Stat Assistant Professor

I did not hear anything yet, but I have withdrawn my application to UConn, so hopefully this gives someone else a chance. Best of luck.

Yeah, I am not going to wait until April either, unless I find out I am waitlisted at Berkeley (I wasn't rejected there yet either, according to the e-mail, so it's possible at this point). PS - it sounds like you've definitely settled on Harvard then. Congrats! That's excellent.

If he does well in the UW Master's program, that would be an excellent way to segue into a PhD program in the U.S. I am not sure what the reputation of ETH is amongst departments in the U.S., but one thing to consider is that there will already be a LOT of competition from abroad, with so many applicants from a select few colleges in China, India, and to a lesser extent Canada and the U.K (for instance, about 70% of the PhD students at UMich are international, and a good deal from China). It seems as though a lot of international students who *already* have Master's degrees end up doing another Master's degree in the U.S. in stats before continuing on to a PhD here, because the faculty are familiar with the quality of the programs here. Most stats faculty are well aware of the extraordinary reputation of UW and would trust strong letters of recommendation from faculty there. Perhaps one of the faculty members on this board can speak better as to how ETH is perceived amongst stat departments in the U.S. However, UW is highly reputed, I do know that much.

Hmm, the vice chair told me they were "undecided" about my application. Since they haven't rejected it, I'm assuming I'm also on this waitlist. Btw, to those who have not heard from Berkeley... my correspondence with the Graduate Student Services adviser implied that they are trying to finalize all decisions this week. Not sure if that includes Master's applicants, but I think the few PhD applications who haven't heard back should hear by the end of Feb.

Are you leaning towards biostats or stats (theoretical or applied)? If biostats, then I would say JHU is the top school. If you're more interested in stats, I think Michigan is slightly better. Michigan has a lot of great interdisciplinary research, so it is strong in social science statistics research and statistical methods as applied to engineering/CS (there are a lot of faculty that hold joint appointments in the stats department and ECE or CS). If you think you might be interested in applications of statistics to those other areas, UMich is a good choice. Cornell seems to have some of that too, but I'm not sure if it is as reputable as UMich in these specific areas.

Not sure why you were waitlisted. It is difficult to say and most of us on this board can only speculate anyway. It could be that the bar for international applicants is set even higher these days, since the number of people applying to stats graduate programs has gone up a lot. Maybe you could try to find some data on the average GRE scores, GPAs, etc. of Columbia admits.

Did you actually study or work under this professor at Berkeley? Are the lecturer and supervisers tenure-track? It's best if all your letters of recommendation had come from tenure track faculty with whom you studied and/or did research under.

How low were your GRE verbal and your writing scores? Do you have any idea how your letters of recommendation were? It seems odd to me, given your profile, that you would be waitlisted from any Statistics Master's program in the U.S., let alone Columbia's. The GRE verbal and writing scores certainly are not weighed very heavily but if they are *too* low and your statement of purpose did not read well (i.e. had a lot of grammatical errors... the content might not matter as much but it's good to make sure it is at least comprehensible). it could hurt the application. Also, weak letters of recommendation could hurt an otherwise strong application, even for Master's applicants.

I haven't heard anything from them either. I'd think that if they do send more offers, they will do so this week, since their spring break is next week and they definitely told me they had a visit day in March. Any more offers after this week will most likely be from a waitlist.

Only one person has reported getting accepted from UNC-Chapel Hill on the results page. I applied there but haven't heard back. I e-mailed the statistics admissions director for a status but they didn't give me any response. I think (?) they may send more acceptances soon, but not totally sure.

I got a response from the Graduate Vice Chair of UCLA. He said the status of my application is "undecided."

It sounds like you are asking all the right questions. You should definitely try to find out as much about all these programs that interest you as possible. What summer internships people typically do is also a good thing to inquire about. For me personally, if I were to obtain a Master's in statistics, I would go for the cheapest option that has relatively good job placement. That is ultimately what motivated my selection of Master's degree programs when I was applying for MS degrees in Applied Math. I ended up attending the flagship university in my state which was also a fully funded MS program where I could work as a TA for a small stipend, so it worked out well for me financially. FWIW, at the time I was applying to MS programs, I also had complete intentions of only obtaining a terminal Master's and working in industry afterwards, and I got an industry job out of that (in engineering which I have been doing the past few years). Every other person in the same MS program as me who graduated my year also got jobs (except for the one student who continued on to a PhD program intead of entering industry). So I'm fine with not having gone to a brand name institution for my Master's.

Stern seems to be very focused on a few areas of statistics research. According to the site, the stats program focuses on research that can be applied to management science and business (e.g. time series, stochastic processes). I think you would have more research areas to explore at Minnesota than at Stern. Depending on what your research interests are though (e.g. if they are very specific and can be fulfilled by NYU), then NYU could be a better option. NYU doesn't have any job placement info published on their site, and I haven't heard of any faculty in Math or Statistics departments with PhDs from NYU Stern. It might be that Stern aims to place graduates in business schools or industry primarily, but I am uncertain. You may want to find out about placement (industry vs. academia).

Not sure about the program's specific strengths in sub-areas of statistics, but judging from its PhD Alumni page, it is a solid program at placing its graduates in both academia and industry.

Thanks for the clarification.

True. I should perhaps qualify my original statement. The less well-known or lower-ranked your schools are, the more the GPA matters. But I think GPA can only go so far, and a high GPA will not necessarily get you admitted. The strength of the letters of recommendation are what will get you in, provided that your undergrad institution has reasonably good reputation and your GPA is above 3.7 (once it's above that, I don't think you can "guarantee" much at all -- I would think that a 3.7 with strong letters of recommendation has a better chance than a 3.9 with mediocre or unmemorable letters). Also, if anyone cares, I have contacted the Student Affairs Officer at the Stats dept at UCLA to inquire about the status of my application. I'll report back what she says, to those waiting to hear from UCLA.

That's true, a 3.7 at a regional unknown university would not be as competitive as a 3.7 from a top institution. I guess I just meant to convey that GPA isn't the only thing that is considered (since there are a ton of 3.9-4.0's that are rejected, and you definitely do not need a 4.0 to get accepted... below a 3.5 might make it extremely difficult though). I meant to stress the point that letters of recommendation are weighed very heavily -- when you have a LOT of applicants with GPAs in the 3.7-4.0 range, Ithink the LORs will make the difference between acceptance/rejection more than some trivial difference in the GPA. In the 2014 applicant profile thread, there is someone who had a 3.73 Master's GPA that was accepted to Berkeley, Washington, Harvard, and Michigan.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Purdue and Penn State are public universities, and a lot of these universities have been suffering from funding crises these past few years. As a result, there is a strict cap on enrollment for a lot of programs (and a lot of PhD programs accepting students without funding, which is worse than a rejection IMO). At my relatively low-ranked Master's institution (low 60s for math on U.S. News and World Report), they could only accept two-three fully funded statistics PhD students the last few years. But also, statistics and biostatistics have grown in popularity (likely owing to the fact that a lot of "hot" jobs like statistician, data scientist, etc. are increasingly demanding more advanced education credentials), so the number of applicants has also gone up a lot. I really do think it comes down to letters of recommendation in a lot of cases. With so many talented applicants with top-notch GPAs, high grades in upper division math/stat classes, and high test scores, I think the only place one can really distinguish themselves from the crowd is in the letters of recommendation (and to a lesser extent, the statement of purpose). I don't think adcoms really care about a 3.7 vs. a 4.0 GPA, and a lot of the statements of purpose read the same, so are rarely useful (except to assess English ability of international applicants and to have any unusual things in the application explained, e.g. "non-traditional" applicant, some bad grades, etc.).

Yes, I remember seeing both PSU and Purdue on the results page. However, they might not have sent out all the acceptances yet... Once you see acceptances go out on the results page, I think it is fair to send e-mails to the departments to inquire about your status. Especially now that it is late Feb., it is not unreasonable to reach out.

Even so, I would consider being waitlisted by Berkeley a true honor. I considered Berkeley a super super reach school, so getting on the waitlist means our applications were ranked relatively highly by the admissions committee (i.e. just below the 14-20 they admitted). Not too shabby.

StatPhD2014: The GSS adviser informed me that they sent out a few acceptances last week but that a final decision has not been made on a small number of applications, including mine. So your application might still be in the running for consideration. Do not lose hope! So it sounds like Berkeley is NOT finished sending acceptances and rejections yet. I am frankly shocked that I have not been rejected yet, to say the least. No complaints here though, haha.

You should be fine.

I contacted the chair an hour ago. He replied to me that he is not in the loop on admissions and cc'd the GSS advisor within two minutes asking her to give me a status.

Contacted the chair, he redirected me to the Graduate Student Services adviser, so I guess she was the correct point of contact for this all along... waiting for her response.

Did you contact the dept? I contacted the Graduate Student Services adviser but did not receive a response, so it's likely they do not know. Maybe the Chair of the dept could tell you the true status though? I'm considering e-mailing the chair later this week if I still haven't heard anything from UCB by then.