WhiteLion

Most universities prefer to take and fund students starting in the fall. Occasionally some schools might take people in the Spring if for some reason a spot opens up, but the top schools tend not to do this, and the only way to find out about spring admission is to contact someone at that school.
PhDs are almost always funded, regardless of the school. Many good schools take funded masters students too. You can usually find information on the website of the department for that school. But as far as I know, there is no grand list of schools with funded masters programs.

I think my decision is choices are likely going to come down to Purdue, Ohio State, and maybe UC Davis, who told me they would give me a decision very soon(and I figure if Purdue and Ohio State took me, it isn't inconceivable that UC Davis might too). So I have been thinking about Purdue as well, although in my case, both Ohio State and Purdue are very large.
 
There is a student at Purdue who was previously a student at my current school, so I contacted him and asked him some questions about the program. I'll share the general ideas of what he told me in case you might find it useful.
 
-He mentioned that in his opinion Purdue is currently strong in bioinformatics and is putting resources into strengthening their computational stuff, but that they have had some of their top Bayesians leave recently and thus are not as strong there as they were 5-10 years ago. He also mentioned that have some people doing financial topics. Of course he did say that, being large, they have offerings in a wide variety of research areas, but those are the ones he mentioned specifically to me.
 
-I asked if students have to compete for advisers, and he said that he didn't personally see many students not be able to get a particular person as an adviser for that reason, but that some professors are popular and you do need to do well if you want to impress them.
 
-I asked how engaged he thought the senior faculty were in terms of active research and mentoring(since I have encountered some people before who are senior and seemed have little interest in these things), and he said that he thought the senior faculty were very active in both areas.
 
-I asked if the atmosphere was competitive and he said it didn't feel that way to him. Rather he felt that the students developed camaraderie working through the challenges of the program alongside one another.
 
I am hoping to visit Purdue as well. I visited Ohio State, and my visit dispelled a lot of those large school fears for me. Although there were some superficial large program things, like large cube-farm style offices for grad students, the student-faculty and student-student relationships seemed quite healthy and supportive and I didn't at all get the feeling that if I studied there I would be invisible unless I was consistently at the top of my classes/exams. Ohio State also has brought/is bringing in a number of new, younger faculty, and from talking to a few of them, I really felt they add a level of energy to the program. They seem eager to engage with students, and I was able to have some interesting conversations about both hot research topics and classical ideas.