Accepted vs. Attending

[curufinwe]

I've always been curious about this. People often apply to a range of schools in terms of ranking and then among the "accepted"s, they choose where they wanna go. So it is unlikely that a school would have all the students they accept to be attending to that program. How do they arrange funding for that? Do they count on historical data? Would they end up with less students than they could afford if they don't have a waitlist? Then again, according to last year's results, I did not see many waitlisted people. So I'm not sure how common that is.

What do you guys know about this issue?

[Bobb Cobb]

I know most well-funded programs admit a few more than they expect to matriculate. This gives them the cohort size that they have determined to be ideal based on past experience, funding, class sizes, and potential mentors. As you suggested, this sets up the possibility that programs could end up with more or less than they anticipated or wanted. This has happened at a few places ranked in the lower part of the top 25 (and maybe others, but I know about these) because of a trickle-down effect from the higher ranked schools. For instance, programs A, B, C accept less students, but D accepts the normal amount. This causes D to end up with students who would have otherwise gone to A,B,C in normal years. This is why most places say they want a cohort of 5-7, 8-10, 12-15 etc. as it is not an exact science, but rather a reasonable expectation based on past experience and current circumstances. There are some places without official waitlists, but I suspect most have at least some sort of fall-back options lined up.

Edited February 5, 2010 by Bobb-Cobb