There are many reasons people apply to graduate school. Some people apply to a graduate program with hopes of one day becoming a professor or researcher, while others enter a graduate program in order to further their current career, especially in those areas where a graduate degree is necessary for advancement, such as social worker and psychology.

Regardless of your reasons for applying to graduate school, the number of people involved in your desired graduate program may be of interest to you. If you are planning on pursuing a graduate degree for professional reasons, knowing the number of people with the same degree competing for jobs helps determine how competitive your field will be. On the other hand, if you are planning on pursing a graduate degree for academic purposes, the number of students in a desired field will give you an idea as to whether or not you will be one of a select few in the field (thereby increasing the chances that your work will have a visible impact) or one in a field of hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, the number of people in a field will also have a substantial impact on the amount of funding researchers receive in grant money; a fact that can have a great impact on the strength of a program.

Between July 1, 2000 and June 30, 2003, the Educational Testing Service (ETS) compiled statistics for the number of students taking the GRE with the purpose of attending specific graduate programs. The ETS statistics are intended to give you an idea of the number of people applying to specific graduate programs and a general indication of the number of people in a certain field.