Stat Assistant Professor

Based on your elaboration, I would echo the two posters above and say not to worry about this. Classes on computer architecture do not seem relevant to Statistics. People who have a few B's on their transcripts still get admitted to top PhD programs in Statistics, and adcoms are more forgiving about this if you went to a top school and your GPA in math/stat classes is good. If I recall correctly, one poster on this board was admitted to Berkeley with a 3.6ish GPA from University of Chicago (but a 3.8ish GPA in math classes). You should be in good shape to get into a good PhD program, assuming the rest of your application is equally strong.

There's not really anything you can do about the B grades at this point, so I would focus on the things that you can control (namely, making sure your recommendation letters are *very* strong). I think the B grades in CS will be mitigated by the fact that you attended a top 10 undergrad. I assume your overall GPA is still pretty good too, even with the B's in the CS classes?

This board seems to have become mainly focused on Statistics and Biostatistics MS/PhD admissions. I would try posting your profile over at http://www.mathematicsgre.com/ for better advice.

Agreed with the above. Since the OP's chances of getting into a top PhD program are not realistic, they should focus on doing the best they can at a lower ranked institution (if obtaining a PhD is really that important to them). Rankings are not "inconsequential," but they are not very important for industry jobs. And for academic jobs, the most important thing for landing a good postdoc/faculty job is publications in top journals and strong recommendation letters rather than the PhD granting institution. Someone with a publication or two in Biometrika, Biometrics, JASA, Annals, or JRSS-B is in very good shape to get a faculty job, regardless of their PhD (or their postdoc) institution, whereas somebody from a top school without publications will not generally be competitive for academic jobs. Those who go to less 'prestigious' PhD programs do probably have more work cut out for them, though. It will probably be harder for them to publish in top venues as a PhD student or get tenure-track jobs without first doing a postdoc. But it's not impossible to get an academic job eventually if you work with the best advisor you can and have a productive postdoc.

I think your profile looks pretty good, and your list of schools is good too. I don't think those schools on your "reach" list are necessarily reaches. The IIT's are considered the top schools in India, besides ISI and University of Calcutta, and you performed well in your Masters program in Statistics at Rutgers. Rutgers also has a good reputation, with famous professors like Cun-Hui Zhang. I think you could afford to try a few schools like NCSU, Wisconsin, or Minnesota, honestly.

I would recommend writing exactly what you wrote in the second paragraph of your post, maybe expanded a bit to two short paragraphs (one where you describe your tenacity in excelling at math/stat despite of the odds, and one describing your tutoring work). Writing that shouldn't be a negative at all, as long as it is fairly neutral in tone. It would most likely be seen as a positive, actually. I could see somebody being annoyed if came across as entitled or if you made grandiose statements like, "The adversities that I faced inspired me to want to change the world by getting a PhD in Statistics," but neither seems to be the case here.

I think it is fine to submit this score. 89th percentile at Stanford is just the median; there are applicants who are accepted with lower scores. The fact that you attended one of Oxford, Cambridge, or ICL for math and performed very well will certainly carry more weight and make you a top contender for a top Statistics PhD program in the U.S. These are some of the best schools in the world (both for mathematics and in general). So I can't see anyone questioning the rigor of your mathematical preparation. Hopefully your letters of recommendation will be very strong too. Best of luck.

Would have to agree wholeheartedly with bayessays. Even if you are a long shot for top 10 biostatistics PhD program, that doesn't mean you can't get into a great program outside the top 10 or that your future career prospects are dampened. There are a lot of alumni from Biostat programs outside the top 10 who go on to be successful in both industry and academia. PhD granting institution doesn't seem to matter much for industry. If academia is what interests you, then going to a Biostat program outside the top 10 does not preclude you from getting a postdoc at a top school or a TT job after that. Strong publications and letters of recommendation are the most important thing for academic jobs (granted, there is a positive correlation between PhD institution ranking and publication record/academic placements. But you can find people at lower tier schools who also make it, especially if they get a good postdoc).

I think it's fine to report that score. I would just advise that you apply to a few schools that are not in the tip-top tier to better your chances. There have been posts on this board by people with seemingly strong profiles who applied to a lot of the most elite Statistics PhD programs in the U.S. and were completely shut out. The higher up you go in the rankings or if the program is housed in an elite school (i.e. the Ivy League), the more weight the prestige of the undergrad institution carries... and the harder it is for domestic/Canadian applicants to get in. UChicago, UPenn, and Harvard only seem to have 1-2 domestic students in each cohort.

Depends on your goals. If your goal is to earn a terminal degree in Masters, then you don't need to take real analysis. You already have the prerequisites, and you are free to choose whichever class you find most interesting for your own personal edification. If you think you might want to obtain a PhD in Statistics later on, then you should definitely take Real Analysis and maybe a few other upper division math courses. It seems like admissions is getting more competitive these days, so a strong mathematical background is needed.

I don't see why not. A lot of people reapply to schools that previously rejected them. If you were waitlisted the first time, you must have been a pretty strong candidate, so you might get lucky this time around.

Your profile looks pretty good, but for the PhD programs in the U.S.A. on your list, your list of schools is very top-heavy. It is not clear to me that you are a "sure thing" at any of these -- though I suspect that your chances for NC State and Washington are above average. It's not clear from your post how much prestige your institution has. Still, it's a definite risk to be applying *only* to these top-tier schools. Are you sure you do not want to add some other schools like UCLA, Purdue, Penn State, Minnesota? Maybe I'm just conservative about this, but unless someone has a "super-star" profile (i.e. summa cum laude from Princeton + coursework in graduate-level math classes + publications), I would not advise them to apply to so many top-tier schools, but to be more selective about which top-tier ones to apply to and to "spread out" their list a bit more.

With a 3.9 from Duke University, graduate coursework in mathematics including measure theory and complex analysis, and 3 publications accepted (a lot of PhD students don't even have that, never mind undergrads!), I would be quite shocked if you didn't get multiple offers from the top schools on your list. The only "weakness" is the math subject GRE, but I don't think it is that big of a deal. Admissions is holistic, and many Statistics faculty don't seem to care much about the Subject GRE. Plus, your subject GRE score isn't that bad... as I understand it, a lot of the content of this test is lower division classes (e.g. Calc III and Lin Alg), which a lot of students have forgotten by their junior year and need to spend extensive time reviewing if they are to score well on it. I think the A's in Complex Analysis and Measure Theory from a school like Duke more than demonstrate that you have the math ability that the top schools are looking for.

Ah. If it's one of the top 100 universities in USNWR, then I definitely don't think your chances are horrible. I don't think your GRE score is that big of a deal. I looked at some of the past results and saw that there were applicants accepted into TAMU, Penn State, Virginia Tech, and Iowa State with GRE Q scores of 162. If your score were below a 160, I would definitely advise retaking but I think it's okay as it is now. That said, Duke and NCSU will probably both be 'reach' schools (though not impossible -- looking on their website, it appears that there are Duke Statistics PhD students and alumni from places like University of South Florida and Miami University-Oxford... as I said, being a qualified domestic female applicant definitely helps). If money is a concern, I would advise you only apply to one of Duke and NCSU, and add another school like Penn State or Iowa State.

If it is a decently ranked SLAC, then I think the OP would have a definite shot at somewhere like Duke. I have known people with similar profiles as the OP who were alumna of schools like Mt. Holyoke and Bucknell who were admitted to Duke and UNC. Being a domestic female applicant definitely does help in Statistics admissions (provided the grades and LORs are strong, obviously). If the school is regional/not nationally known though, then it's will be much harder to get into somewhere like Duke.

What kind of small private college is it? Is it a nationally ranked SLAC in U.S. News and World Report or is it more of a regional, relatively unknown school? If it's the former, then I think your chances at these schools are decent. If the latter, then Duke and NC State may be reaches for you, but I could see you getting admitted to the others on your list.

Your profile looks great, and I think you can most likely get into one or several of the top-tier schools on your list. I don't think a few A-'s or B's will hurt your application, especially if they are in unrelated non-math/non-quantitative subjects. The adcom won't be hand-wringing over an A- in your case, *especially* if you went to MIT, University of Chicago, or one of the top Ivy League schools in the country. As a personal aside, you already took graduate-level Statistical Inference and Generalized Linear Models as an undergrad, and you are working as a TA for the GLM class! That's very impressive, since these are courses that most PhD students in Statistics don't take until their second year as a PhD student. I would say you definitely deserve to be at UChicago, Harvard, Berkeley, or Penn!

Yes, you should retake the GRE. If you have some time to prepare, I would focus on preparing strictly for the Quantitative section (master the ETS "tricks" and whatnot). Try to get your score .over 160. It won't really matter much after that, but a low Q score may be an early 'screening' device to screen out some applications. In a Statistics PhD program, you'll likely have to take timed qualifying exams that determine whether you can advance to the PhD research stage (although they won't be standardized), so you may want to figure out what works best for you to manage this kind of pressure and manage your time accordingly.

I don't think this really matters. Write a concise 1-page statement of purpose describing your past preparation/accomplishments and the area(s) of statistics/biostatistics that you're interested in. Presumably there will be 3 one-page letters of recommendation, and so taken together, those should be more detailed than your SOP.

Many applicants don't have research experience -- there are a lot of PhD students in Statistics who come from a pure mathematics background, and a lot of them didn't have any research experience of note (apart from *maybe* a summer REU). I think you will be fine. Since your institution is not as highly ranked, the letters of recommendation are absolutely crucial and what will move you from a "borderline" case into the acceptance pile. So see if your letter writers can speak very highly about your research "potential."

I would recommend applying to Texas A&M and UNC-Chapel Hill.

You have a very impressive profile, and I expect you will have a very good shot at UW and Duke... maybe even Berkeley as well. It is hard to say for Harvard and Stanford because they admit so few students every year and a lot of the domestic students they draw from come from elite private universities or the top 5 public universities. But it's not out of the questions there either. I noticed that there seems to be a big gap in terms in the programs you're considering (i.e. your list goes from Duke to UCLA). There are a lot of great schools in between Duke and UCLA, and I think you would probably be able to get into a lot of those if you applied (e.g. you would probably be one of the top ranked applicants for NCSU, UWisc, and UMN). I would apply to a few of those programs, resources permitting.

I think you have a good shot at getting into University of Florida, and you would also be able to get into schools like Michigan State and Virginia Tech if you applied to them. Is there a reason why your letters of recommendation are only going to be "okay" but not "amazing"? If you can secure strong letters, your application may very well be in the discussion for a school like Texas A&M. Also, if your interest is in applied Bayesian statistics, perhaps you should also think of applying to some more Biostatistics programs besides Emory. I think you could do well in Biostat. Just a thought.

It might be best to clarify this with the Graduate Coordinator of the departments you're interested in. I doubt that anyone can give you an answer that would apply across all departments.

Not necessary at all for MS programs. For Statistics PhD programs , if the rest of the application is very strong, then it's not necessary (except at the schools that require it). For applicants who went to less well-known schools, who have a light math background, and/or who have lower math GPAs, then a great score on the Subject GRE can help boost the application. However, even in these cases, I would also say that obtaining a Masters degree in Math or Statistics and performing well in the Masters program would serve as bigger boosts to the PhD application than the Subject GRE.