2010-2011 Admissions: Don't Waste Your Years

This year the graduate program of finance started sending invitation letters to students in regular masters programs. They probably think that, in relatively challenging programs such as "Master of Quantitative Finance", "Master of Economics and Finance of Aging" there are good students with a solid background in finance.

It seems that the department has difficulty in attracting students. Perhaps they are not satisfied with the quality rather than number of the applicants.  So how come UvT cannot attract successful graduate students? Aren't they the number 23 in the world (according to their own rankings list) ?

The Economics department has not started "recruiting" students by e-mail yet. Though it is not hard to predict that they will soon start doing that. Out of 25 second year research masters (formerly known as Mphil) students, they admitted only 6 (SIX) students to the PhD program. They claim that there are still 4 available positions so we might expect a total of 10 admissions this year. The attrition rate turns out to be 60%. Now who wants to waste 2 years of his life with 60% probability?

Attrition rates are always high one might think. Are they as high as 60% in other universities as well? This article, estimates two year attrition rates of US Econ programs:
Tier 1 programs: 13.6 %
Tier 2 programs: 17.4 %
Tier 3 programs: 32.6 %
Tier 4 programs: 39.4 %
Tier 5 programs: 37.9 %
Tilburg University: 60 %
Go figure.

All in all, after 2010 it will be fairly easy to be admitted to the graduate programs of UvT. However it will be even easier to be dropped out. Remember: they now require an A for thesis AND an average of 8 (A) from courses! Even if you fulfill these criteria there is a good chance that they will make it even harder while you are making plans about your future. Please read this article to see how unreliable and incompetent UvT graduate school  administration is.