Competitiveness?

Graduate School
1

<p>How competitive is admission to graduate colleges compared with admission to undergraduate colleges?</p>

<p>For the Top 10 undergrad colleges, (many of which are Ivys), admission rates seem to be around 9%-15% of applicants. What about the Top 10 graduate colleges, though? Are they more or less competitive than that?</p>

<p>I know for the top ranked undergrad colleges, a person can have nearly perfect scores, ECs, and recs, and yet it's still often a shot in the dark as far as being accepted goes. Is the same true for the top graduate colleges?</p>

2

<p>It depends entirely on what field you're applying for.</p>

3

<p>some clinical psych phd programs have a 1% acceptance rate. beat that.</p>

4

<p>What about a Ph.D in physics and chemistry?</p>

5

<p>Well, Minnesota publishes all of their admissions stats:</p>

<p>PhD Physics (58% acceptance rate)
PhD Chemistry (54%)</p>

<p>Now, note that the average Quanitative GRE for admitted students into these programs was over 750, and Minnesota has a top 25 Physics and a top 25 Chem PhD program. It gets more competitive as you get toward the top 10.</p>

6

<p>Thank you.</p>

7

<p>Wow! I didn't know that Minnesota's physics program had such a high acceptance rate. I would've guessed that it would be closer to 10%--20%.</p>

8

<p>Very low yield rates...in the 20%, I believe. They have to accept a lot of applicants.</p>

9

<p>You also have to remember you don't have as many unqualified people applying. A lot of people apply to the Harvards and the Princetons for undergrad just to give it a shot. You wouldn't take all the time (and money) to take the GRE general, take the GRE subject, write a coherent future research plan, and find recommenders unless you were taking it seriously.</p>

10

<p>Excellent point.</p>

11

<p>Where do you all receive your statistics from? Link?</p>

12

<p><a href="http://www.grad.umn.edu/Programs/select_program.html?l=t%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.grad.umn.edu/Programs/select_program.html?l=t&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>