an UG institution could do it for their graduates... but then there's that same sample issue.

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Not only that but the number of students that apply and can be accepted can change vastly over time. In recessions, grad school applications increase and while a program might admit, say, 20 people one year, the next they might only have space and money for 5.

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If YOU are accepted by a school, then YOUR acceptance rate is 100% for that school. If you are rejected, the rate is 0%

I think that's all any of us really care about, since none of us will be 20% accepted.

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