StatsG0d

Thanks a lot! I'm guessing because they rejected some people over the last couple days, so I figured they would have rejected everyone who they weren't seriously considering. As an update, I was emailed back saying an official letter would come soon. Good luck to you! I probably will decline the offer after consideration, but the financial support is very good and the program seems very quaint so I am considering for the time being.

I believe Liang has a very strong track record of placing students (at least when he was at Texas A&M). I would think VERY carefully about this. Arguably, the best predictor of your success is highly correlated with your advisor and his/her previous placements.

For anyone waiting on Rutgers, you're probably accepted. I got an email saying they were "considering making an offer for PhD admission," and asked if I was interested (outlining the amount of financial support). Good luck to all.

It's really dependent on your deductibles. As a grad student, you're entitled to a $2,000 tax credit so that's nice. If you pay student loans, you can deduct all those. I can't imagine an effective tax rate being MUCH higher than 15 percent in a pretty bad case scenario, so I guess you can assume you'll get around $17,000 based on a $20,000 stipend.

By gas I'm assuming you mean gasoline and not as a utility? It would be strange to have an apartment include electricity but not gas. On paper I think it should be enough but you have to remember that stipends are not tax-free, so your $640/month may be a little less than you think. Personally, I think that living in the midwest you probably shouldn't get an apartment with utilities paid for. It's nice to never have a surprise but at the same time it's really only so hot that you NEED air conditioning maybe 2 months out of the 10. It does get cold, but it's usually much cheaper to pay for heat than for A/C. My advice: Try to estimate your net stipend (stipend less taxable income), and then make a budget for things.

Ellies and epimeleia both said it best in my opinion. There IS something to be said about going to a name brand institution such as Harvard--think of the alumni connection, the job opportunitis, etc. However, NCSU is leading the field in data analytics with their masters in analytics program, which I imagine is closely tied with the statistics department. I am sure you will have access/exposure to the same employers. I would choose NCSU if I were you. As nice as an ivy league degree is, it helps (mostly) in terms of short-term career outcomes with (probably) few long-term benefits over NCSU.

I did the same. He pointed out that any applicant who has not heard by now is on the waitlist, so I guess spare the professor another email!

This is something I have never even thought of before. During one of my visits, I noticed a lot of students seemed to already be competing to impress professors. All of a sudden, UF doesn't sound so bad haha.

I applied there as well. I have not heard anything. But it was brought to my attention that the school has basically zero funding, and they have not taken on a statistics graduate student since 2012 or something. I wish you the best.

Not sure what proper etiquette is but I reached out to the office assistant first. Dissatisfied, I then emailed the chair of the grad program directly. She emailed back promptly with more detailed info. I would say email the assistant first.

Oh it's for math and not stats? Sorry, I didn't notice that before. Thanks a lot. Kind of annoying.

For UCLA, do your guys' ApplyYourself still only say submitted? I'm also waiting on UCLA haha.

I contacted Purdue the other day--same story. They said I should know by "mid-April," which is VERY late in the process. I will give them until March before I decide to make a final decision. I don't want to keep the programs that consider me to be a top applicant waiting for some (lower ranked) school that considers me for the second round (yeah, I guess I'm a little bitter haha).

When did you hear back from Michigan State?

It should be more than enough unless you're eating out every day. I live in DC, which is significantly more expensive than SB, and I spend about $60/week on groceries and eat out maybe once or twice a week. I would say i spend $30 eating out per week, so let's call it $90/week = $360/month. South Bend is significantly cheaper--you should be able to have a lot of residual income. Now, if you're going to never really cook and eat lunch out every day, it's a bit more grim.

Varian is kind of the standard. That was used by my friend at UChicago for his undergrad sequence.

I just came back from my visit. I actually didn't think the setting was that rural. In fact, it's bigger than my hometown in Northern Indiana. Obviously it's not a city, but I would say there seems to be some good restaurants and stuff that you would expect of a town with >100,000 people. The data here would suggest that you're right about the 40%, but I will say it certainly didn't feel like that on campus.

I would say you can probably find a decent place to live in South Bend for around $500-$600 per month. Tack on maybe an extra $50 for utilities. So for living it's possible, but you may need to use some of your spouse's income for food. $10k is really not a lot to live off of anywhere in the world. If you have a car and don't mind commuting, you can probably find a much cheaper place nearby (e.g., Niles, MI, which is 20 minutes away from campus). Of course, this probably will add to the cost in terms of parking fees, and I'm not sure how much these cost at ND.

Calculus is usually the only prerequisite for an undergraduate course in micro. What you're reading is more typical of a graduate sequence than an undergraduate, as expressed by the book's Amazon page: "Microeconomic Theory brings the readability, comprehensiveness, and versatility to the first-year graduate classroom that has long been missing."

Check out Duke, Wisconsin, and Johns Hopkins. I'm at the IMF, and I have a friend who attends SAIS at JHU, and he's met many people working for the government. Honestly though, I would say take the fundamental math you need to get into a PhD program and apply there. If you get funded, worst case scenario you leave with a free masters degree. These masters programs are very expensive.

They did, but only after they accepted me.

I was accepted to their statistics program.

I get the feeling this was already covered pretty well in thread.

I can't really speak fully since I'm not a student yet (entering this fall), but I think one of the biggest advantages of a large department is that there are many different electives / research topics, while smaller programs obviously have fewer faculty members which might imply fewer specializations. I guess if you know what you want to do research with and you have perfect foresight then this is insignificant.

The closest El station is Cottage Grove, which is about a 15 minute walk from the south part of the campus. I wouldn't say it's the safest place in the world, but if you go with a group you should be fine. There's also a shuttle that runs from 6:30pm to 12:00am on weekend nights that goes to South Loop.