If a school hopes to matriculate 4, then how many are they likely to admit?

[NWFreeheel11]

I was wondering what the Grad Cafe thought about how many people a school will most likely admit if they are wanting to matriculate 4 people.

 

Do you think that they would most likely admit 8 people?

 

I read somewhere that schools tend to expect about 50% matriculation from those that they admit. Does this seem correct?

[rising_star]

It depends greatly on the program. Lower ranked programs may admit more than that, knowing that their top students will have other offers and may not choose them. It's probably partially based on what has happened in previous cycles, which you can't necessarily know. I know my PhD program had a matriculation rate way higher than 50%.

[TakeruK]

My PhD program has an average matriculation rate of about 50%. I've heard that other programs have rates that range from 30% to 80%. Sometimes, within one year, the rates can be far from average for one reason or another. Within my particular subfield in my program, the matriculation rate varies wildly (between 0% and 100% in the last 5 years), but this is also because of small number statistics.

 

The number of offers can really depend on each program's ability to absorb extra students / their willingness to take risks. Some programs take fewer risks and make several waves of offers until they fill their quota (many Canadian schools do this) while others will make 40 offers for 20 spots and hope that not all 40 matriculate!!