Graduate School | UW–Madison
Graduate Programs & Services at the University of Wisconsin–Madison

Graduate School Data

The University of Wisconsin–Madison Graduate School is committed to data transparency about student experiences and employment outcomes. This page provides data highlights, links to interactive data dashboards, and information about national data initiatives in which UW–Madison is a partner.

Admissions and enrollment

For fall 2020, the admission rate was 31%. The enrollment (yield) rate was 37%. Admissions and enrollment information for individual programs is also available through the link below.

Admissions and Enrollment bar chart showing 18,538 students applied, 5,808 were admitted, and 2,147 students enrolled for fall 2020.

Doctoral student funding

In fall 2020, 87% of PhD students had full funding through UW in the form of graduate assistantships and fellowships. Other students generally rely on a combination of funding sources such as external funding, employment, personal savings, and loans.

PhD Student Funding pie chart data for fall 2020 shows 36 percent of PhD students were research assistants, 30 percent were teaching assistants, 13 percent had other funding, 12 percent were fellows, 4 percent were project assistants, and 4 percent were trainees.

Degrees awarded

UW–Madison granted over 3,100 graduate degrees in 2020-21 (2,406 master’s degrees, 729 PhD degrees), with a median time to degree of 5.8 years for a PhD degree and 1.8 years for a master’s degree.

Doctoral career outcomes

PhD alumni 5 years post-graduation held careers in a variety of sectors, including in academia (53% of PhD graduates), for-profit industries (34%), government (6%), non-profit organizations (6%), and other fields (1%).

Data Resources & Requests for Campus Users

University faculty and staff can access a wide variety of campus data resources related to graduate education at UW–Madison including data reports, interactive data visualizations, and data queries. More information on these resources can be found in the Graduate School KnowledgeBase.

Student data

The Graduate School Explorer contains aggregate data on admissions, enrollment, student funding, degree and program completion rates, and doctoral career outcomes. NetID login is required.

Note: To use the Graduate School Explorer, you must have access to “Student Restricted” data. To request access, complete the Office of Data Management request access web form.

The Graduate Admissions Competitor Landscape visualization presents data on the national postsecondary institutions competing with UW–Madison graduate programs for new student admissions. Dashboards display the institutional enrollments of new graduate admits over the past five years as well as the reasons reported by admits for not accepting UW–Madison graduate program offers of admission.

Survey data

The Graduate School administers three required student surveys: the Doctoral Exit Survey, the Master’s Exit Survey, and the Doctoral Student Experience Survey. To access survey data, click on the corresponding link below.

Can’t find what you need?

University staff and campus researchers wishing to request a specific data report or product not otherwise available should use our data request intake form. To complete the form you will first need to log in to your campus G Suite account.

About Our Data Projects

The Graduate School is involved in a number of data projects that seek to improve data collection and transparency about graduate admissions, enrollment, funding, career outcomes, and more.

Understanding PhD Career Pathways for Program Improvement

UW–Madison is part of a multi-institutional grant aimed at collecting and making transparent data about PhD students’ career aspirations and alumni outcomes. The data will be used to strengthen career support and initiate an employment tracking system to extend into the future.

Coalition for Next Generation Life Science

Recognizing the lack of clear marketplace information on career options for life scientists, UW–Madison joined eight other research universities and a major cancer institute to form a coalition that has publicly posted career outcomes data for biomedical scientists.

Data publications

Understanding UW–Madison PhD Career Pathways: Career Preferences, Outcomes, and Alignment

Published August 2019

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