StatsG0d

I'm pretty confident you can get in the top-10 and very confident you'll make it to the top-20, barring a very negative letter.

Congratulations! You can always have a co-advisor from the finance or econ department on your committee. OSU has a pretty solid econ program an a decent finance program I think.

From the website: This online certificate program is designed for working biostatisticians, such as data manager and analysts, who are not formally trained and want to improve their technical, mathematical and computational skills.

http://sph.umn.edu/programs/certificate/biostat/

Apologies: I did not see this was for masters programs. I agree that you should be competitive at pretty much all of those above schools.

All of those programs are pretty competitive. I was waitlisted to UCLA, despite being accepted (with fellowship offers) to more prestigious programs. I was even rejected from UCSB, which was kind of a joke (granted, my application was not complete until the day of the deadline. I guess what I'm saying is try not to let regional preferences dictate where you apply. It is very important to diversify. Also, your GPA is on the low end, so I hope that your math GPA is at least a 3.7 and preferably a 3.8, particularly for these schools. Otherwise, I think it will be quite tough. Having said that, math majors always look good to statistics adcoms. However, I think people tend to underestimate the importance of LORs. I went to a relatively unknown school, and I truly believe that my LORs made all the difference. Try to get involved in some econometric work with your econ profs or some statistical work with your statistics profs (I imagine the latter is harder). Go to office hours and talk to your professors about your decision to go to graduate school and ask about their research interests. Showing interest is obviously a first step to getting a good LOR.

I don't know if the choice should be that clear just because it's cheap. While I agree finances matter, what you really care about is return on investment (ROI), which one can define as your discounted future earnings as a percent of your cost of education. Maybe the median-career salaries are identical, but I would bet my hat that the first ten of so years you would be paid more at Michigan or Harvard than at Buffalo. Furthermore, you're probably more likely to get a job upon graduation at those schools than at Buffalo. I'm not saying take out debt for sure, but it's something to think about. I would call Buffalo and ask them the following questions: 1.) What percentage of students receive jobs by graduation? 2.) What percentage of students receive jobs within a year of graduation? 3.) What is the average salary? 4.) What types of placements are there (e.g., Big Pharma firms or small, unknown firms). This might help your decision. If they claim they do not carry this data or just do not share it with you, this should raise a red flag. Tread carefully.

I kind of feel like both schools are identical both in terms of prestige. According to AreaVibes, the cost of living in Lafayette is about 5% cheaper (pretty negligible). I would say go to where you think you would be happiest. Columbus is a much larger city than Lafayette, but Purdue is within an hour or so of Chicago and about 30-45 minutes away from Indianapolis, so while the immediate surrounding is rural you're near very large cities. So I don't think the jobs issue is a big one, particularly if you own a car. Don't forget that Purdue was on spring break last week, so that may be a reason why they have been unresponsive (I would say they have been fairly responsive to me, but definitely not as much as other schools). I would say give Purdue a visit and see how you feel. It's easy to dismiss a school that you haven't yet visited.

That seems pretty silly to me. If you completed an MS at a respectable school (say UCLA), then I doubt anyone is going to raise an eyebrow if you try to crack the top 10. Now if you were going to UCLA and then tried to go to a similarly ranked or lower ranked program, then that might come off as kind of strange.

I've heard that their ranking is relatively inflated, but that they were an elite program about 20 years ago when agriculture dominated statistical methodologies. I met a guy doing a postdoc at A&M from Iowa State, so clearly they can place students at good postdocs. If you want to do academia, find a professor that has a good track record of placing students in academia. The consensus on this forum seems to be that your advisor's reputation matters more than the program's. So find a professor that publishes (ideally is still publishing stuff in good journals) and who has a track record for putting students in academia, and you're golden.

Rejected from Columbia. I had a little bit of hope after I wasn't in the round sent last night haha.

I was an economics major. Like you, I had my fair share of math courses, but I had my sights on an economics PhD so I took more than I needed to (differential equations, real analysis, etc.). En route, I took a statistics course and I loved it, but it was too late to change majors. I think what really solidified my decision to pursue a stats PhD instead of economics was my experience doing applied econometric research at an international organization. I decided it wasn't right for me, with the reliance on (rather unrealistic) linear assumptions and exclusive use of linear regression. While doing a project, I was attempting to read the literature on how people solved a similar problem, and one person wrote a paper using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods, which kind of opened my eyes fully.

Applied Math to Stat is right--we would need to understand your career goals in order to ascertain which program you should take. In the public health field, I imagine practical experience is very valuable. If you applied to the program just to get the analytical skill set (a lot of people apply to MPP or MPH in lieu of an MBA, and often compete for the same jobs at the top consulting firms), then I would say the stats program is better.

That's a good strategy, although I don't think you would have to aim too low. In my opinion, your profile is stronger than mine and I was accepted to some fairly competitive programs. Your math GPA may be slightly below average, but since you had much higher grades in your last two years (in the advanced classes), I think you'll send a strong signal.

Thanks wine in coffee cups, bayessays (playing a little devil's advocate I see), and Applied Math to Stat. I have not yet visited Purdue, so I am unfamiliar about the culture there. I'll try to contact some students at Purdue and try to get a feel of how things are. Thanks again for the advice, everyone!

If you're looking at a terminal masters, I think you're selling yourself too short. Apply also to Berkeley, Stanford, and Harvard. I'm fairly confident you can get into at least one of these. With that said, you should really consider applying to PhD programs directly if you're considering one down the road. If you decide to leave early, you'll get your masters. Just my .02.

Wow. Thanks a lot, Bayesessays. You basically confirmed all my fears about the larger program. I think I'm leaning even more towards Florida now.

Thanks a lot! Yeah I'm not too worried about the one year TA thing really.

Hey everyone, I've probably posted too much on this forum, and yet again here I come needing some advice/suggestions. I've been accepted to quite a few programs, and I am considering Purdue, Florida, Texas A&M, and Penn State, with primary consideration from the first two programs. Both Purdue and Florida offered me fellowships. For Florida, I will have to TA one year since it is a graduate school requirement. For Purdue, in the letter they said my fellowship would be administered as an assistantship, but when I emailed the chair, I was told that it would be administered as a fellowship for 4 years (i.e., no TA requirements whatsoever). Purdue's program is huge. They have many faculty and many grad students. Strangely, it seems that the distribution of grad students among the faculty is very unequal. Some professors I wanted to work with were already supervising 10+ grad students. I worry that I will have to compete with fellow students to get my advisor's attention. One professor with whom I was interested in working currently has none (at least reported on the web site). UF could not be more different. The program is pretty small, with ~20 faculty members and I think ~70 grad students. They just stole Michailidis from Michigan, who is very strong in machine learning. I was told I would have my choice with whom I would want to work, barring some professor being overburdened (but I was told this would likely not be the case). The placements at UF seem pretty impressive, particularly those working with Hobert and Ghosh, and Michailidis has a good track record of placing people at Michigan. Does anyone have any advice? I'm on the fence, but I am slightly moving more toward UF at the moment.

I think it's tough to say if you're looking for a job in Europe, but Columbia is the obvious choice if you plan to work on Wall St.

You're choosing between (arguably) two equally ranked programs. I would say you have a great shot at either one. I personally DON'T think the whole silicon valley connection thing is true with Stanford. Don't forget where Zuckerberg went to school.

Statistics.

Thanks! It's for 3 years and worth $25k, so pretty generous especially for very low-cost Lafayette, IN. That's exactly what my interpretation was as well about the rankings. Plus I feel the criteria used are a little arbitrary.

Well I am 100% sure I will be declining now. I received an offer with a fellowship to Purdue and will likely be accepting! Hopefully doing that will put you in the admits list. On that note, does anyone have any comments on Purdue? I know it is a big department (like A&M and PSU), and the placements appear to be good. It is ranked really well (17th excluding biostats programs). Is it worth going from a program ranked 10th excluding biostats programs (A&M) to Purdue if I was awarded a fellowship? My first reaction would be absolutely, but I'm trying not to let greed cloud my judgment. I would appreciate inputs from anyone.

Texas A&M and Penn State have a lot of promising young faculty researching spatial statistics.