How are the applications looked/analyzed in the first round by the adcoms? any idea?

[P=NP]

Yes, I think it's apples and oranges. If you look at some program web sites, the proportions for admits is often quite different from the proportions for matriculating students (which is what the cited paper is looking at)--not just for the variables we've mentioned, but also for race, sex, etc.

Yep, e.g. Yale's matriculating students:
US: 8
Europe: 4
Canada: 1
Asia: 3
South America: 2
Australasia: 3

[taka_sukunami]

I can see giving you contact details of other admitted students to organize flyout activities, but I think it was an accident that incoming students were given the entire list of admits - the incoming class contact information was on one excel sheet, the entire list on another, someone probably just forgot to delete the latter.

Do you (or other TM folks out there) think it actually works in practice, i.e. giving everyone the list so they can network? Given that only 20 or so matriculated from the 60+ admits and the fact that Yale is an amazing school, I can only infer that most of the top schools are fighting for the same students (that is what we would expect anyways). If that is so, do people actually hook up/keep in contact even after they choose to go to different places? That would be a pretty powerful network if they did.

[jjmann]

Does the dept taking in mean more students mean that more people are going to be weeded out... or is it just that the department went on recruiting and can now support a larger student body?

I think it is usually the latter case. Departments slowly increase in size and can also gradually support a bigger student body. I dont think top10 departments want to lose out any students on whom they are investing their time and money.

[P=NP]

Do you (or other TMe folks out there) think it actually works in practice, i.e. giving everyone the list so they can network? Given that only 20 or so matriculated from the 60+ admits and the fact that Yale is an amazing school, I can only infer that most of the top schools are fighting for the same students (this is what we would expect anyways). If that is so, do people actually hook up/keep in contact even after they choose to go to different places? That would be a pretty powerful network if they did.

I think giving people the list of admits was primarily to help them in flyout things like sharing a hotel room, taxi, getting together for dinner (before they had a chance to meet in person).

[taka_sukunami]

I think it is usually the latter case. Departments slowly increase in size and can also gradually support a bigger student body. I dont think top10 departments want to lose out any students on whom they are investing their time and money.

Agree. I don't have the exact article now, but remember reading somewhere that economics is the fastest growing major so demand for econ PhDs should only go up from here.