A senior philosopher writes:
We are a mid-ranking graduate program. In previous years we have normally finished up making about 15 offers to get an intake of half a dozen students, going two or three deep into our wait list following an initial set of dozen offers. This year, however, our experience has been quite different. We had to go much deeper into our wait list, and finished up making nearly 30 offers overall. An informal inquiry to one other program suggests that they had a similar experience. I wonder if there is some general trend here. Are students becoming much more cautions, making more applications overall, and making more "back up" applications than they previously would have done?
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