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Residuals

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  1. I often read on various forums that Hyde Park is unsafe. I am amazed with the urban legend about UChicago and Hyde Park. Between the Chicago Police and UChicago Police, Hyde Park has one of the highest police per capita in the US. In terms of actual crime, there is a great site of statistics by university at the US Department of Education (https://ope.ed.gov/campussafety/#/). The data are in the form of crime incidences (of various categories) per 1000 students. Folks may be surprised to find that UChicago is one of the safest universities. For fun, compare UChicago versus Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, etc. You will find that UChicago is pretty much uniformly less than all these schools. Number of incidents of sexual crimes, burglaries are on the order of 3 to 5 times higher at schools like Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard than UChicago. With this said, with any urban institution, there are areas and times that would be stupid to venture into. When you live in Hyde Park, it is pretty obvious what boundaries you don't want to cross especially in the dark hours.
  2. Wharton never seems well gauged in the admissions process. The department feels it is theoretically on par with Stanford accepting Stanford qualified students and putting excellent students on the waiting list. But more times than not, the accepted students decide to go to other departments (like Stanford, Berkeley, or Chicago). But, in the meantime, Wharton drags its feet on the waiting list students to only lose them for reasons you state. It is quite a dysfunctional process.
  3. Indeed, that is where he is going. Chicago started to build momentum on the ML/computational front with him. I wonder how the department is going to respond with this set back?
  4. Yesterday (March 6) and today (March 7) are admit visiting days for Berkeley stats. Accepted applicants are visiting the department as we speak. Obviously, not all the admits will accept. So, there might be further considerations down the road but I am not sure of that either.
  5. I agree with you. It is discouraging for a PhD student to be admitted with no or limited funding.
  6. There is no doubt that the state cuts on UW system has had impact on financials like offering of scholarships. But, the rumors of UW Madison's department being "poor" are totally unfounded. There are top notch researchers (both at the senior and junior levels). Several Berkeley PhD's as faculty. They just hired two Wharton statistics doctoral graduates as assistant professors. So, no suffering in terms of faculty quality. What is suffering is the campus' ability to give $$.
  7. The statistics profession is going through an evolution with no clear end game. First, the academic job market for statistics faculty positions is quite tight and difficult to land even if one is coming from a top department. A recent Amstats News article spoke the sobering fact that post-docs in statistics is growing exponentially which further delays the starting of an academic career. Then there is a computer science (CS) effect. Those few faculty positions that are out there are increasingly being filled by CS PhD graduates. The number CS PhD students is exploding. So, there is a risk that this supply of graduates can further crowd out a traditional PhD in statistics student.
  8. The rankings are weird on this site. For example, if one deletes the three biostats departments above Chicago, then logically places Chicago at #3 with statistics. But clicking on the schools show different rankings. Weird and not well done. Too bad this list wasn't properly designed based on the separation.
  9. OM comparison with statistics within a particular B-school is a not a full analysis. Without revealing myself, let me just note that I have a dual PhD in OM and statistics from a top 5 B-school and I am an OM and statistics faculty member at a doctoral granting B-school. So, I agree that OM is a fundamental area that deals with creation and transformation and is at the core of business and is most valuable to the company and society; I teach this! But, my statements about OM market being the smallest in terms of faculty positions are very informed. OM faculty regrettably get paid less that their business school colleagues, though OM does pay better than statistics faculty positions. There are leading OM researchers (some of whom my colleagues) who are trying to expand the recognition of OM as a field. The supply chain management movement has no doubt helped but OM still has a way to go to be viewed in the same manner as finance, accounting, management, etc. Finally, there are fundamental research questions in accounting and management that require PhD level training. You just have to be familiar with these worlds. Good luck in your applications.
  10. You are failing to recognize that OM is the smallest discipline at business schools (top or not). There are typically fewer OM faculty (than say finance) to supervise research. And given the size of OM as an area, the market can't support increase of the supply side (there aren't as many OM faculty jobs as finance/accting/marketing/mgmt). Thus, in the end, this is why you find smaller PhD counts.
  11. I would agree with @marmle. Top stats departments favor math backgrounds. Real analysis is the minimal gateway requirement. You indicate that you possibly could see yourself being a faculty. Bear in mind, the top departments are biased towards applicants who have academic career aspirations. Harvard tends to be more focused on social sciences applications, not your interests. Biology-oriented statisticians may be hard to find in departments of statistics. But, they are around if you look. There is Philip Dixon at Iowa State U Department of Statistics; might look him up.
  12. I think with your math courses/GPA/General GRE Quant and from a good school in U of Toronto, you have a good shot at all the schools. Only Stanford's PhD requires Math Subject Test; no other school explicitly requires it. So, if you feel that your Math Subject Test score is not on par with other international students, you don't have to submit it to any of these schools (note: no MS program asks for the subject test, so if you go to an MS program then you have a second chance at the math subject test in the future). I think you have good chance at many of the programs you are applying to. Good luck.
  13. Your math course work is good and expected for the better programs in statistics. I wouldn't worry about the verbal GRE, most schools don't focus on it. The problem with the Math Subject GRE is that there is an expectation of very high scores from international applicants. I think you can rely on the general GRE quant score. Might think about U of Wisconsin and Penn State.
  14. Your record should be no problem for MS programs at all these schools. You don't state which schools are MS vs. PhD so it is hard to be more specific. CU Boulder is a respectable math department so your courses will be taken seriously. Your math grades are solid except for a blemish with Calc II. Your GRE is solid. You might have difficulty at the very top schools for PhD going against students who have taken the GRE math subject test and have done well. But, being a domestic male is an advantage. Math at top state schools is not any different than the international schools. Domestic students take graduate probability at the undergraduate level so domestic students will experience courses in the graduate program early just as many international students. The substantial difference between domestic and international applicants is the test scoring. International students work intensely on problems repetitively resulting in the ability to master GRE and GRE subject tests. You have international students who have terrible English skills who score 90% on GRE English! It is a bit of a joke. But, as a result, international students have created a problem for themselves in that their scores are "discounted" relative to a domestic student. Personally, I don't view the Ivies as representing the stronger statistics departments. The academic placements of Harvard and Columbia are much weaker than many other departments. Penn fairs okay.
  15. Real analysis will lead one from undergraduate-level coverage of probability to graduate-level coverage and formulation of probability using measure theory. Also, as I said, complex analysis is useful for a number of important probability-based approaches. So, knowing real analysis for theoretical statistics is more than a litmus test of being able to do math for admissions committees, it is necessary for having a firm grasp of a number of theoretical concepts in statistics.
  16. Probability theory can use a lot of complex analysis topics. For example, characteristic functions.
  17. What you have going for you is UW-Madison reputation in math and statistics. Many UW-Madison students place in top grad programs. Though there are overlaps (sort of) with statistics and OR, they are not the same (one being data discovery and the other more emphasis on optimization). Are you sure of which of these two different paths you are interested in? Your math courses are fine with a few 'AB' blemishes. Are you getting letters from an actuarial plus two statisticians? Or actuarial, math, statistics? I ask because you are shooting for very math-centric programs, so it would be good if you have a letter from a math prof (preferably a proof based course). If you are shooting for Berkeley, why not Chicago stats? I say this because Chicago has a long tradition in economic/finance related applications. Like Berkeley, Chicago doesn't require the GRE math subject test (just recommends like Berkeley). The department might take interest in your interests. But with this said, I think you should consider some safety schools. Case Western has strong reputation in OR (actually, the first OR PhD in the country): https://weatherhead.case.edu/degrees/doctorate/phd/operations-research/ Stats safety -- Penn State, Columbia, UCLA, Temple (in B school)
  18. Chicago doesn't have a PhD in Operations Research. There is an operations management group in the business school but there is not OR department. OR departments are found at schools with engineering.
  19. Quantitative research potential is the key emphasis. If you are able to game theory research, then you clearly have the potential to do research in an area like statistics.
  20. You have more than the expected courses in math. Your econometric courses are really statistics courses. Most stats departments don't expect much UG stats, math is their main concern. You have a pretty competitive profile. UG in economics is not uncommon for statistics departments. I wouldn't worry about knowing the research direction you wish to go. It is potential the departments are looking for. Brown? Is that the biostats program?
  21. When it comes to stats, math genealogy doesn't help too much. Yes, some departments show placement but don't show the specific advisor (you can figure this out with looking up the student's page or Google). Unfortunately, unless you are in the profession, knowing who the good faculty for placement are takes a bit of work. First, one can go to the department of interest and open 1 by 1 faculty CV and look if they list past students who worked under him/her. Also, I would literally go to the top 20-30 departments and look at the faculty's alma mater (I would look only at young faculty) and see who he/she worked with. For example, if you went to Chicago's stats department, you would see the young asst. professors just hired (one from Yale and one from Princeton). Then you backtrack from their CV's. When you backtrack the Princeton grad, you find she worked under a really productive, highly recognized statistics faculty member who you would have never known about if you were thinking traditional top statistics department. It is a pain but it is worth the effort. Final advice when it comes to traditional statistics departments (as opposed to biostatistics). Look for the faculty who have produced students who have published in top statistics journals (JASA, Annals of Statistics, J Royal Statistical Society, etc.). Statistics is indeed interdisciplinary but if a young faculty member is publishing only in application journals (biology, medicine, etc.), then tenure is iffy at best (I know of a recent unfortunate tenure rejection of a young asst. prof. at a top 15 department). Biostats is much more application oriented so my comments don't apply completely to those faculty.
  22. You are absolutely correct on finding a top advisor regardless of school. Chicago just hired an asst. prof. who is a recent statistics PhD graduate from Yale. Yale isn't viewed among the very top departments (probably not in top 20) but this guy worked with a strong Yale faculty member to do solid research. Another Chicago hire into its statistics department is a woman who got her PhD from the department of Operations Research at Princeton. Within this department is a small statistics group with a couple very productive, young statistics researchers. She came from a department that is not even ranked (!) among statistics departments and look where she ended up. There are top end advisors at other schools (e.g., Texas A&M, ASU just nabbed a Chicago faculty member). When a doctoral student does solid research, it gets noticed. On the flip side, there are faculty at the top three departments who have weak (dare say pathetic) academic placements of their students. This is actually an issue in that the better advisors at the top departments can only take on so many. So, the remaining students get the short-end of the stick and are stuck with "lesser" faculty at these departments and don't get placed as well as they had hoped. It would have been better for these students to be at lower ranked departments (as the examples of Yale, Princeton, etc. above) and to have worked with the star faculty members in those departments.
  23. You have a solid record. The lack of a math subject test is problematic for the top departments. Madison is a really good choice for a masters given how respected the department is. In terms of other masters programs, did you look at Columbia's? The website states that its MA is for preparing people for doctoral studies: "The Statistics Department offers a flexible on campus M.A. program designed for students preparing for professional positions or for doctoral programs in statistics "
  24. I agree with all the posts. You have solid record from many dimensions. Good UG university. Excellent GPA. Solid quant GRE score. Great interdisciplinary research experience. And more than enough math courses for a biostats program. You should indeed have more confidence and shoot for a higher tier of biostats programs. From what I see, I would be surprised if you aren't admitted to at least one of the top 10 biostats programs. (As a complete side note which has no bearing on your strong math training or on your record, I am surprised that Ohio State uses Baby Rudin for graduate level real analysis I. Baby Rudin is a classic book that the better schools would use for undergraduate real analysis. Graduate real analysis courses tend to use one of many possible books that are at the next level up. Again no consequences with my comment, just a bit surprised.)
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