How does a dental school reach its advertised class size?

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NDPitch

NDPitch

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I've been wondering, how does a school end up with the right amount of students for the incoming class? It's a fact that schools will offer more acceptances than the number of students entering into the incoming class.

Let's use UConn as an example. They have a small class size of 40ish. However, I think last year they ACCEPTED 55 out of state applicants. That's more than the entire class size, not to mention that 50% of the class comes from in-state.

Could a school potentially end up in a "overcrowded" situation, where all of the offers made are accepted? Can a school essentially turn you away after you've accepted the offer because the class size is too big? I doubt this has ever happened. Is this prevented by dishing out acceptances slowly through the cycle? I wonder if a dental school makes enough offers on December 1st to potentially fill the class, and the "left over" spots from people turning down the offers are dished out on a rolling basis?
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A school has 40 spots.. They send out 40 acceptances. only 30 matriculate. they send out 10 more acceptances.. only 5 of those matriculate.. they send out 5 acceptances.. all five matriculate.. They have sent out a total of 55 acceptances.. (more than the class size) the don't take gambles like you mentioned. You really think they want to call a student back up and say "nope sorry, i guess we're full.) That's why it's rolling admissions.
 
They get within a range of, say, 5 to 10 matriculants by predicting what percentage of acceptances will matriculate. After that they use the wait-list as necessary. Frequently admissions offices hire statistics companies that specialize in forecasting to advise them on how many applicants to accept and what sort of applicants are most likely to matriculate. They are quite good at it and quite precise. It's more important for dental schools to have this degree of precision than undergraduate institutions because of the limitations of patients and chairs later on in the education. Undergraduate programs suffer considerably less when they are overfilled. Over-admitting just isn't an option in professional schools.
 
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NDPitch said:
I've been wondering, how does a school end up with the right amount of students for the incoming class? It's a fact that schools will offer more acceptances than the number of students entering into the incoming class.

Let's use UConn as an example. They have a small class size of 40ish. However, I think last year they ACCEPTED 55 out of state applicants. That's more than the entire class size, not to mention that 50% of the class comes from in-state.

Could a school potentially end up in a "overcrowded" situation, where all of the offers made are accepted? Can a school essentially turn you away after you've accepted the offer because the class size is too big? I doubt this has ever happened. Is this prevented by dishing out acceptances slowly through the cycle? I wonder if a dental school makes enough offers on December 1st to potentially fill the class, and the "left over" spots from people turning down the offers are dished out on a rolling basis?
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Did you apply to UConn. I got an interview, and i was wondering what is their interview/acceptance ratio for out of state students. Do you happen to have that data? Thanks!
 
DDS Perez said:
Did you apply to UConn. I got an interview, and i was wondering what is their interview/acceptance ratio for out of state students. Do you happen to have that data? Thanks!
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Indeed I do.

The 2012 d-school guide states that 1101 OOS students applied. 126 of those were interviewed. 55 of those were made offers. That is a 5% rate of acceptance for OOS applicants.

Congrats on your interview. They are hard to come by at UConn. Rock that interview! UConn is #1 for me. No word from them yet, but we'll see what happens.
 
NDPitch said:
Indeed I do.

The 2012 d-school guide states that 1101 OOS students applied. 126 of those were interviewed. 55 of those were made offers. That is a 5% rate of acceptance for OOS applicants.

Congrats on your interview. They are hard to come by at UConn. Rock that interview! UConn is #1 for me. No word from them yet, but we'll see what happens.
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well the 5% doesn't apply to me because i already got an interview so i should belong to a 55/126 roughly 44% chance of being accepted, thats not bad, i hope my english behaves that day hahahaha. I really appreciate you telling me the information, thank you! UConn is my number one too! so far of my two interviews it will be my first one, so that has me a little worried lol. I wish you best of luck!! Hopefully Classmates :thumbup:
 
goffdent said:
A school has 40 spots.. They send out 40 acceptances. only 30 matriculate. they send out 10 more acceptances.. only 5 of those matriculate.. they send out 5 acceptances.. all five matriculate.. They have sent out a total of 55 acceptances.. (more than the class size) the don't take gambles like you mentioned. You really think they want to call a student back up and say "nope sorry, i guess we're full.) That's why it's rolling admissions.
Click to expand...

This is not true for all schools. I was told by an adcom of a school that they flat out send out more acceptances than they have seats for because they know they will be rejected by x number of students. Doesn't really matter though because the point is that in the end all schools send out more invitations than they have seats for.
 
joshwake said:
This is not true for all schools. I was told by an adcom of a school that they flat out send out more acceptances than they have seats for because they know they will be rejected by x number of students. Doesn't really matter though because the point is that in the end all schools send out more invitations than they have seats for.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's what I've been told by an adcom too. But say they have 50 seats for OOS, then they send 55-60 acceptances, and go from there.
 
There are always people on the wait list more than willing to fill up a given spot... i have even heard of acceptances coming as late as June and July to those on the wait list.
 
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