Predicting Graduate School AdmissionNICHOLAS GRABON ECE 539 12/13/13
DATA SOURCE Self Submitted
Physics only
Often incomplete
~500 total data points
http://www.physicsgre.com/results.php?school=berkeley
DATA PREPARATION AND METHODS
Converted binaries to -1 or 1
Eliminated Data with no acceptance information
Formatted GRE and grades
Used svmtrain and svmclassify from class
Radial basis function worked best
Chose best rate out of 1000 trials
Held out 100 points per trial
DATA ANALYSIS
Chose an average resume to investigate (my own)
Varied this with respect to
Physics GRE score
Gender
Year of Application
School Applied to
Residency
GPA
And Combinations of these
PGRE SCORE and SCHOOL
Classifier Error=16%Green is accepted, blue is denied
PGRE and Gender1 corresponds to female; -1 to male
2009 2011 2013
2008
PGRE and Race
2008
2009
1 denotes ethnic minority, -1 denotes ethnic majority
2011 2013
PGRE and Residence 0 indicates domestic; -1 is international
201320112009
2008
PGRE and GPA
2011 Total GPA 2011 Major GPA
Here I used Princeton to emphasize the difference
PGRE score and Verbal GRE Score
Conclusions
The PGRE seems to be the most important factor
There is a small amount of randomness but essentially predictable
Gender, ethnicity, and residence matter
General GPA matters more than the subject GPA but not as much as PGRE
The top block of schools have roughly the same criteria