PhD admission percentage
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15 Jan 2005, 20:03
I once asked a prof in a top 20 school why the admission percentage for PhD is so low. He said that, out of the 700 admission he received, about 300 to 400 are from Asia, and most of these applicants went to some "no name" university (or universities that are not well known). Therefore, when he reviews the application, he will probably discard all these applicant.
In addition, in most cast, it is likely that the same 1000 people applied to the top 20 schools.
Let's do some math. For the top 20 schools, it is likely that there are only 1000 applicants, 500 of which are not likely to be reviewed. Therefore, only 500 of those are the serious one. In addition, each of the top 20 universities are accepting abou 10 to 15 students, that makes it to be 250 new PhD student each year for the top 20 schools. In that case, if I apply to all these 20 schools (assume that I am from some "reasonable" university), the admission percentage is actually 250 out of 500 (i.e. 50%)
Obviously, this would be a general number because the statistic for different department would be different.
did I make a false assumption in my calculation?