Ratio of initial applicant telephone interviews per available program spots?

[aqueousmelodies]

Hello, I was wondering, is some (secret) generally accepted ratio most graduate programs use to determine how many initial phone interview they will give per spot available in their program?

 

I am applying in the I/O and Organizational Behavior areas and I have three telephone interview set up for next week, so I guess I am just confused as to if they are just screening me to make sure there are no red flags before extending the offer, or if They are trying to interview 3+ phone for the offer I am hoping to recieve.

[Applicant 1746]

I'm not sure about I/O, but for clinical and counseling (and maybe social/cog?), it seems that each POI phone/Skype interviews a short list of 5, and then invites 2 or 3 for a campus interview (of which 1 is typically selected, unless the POI plans to take more than 1 student that year, in which case they seem to invite double the number of applicants they plan to take).

[lewin]

This varies from person-to-person and from institution-to-institution. There's no secret rule.

As a thought exercise, prospective grad students should read this paper on how feeling a lack of personal control increases illusory pattern perception (e.g., superstitions, conspiracy theories, patterns in noise). I think the application experience primes people to look for patterns in everything.