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ADMISSIONS DATA
Students frequently ask about their “chances” of gaining admission to PhD programs. Peterson's Guide to Graduate School does print such data, usually 2-3 years out-of-date. In 1998-99, I printed more current data for dozens of programs.
After talking with many philosophers about this data, and after having served several times on an Admissions Committee, I am now convinced that this data is more misleading than illuminating, and so will no longer collect and print it, and largely for reasons that appeared as cautionary notes in 1998:
(1) The volume of applications reflects a variety of factors: region of the country, particular specialties of a department, and the like. Acceptance rates also reflect various factors: again, region of the country, as well as factors like who that school is competing with for students, the size of the graduate program, the caliber of the overall applicant pool, and the like. Acceptance rates have little or no correlation with the quality of the students in a program: a program that only accepts 4% of applicants may be doing so because the applicant pool is mediocre or the size of the graduate program is small; a school that accepts 15% may be doing so because its applicant pool is first-rate, and it is competing with the other elite programs for those students. (In general, state schools have larger graduate programs than private schools.) There are large volumes of applicants in Continental philosophy every year; a school that draws on that applicant pool will have high volumes of applications. In short, there is hardly any correlation between volume of applications, acceptance rates, and quality of programs.
(2) Some schools do not even require GREs, and still others give it little weight. Median GREs are only a very crude proxy for your chances of admission. (Remember, too, that the median indicates that half the students admitted had lower GREs--perhaps much lower--than the one reported!)
(3) GPAs are an even cruder proxy. Most schools consider where the GPA is from: for most schools, a GPA of 3.5 from Princeton is more impressive than a GPA of 3.9 from an undistinguished college.
(4) Finally, data on the number of students admitted does not distinguish between those admitted with and without financial aid.
In the end, then, it is my considered opinion that numerical admissions data is not very useful in assessing your chances for admission. |
