English Ph.d. Acceptance Rates

[abc123guy]

Hello - I have a question that has bothered me for some time: Why is it so difficult to find admissions statistics for graduate programs in English? If I apply to a school, I'd like to know my chances of getting into that school. Does anyone have any insight into my dilemma(i.e. where to locate admission rates, why schools don't publish admission rates, etc)? Or, even better, does anyone have representative admission rates for Ph.D. programs? Thanks for the help.

[glasses]

I think it might have to do with the sheer number of variables that can't be defined by numbers: sure, average incoming GPAs and GREs matter, but there are so many unquantifiable aspects of the process that those acceptance rates would be virtually worthless. How could you say what an average writing sample--or an average LOR, or an average SOP--is? For English, these are the most important parts of the app. If a school says they take 2% of their applicants, and of those 2% the average GPA was 3.6, that doesn't tell you all that much about how you'd fare.

Not that any of this helps with the anxiety and the persistent bogeyman called the Can I Get In There Factor. To deal with that, I've been asking professors who know my work to tell me if they have any specific recommendations for schools I should take a look at; I've also been to a graduate school admissions counselor and asked the same, after rattling off stats, resume bullet points, and academic interests. This usually gives me a pretty decent idea of what I can reasonably expect.

[lotf629]

I think Glasses' post was spot-on. Many English Ph.D. programs will take only 1-2 students (if that) per year, per subfield; as a result, professors on the committee are looking not only for qualified candidates but for workplace subordinates and junior colleagues. That's why so many people on these boards emphasize "fit," and why many people are accepted at superselective schools but rejected by moderately selective schools.

That said, I think Glasses' 2% rate is typical of the most selective programs. I know that Columbia took 20 out of 700+ this year, and I know that Harvard typically takes 16-18 out of 400+...but there again, those numbers are misleading, because they make Harvard look less selective than Columbia, which is not the case.

[purplepepper]

Princeton publishes their acceptance info.

http://gradschool.princeton.edu/about/d ... able_A.pdf

The numbers don't reflect this past admissions cycle, but I imagine they'll update it soon enough. I imagine that the numbers can be misleading as there is no info on subfield, but at least it's a general idea.

[jasper.milvain]

It sounds like the kind of information that a department graduate chair would know, as would a graduate secretary (or whatever you call the admin worker who processes files at the dept. level).

I agree with glasses and the others that the information wouldn't be that helpful.

[LingGrad2009]

* 1 awarded posthumously

This made me sad.

[abc123guy]

Thank you for all of your insight. Many of you seem to think such statistics are not relevant. I, on the other hand, look at any statistics as good statistics. Yes, such stats may not at first glance give an accurate idea of the difficulty of getting into a school, but combined with the many other stats provided by the graduate school, one could get a much better idea of the likelihood of getting accepted at any given institution. I like transparency - and without all the information - I am a little left in the dark by some of these schools.

[glasses]

Thank you for all of your insight. Many of you seem to think such statistics are not relevant. I, on the other hand, look at any statistics as good statistics. Yes, such stats may not at first glance give an accurate idea of the difficulty of getting into a school, but combined with the many other stats provided by the graduate school, one could get a much better idea of the likelihood of getting accepted at any given institution. I like transparency - and without all the information - I am a little left in the dark by some of these schools.

Well, again, it's not that statistics are irrelevant--I'd never say that--just not all that useful. And, to be blunt, from my albeit limited experience, we ain't gonna find transparency here.

[Minnesotan]

If it makes you feel any better, it's not any easier for those of us who are already PhD Candidates. There's much more information out there for grad school applicants than for job, fellowship, or post-doc applicants.