A total of 1,068 graduate students were accepted from the pool of 10,135 applicants, which was 10 percent larger than last year’s pool of 9,238 applicants.
Of the admitted students, 575 — or roughly 54 percent — have enrolled at the University for the upcoming academic year, up from last year’s 51 percent yield. Women made up 35.8 percent of admitted students.
This year’s applicant pool featured 4,556 international applicants — up from 4,189 last year — and of the 351 accepted international applicants, the largest numbers came from China, India, Canada, France and Germany.
Redman attributed the increase in applications both to the current economic climate and to the success of University initiatives aimed at attracting prospective graduate students.
“We saw interest in both the quality of our programs and also the sustained quality of our financial aid program, because we are still able to make full offers of support covering five years,” Redman said in a University statement.
In an interview with the ‘Prince,’ Redman added that the University will continue its commitment to offering summer fellowship support for graduate students for all five years of study.
“I don’t think there’s another graduate school of our caliber who [offers summer support],” Redman said.
The standard University fellowship stipend for graduate students is $25,750, and the University covers tuition fees for graduate students with a combination of departmental and fellowship aid.
Redman said he thought the 3 percent increase in graduate student stipends — approved by the Board of Trustees in January — was also a factor in attracting a larger pool of applicants this year.
“Generally, in a tough economic climate more students think about going back to school,” Redman said. He added, however, that while some graduate school departments saw large increases in applicants, others saw dramatic decreases.
Applications to the School of Architecture increased by 30 percent this year. Redman explained that since construction decreases during an economic recession, many applicants may have wanted to increase their skills to appear more qualified in a job market with fewer opportunities.
The finance program, however, saw a 25 percent decrease in applications, which Redman also attributed to the economic downturn.

“If individuals have a [finance] job in this volatile market, they might be more inclined to remain in that job to hold on to it, rather than leave that job to pursue more education,” he explained.
The University expanded recruitment efforts this year by launching a new website with information about academic programs and campus life and by hosting informational events on and off campus, Redman said, adding that representatives from the Graduate School also routinely travel both across the country and internationally to recruit students.
The University has been emphasizing the recruitment of graduate students from underrepresented minorities, he explained, noting that 1,240 American minority students applied for the upcoming academic year. These applicants included 252 African-Americans, 282 Hispanics, 25 Native Americans and 681 Asian Americans. Of these applicants, 160 — or 12.9 percent —received offers of admission.
As the University plans budget cuts across all departments, Redman said the Graduate School may have to scale back its recruiting.
“It’s possible that we might be a little more selective, but we are certainly not going to stop traveling,” he said, noting that the Graduate School will focus its efforts on large national meetings, such as the National Bio-Medical Science Symposium, to target large numbers of prospective students at one time.
“I think in the future we’re just going to have to be much more strategic about our travel and, generally, with our recruitment plans,” he explained.
Redman said he was not yet able to discuss how the Graduate School’s admission numbers compared to those at peer institutions.
“I don’t have a very firm sense of where our major competition was this year,” he said, adding that there will be a meeting next week with other top schools concerning admissions.
“I think we were so busy on our home campuses that we didn’t seek a lot of information from our peers,” he explained.