<p>Well… This list is completely statistically insignificant and if you’d like to know why:</p>
<p>(1) You’ve given a list of # of students from A-Z schools that attend X school.
How this bears any statistical significance I have no idea. Anyway… You need to factor in the # of applicant who applied to X school from each A-Z school, how many were accepted and how many chose to attend. Since it’s the total # of applicants and the total # of acceptance that really matter. Why? Well…</p>
<p>Here’s essentially the list you have provided:
X school is the most prestigious school for studying Φ. </p>
<p>A school 50
B school 20
C school 10
D school 5
E school 1 </p>
<p>Okay so great; we now know how many students from each school A-E decided to attend X. Which… Isn’t helpful. And here’s why:</p>
<p>Assume:
A school has 25,000 undergrads
B school has 15,000
C school has 12,000
D school has 1,000
E school has 10,000</p>
<p>Which in reality means that, of the total student population, the following percent decided to attend X school:</p>
<p>A school 0.2%
B school 0.13%
C school 0.083%
D school 0.5%
E school 0.01%</p>
<p>Here’s what’s important: D school had only 5 graduates in attendance at X, yet it had the highest percentage of students attending X. Ok great, so now we know the % of student from A-E who go to X. STILL NOT RELEVANT.</p>
<p>You still need the # of students who applied, the # accepted and the # who attended. That way instead of telling us the % of students in attendance, we actually have some sort of statistically significant number as to why we’re trying to analyze. As it is now, you’ve given us a correlation, not a causation. </p>
<p>This is why:
Suppose the following number of students applied to X from each school, followed by the number accepted and the number who attended and then the acceptance rate:
A school 100 70 50 -> 70%<br>
B school 200 23 20 -> 11.5%
C school 25 10 10 -> 40%
D school 500 10 5 -> 2%
E school 10 1 1 -> 100% </p>
<p>Now, D school, who had the largest percentage representation also has, by far the lowest acceptance rate into X school. Whereas E school who has the lowest representation at X school, happens to have the highest acceptance rate into X. </p>
<p>Do you see why posting numbers of people attending XZY college is statistically insignificant if you’re trying to determine which schools are favored by graduate schools?</p>