stats_applicant
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Posts posted by stats_applicant
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This post should really be stickied because of all the great insights.
In terms of social interaction (whether among other graduate students inside/outside your program or otherwise), how bad is the shock? I find myself to be something of an extrovert, so I am hoping that the social shock of being a graduate student isn't that severe. Granted, I was very dedicated to my studies in undergrad and had a good social balance, but obviously it's much more serious in graduate school. Do you find your classmates collegial? I've heard for some programs/schools your fellow grad students view you as competition, and so are unwilling to help you out in times of need.
There's no quota or anything for the quals, so it's in everybody's best interest to help each other pass. We're allowed to work on homework together in most of my classes (it's up to the instructor) so we frequently discuss problems. It's not competitive at all.
I think the social atmosphere varies by department. My department is rather small but we still have activities now and then. But it does take a while to meet people outside the department and outside your classes, especially first year when you have a heavy courseload. Really its what you make of it; the workload is such that you could spend every waking moment working and not be 100% comfortable with the material, so if you decide to do that, that's what'll happen. Not that that's a bad thing and a lot of people are satisfied with that lifestyle, but I make it a point to prioritize social events, playing sports, etc. and I don't think it detracts too much from my academic life.
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Sounds like we need to hype up this party and add to the anxiety. Aside from NC State, it seems like most schools are slower than last year, but I could be imagining things.
This time last year for statistics, really the only results that I remember were from Wisconsin, Washington, and NCSU. A bunch came out around the second week of February.
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Agreed, I was just about to post the same thing! The emphasis in the first year or two of an American statistics PhD program is on coursework and learning the material well enough to pass qualifying exams, which functionally means spending a ton of time studying. You can work on research, but it's more on the back burner until your second or third year when you're done with the hard requirements.
This is true. However, for me the approach to coursework has still been fundamentally different from undergrad. I'm not so concerned with finishing every little problem on every homework set, and grades below A- are rarely handed out. If I want to spend time working on a coding or data analysis side project, or attending a seminar or reading group, or reading survey papers or supplementary material for a topic I don't understand particularly well, I'll sometimes choose to do it instead of finishing my homework. Yes, I need to pass my qual, but ultimately I think the main goal is to develop the tools to become a strong researcher (which is sometimes orthogonal to some of the qualifying exam material).
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Would not be at all surprised if someone forgot to update a line in the initial wave of offers that went out yesterday.
The official numbers from last year was 284 applicants, 28 offers. For confusing reasons these include part-time master's students (who were 3 of the enrolled students, unsure how many were offered or applied), but not full-time.
Thanks. Do you know how many offers they typically make initially?
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Can confirm that Washington statistics acceptances have been sent out.
Apparently they had 280 applicants for 10-12 spots. That a lot of applications, any idea how it compares to previous years?
Last year was the same -- 280 applicants for 10-12 spots. Might be a generic thing they put in the email.
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Many start coming out the first week of February. IIRC Washington and NC State were a bit earlier last year
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You're underselling yourself; you should definitely apply to NC State but shoot for the other top 10 programs too (though perhaps you're omitting those because the deadlines for most have already past). Math preparation wise, schools tend to look for good grades in analysis and at least some exposure to probability, and you're set there. You should be competitive at most of them. Many people come from pure math degrees; I had little statistics undergraduate background and had no trouble getting into top programs last year.
Don't worry about funding; it should come with admission at any of these places.
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In contrast to some of the posts above, I can assure you that won't be expected to have much of an idea at all. Statistics is different from other disciplines in that many if not most graduate students didn't do their undergraduate work in statistics, so faculty understand (and expect!) that your research interests will be shaped by your first year experiences and in fact very few students end up doing what they thought they were interested in. Of course it helps to articulate why you want a degree in statistics and perhaps a few broad sub fields you think sound interesting, but you don't need anything beyond that. Talk about why you're switching to stats from civil engineering and how the civil degree makes you stand out -- I think that could be a cool story.
Head over to the stats sub forum for more discipline-specific advice.
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In math all the authors are alphabetically ordered and given equal credit. I don't know if stats/CS/OR are similar or not.
In any case I wouldn't worry too much about it; I had zero publications and got in almost everywhere I applied.
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Right! That's exactly what I thought. So many people on the forum have specific interests that I thought I was behind, though.
So broad interests all schools are looking for. When I write my statement of purpose, should I identify a few faculty members who publish in my subfields of interest and name them? Is there any reason to try to reach out to potential advisors if most applicants don't have a specific research area in mind?
Spend half a paragraph mentioning a few names who may be doing work broadly related to your interests. Don't bother contacting them.
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No one expects you to know exactly what you intend to pursue for your dissertation. However, your research interests should be narrowed enough to find some kind of gap in the literature and present some questions that you might investigate.
I don't think they even need to be this detailed. Talk about your broad interests and a bit about why you're not interested in pursuing what you've worked on. You'll be judged primarily on your math preparation.
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I had a spelling error in mine and was still accepted to 9 of the 10 schools to which I applied. Don't worry about it.
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For what it's worth, I think linear algebra courses vary much more in content than calculus courses do.
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My guess is that a calculus course probably wouldn't be too different no matter where you took it (though perhaps your experience with linear algebra disagrees with me).
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Berkeley ML group is very very strong. Jordan, Wainwright, Yu, etc.
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I think this highlights an important point: whether you decide you prefer the small college town or the larger city, I do think it's important to seriously consider where you would like to live. Many of the other students I met on my visits weighted academic program quality as 90 to 95 percent of their decision, but I personally factored in geographic location and non-academic lifestyle much more heavily. I think in many cases the differences in academic experience for programs ranked similarly may be marginal, so you may as well choose somewhere that you'll be happy living for five years.
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For analytics, NC State is the brand. This year, their class already has reached 97% with job offers and you can see the comapanies here http://analytics.ncsu.edu/?p=6944
Agreed, not sure where all the NCSU bashing is coming from.
- emco and Alagashblack
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University of Washington probably had around that many too. According to their Graduate school, they had 532 applications last year.
https://www.grad.washington.edu/about/statistics/admissions/admissions13.pdf
I believe that number is for masters + Ph.D. combined. This year Washington had 280 applicants for the Ph.D. program.
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In this case, how do we determine what the ranking applies to? How to distinguish whether a department of this type has a strong reputation in stuff like geometry/topology vs statistics/probability?
The US News rankings do include some subfields:
Unfortunately, it doesn't include probability/statistics.
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Stanford 4.9 4.9
Berkeley 4.7 4.7
Chicago 4.3 4.4
Harvard 4.3 4.3
Washington 4.3 4.3
CMU 4.1 4.2
Duke 4.0 4.1
Wharton 3.9 4.1
Wisconsin 3.9 4.0
NCSU 3.9 3.9
Texas A&M 3.9 3.9
Michigan 3.8 3.9
So assuming they did a 50-50 average of 2009 and 2013 (which admittedly is a wild assumption) the 2013 survey alone of the top few would look something like
1. Stanford 4.9
2. Berkeley 4.7
3. Chicago 4.5
4. Harvard 4.3
4. Washington 4.3
4. CMU 4.3
4. Wharton 4.3
8. Duke 4.2
9. Wisconsin 4.1
10. Michigan 4.0
11. NCSU 3.9
11. Texas A&M 3.9
putting Wharton in the top five.
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I've heard Wisconsin is pretty difficult as well. Their biostat course sequence is essentially the same as stat, so the coursework/quals is pretty theoretical in nature.
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This is fantastic -- thanks for fixing up the school names.
I'll try and take a look at the data later and see what interesting things I can find.
To study ML at CMU versus U of Chicago
in Mathematics and Statistics
Posted
Agree with this. I like both places a lot and they're really not comparable -- comes down to personal preference.