is Peterson's a reliable Grad School guide?

[Nico Corr]

I am interested in going to graduate school Fall of 2017 to study International Affairs and I have been doing research to see which programs most interest and best fit me. I live in the DC metro area, and am particularly interested in going to one of the grad schools in the area. GW is of particular interest to me. WHile conducting my research, I came upon a site called Peterson's that has information about school admission's percentages, cost of attendance etc. I noticed that for many of these schools, GW included acceptance rates seemed higher than I thought they would be. Is Peterson's a reliable source for information pertaining to acceptance rates and such?

 

https://www.petersons.com/graduate-schools/the-george-washington-university-elliott-school-of-international-affairs-000_10049512.aspx

[Chai_latte]

It depends.  

According to a Peterson's employee, Peterson's gets the info from the departments themselves.  However, the information is not always current.  If a particular program has not responded to the survey in 3 years, the out-of-date responses may still be listed.

At least, this was what I was told ~5 years ago.

[mcgrad]

I've heard the same things about Peterson's data, knowing the college data industry (I worked in that industry for about five years). I'd suggest looking at a website like gradcu.com or the school websites that you're most interested in. They are way more focused on the graduate education and should have the most up-to-date information that you're looking for. Gradcu.com data is updated yearly no matter what, so everything is current. It's also more of a holistic site that doesn't put a ton of emphasis on test scores or selectivity in the grad school arena.

[Nico Corr]

On 9/29/2016 at 8:43 PM, Chai_latte said:

It depends.  

According to a Peterson's employee, Peterson's gets the info from the departments themselves.  However, the information is not always current.  If a particular program has not responded to the survey in 3 years, the out-of-date responses may still be listed.

At least, this was what I was told ~5 years ago.

Thanks for the reply. I figured there would be a caveat of some kind, I will try to figure out how recent these stats are. Thanks