"Fluff" Students?
Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 10:24 pm
I have heard from my professors that some programs accept way more students than they want (and bring them in) for the purpose of TAing. They then proceed to make qualifiers so incredibly hard as to purposefully weed out a large portion of the class (in the case of 1 school I heard they were weeding out 30%+ of each class).
I was talking to my friend the other day, and he mentioned a program that he knows does this. It got me thinking. I'm not sure I really want to go to a program where they're expecting to kick out a large portion of the class after quals. That doesn't sound like a pleasant experience. However, it seems a bit tricky to figure out what schools do and what schools don't do this. I've been looking at acceptance numbers and comparing them to the number of PhDs granted and such on http://www.gradschoolshopper.com/. I look for any inconsistencies. It sends up red flags to me if the numbers don't seem right. That doesn't seem like the best method
Does anyone know a good place/method to find this kind of information? The only other method I can think of right now would be talking to current graduate students at specific schools and asking.
I was talking to my friend the other day, and he mentioned a program that he knows does this. It got me thinking. I'm not sure I really want to go to a program where they're expecting to kick out a large portion of the class after quals. That doesn't sound like a pleasant experience. However, it seems a bit tricky to figure out what schools do and what schools don't do this. I've been looking at acceptance numbers and comparing them to the number of PhDs granted and such on http://www.gradschoolshopper.com/. I look for any inconsistencies. It sends up red flags to me if the numbers don't seem right. That doesn't seem like the best method
Does anyone know a good place/method to find this kind of information? The only other method I can think of right now would be talking to current graduate students at specific schools and asking.