Estimates on size of physics applicant pool this year?

[vicente]

Anyone got an estimate on how many applicants there were this year in total counting all schools, how many grad student spots were budgeted, and therefore whether it was harder / easier to get in this year compared to previous years?

Obviously the number of applicants and the number of budgeted grad student spots varies from school to school depending on individual dept funds, changes in individual state education funding, and whether the dept admitted too many / too few people last year, but I'm wondering if it's possible to identify a general trend across the country.

[quizivex]

Must bring new life to this thread...

Doesn't APS publish numbers like that? I have no clue, but people have posted various statistical data on the forum about the number of students doing bla bla bla before and usually they claim to get it from APS.

[butsurigakusha]

There is such data available on the AIP website, but of course it doesn't include data for this current round of admissions. But, just to give an estimate, according to grad school shopper, Berkeley had 713 applicants last year. This year, according to the letter I received, they had over 720 applicants. MIT had 713 applicants last year, and over 700 this year. These numbers seem to indicate that the number of applicants is pretty similar to what it was last year.

[quizivex]

Thanks for the info, I'll be curious to check the admit statistics for the programs I applied to this year when the data comes out next year...

Whoops, AIP, not APS, how embrassing...

almost as embarassing as me being unable to spell embarassing correctly...

[dlenmn]

From what I heard at Wisc, they got an unusually large number of applicants this year (this was from their Graduate Coordinator). The word on the street was that this was the case at some other places too. Interestingly, Wisc sent out more acceptances than in the past because the quality of the applicants had been going up meaning that more were going to higher ranked programs...

[twistor]

Based on most pondiferous data available on the interwebs I'd say the applicant pool was medium-hugesmall.