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Your professors would be the best people to talk to, they would know more about your individual situation, what graduate schools want, and what your school has to offer to get you there. Regardless, algebra and analysis are essential, if at all possible topology too. You are going to want more than those 4 courses you listed definitely. Depending on what mathematics you are interested in probablity and statistics could be useless or essential.

I don't see why it should matter at all what you wear, you are accepted. Wear what you will wear when you are going to school there. Granted, this is coming from a math student, we aren't a formal bunch. Spend time just going around the town on your own. Find out, either through the city guide here or asking grad students or whatever where the best areas to live are and visit those. Just get a general feel for the area. Tour the entire campus, check out the main library, read the school newspaper. Talk to grad students and ask them about classes/profs/student life. Go to classes with them. Talk to profs about their research. Depending on the school, they may have stuff lined up for you to do. The schools I visited were in larger cities, so there was plenty of touristy stuff to keep me busy, and I'm also into photography, so I got to do that in my spare time. I also went to a comic convention in Seattle that I found out about like the day before.

As long as UNC's stipend is enough to live off of, better fit and better location would swing my favor in that direction. Personally, I would be much happier with those two than a bit more money (I actually turned down a school which was offering me more). Also, looking at the NRC statistics rankings, UNC is 9, Florida is 41. Rankings are not everything, but that seems like a big gap to me. I would think an offer like that would go against the CGS resolution, anyway, so I would ask for an extension. "Students are under no obligation to respond to offers of financial support prior to April 15; earlier deadlines for acceptance of such offers violate the intent of this Resolution."

I would say the difference there would be negligible, but I sorta trust US News' 2008 rankings more, a lot can happen in 13 years. Ask your professors what they think of both departments, that would probably give you the most complete picture. Generally ranking does matter less with lesser ranked schools, but 44 vs 74 is still a big gap and should be taken into consideration, I feel. But if you main question is about small vs. big programs, then yes I agree that if you don't know what you are doing, larger programs are better. Otherwise you are limiting yourself before you even start exploring your options.

If you have no idea what you want to do within math, than I would lean towards the bigger program. I would also keep in mind that there is a sizable gap in ranking, on US News Irvine is 44, SC is 75. Have you visited the schools? Talking to professors and taking a hard look and the area will give you more information to assist your decision.

A ranking gap that large is impossible to look past for me. And you list tons of reasons that this program is better other than that, besides the professors being friendly. I don't see how this is a difficult choice at all unless you can't find a prof at Caltech who is doing the research you want to do.

If the school is part of CGS, they cannot ask you to respond before April 15th. Ask for an extension, which is rightfully yours. This is shady of them, not you. Also they already accepted you, they arent going to unaccept you if you ask for an extension, so it really can't hurt you.

People outside the world of applied math are not the ones who are going to be hiring you. The general reputation is completely meaningless.

Water will evaporate at any temperature. Heck solid ice can evaporate. Moisture evaporation is the reason it feels colder when its windier. Dry air has a lower specific heat, so is worse at insulating you from the cold. It may be easier for you to warm, but by the same token its easier for the ambient air to cool. The air entrapped by your clothes and you typically starts out warm anyway, as you put clothes on indoors. So its a matter of how easy it is to stay warm, higher specific heat will mean it will need to lose more energy to cool. We can argue this all day, but you are definitely not going to convince me that wet days are worse than dry days. The worst days of winter are the ones with not a cloud in the sky, when the air is bone dry and the wind is blowing. I've lived for 4 years in Buffalo, so I like to think I know a thing or two about winter. Sorry, Lemur, should have been clearer, I just looked at the free version, which only shows the top 10.

The UCLA resident tuition is a fourth of the CMU tuition, but if you are foreign you are not a California resident. The out of state tuition is $23,337 according to US News at UCLA, $35,700 for CMU. I don't know much about Computer Engineering, so I don't think I can help much, but I will say that if you intend to go for a PhD, having a masters thesis and research will look a lot better than a fast track professional MS.

If you still haven't heard when the deadline is closer, tell B the situation and ask if you can be given some extra time. The CGS resolution just says you aren't obliged to respond until 4/15, departments themselves are likely friendlier and will understand your predicament. Although its pretty rude, there is really nothing B can do to stop you from pulling out of your commitment if it comes to that, but I'm sure they will prefer you telling them they are your choice if A doesn't work out rather than committing and pulling out.

Don't know what you mean by that, dry cold is definitely worse. Less humidity means what water you have evaporates easier, making you colder (same reason dry heat is better), and the dry air/high wind is bad for your skin. Water also holds heat better, so it doesn't get as cold in the first place, particularly at night. Not to scare the OP away! Just buy a coat and stay indoors. You'll be fine.

Less than a month less, and I'm still waiting on two schools! One of these says on their program web page that they want to respond by the end of january, and in an email three weeks ago said they intended to send offers within the next two weeks. :/ At this point, I would be fine with just sending a couple of rejections my way, I'm already pretty confident I know where I'm going.

While its pretty rude to change your mind after committing to school A, there isn't much you they can do about it if B will take you still. I would stand back and think about this longer though, turning down more funding and a better reputed program just for a better city and a girlfriend I would definitely not do. Things you should consider are how bad the commute would be, only two hours away means weekends together at the very least, and how firm is her decision to move to B's city, can she move to you? To answer your question, if I were you, I would go to A. I wouldn't gimp my career trajectory because I like the location a bit less.

What do you mean its reputation can't compare? UMN has a much better reputation for applied than CMU. For applied, UMN is 5 on US News, CMU is unranked. For math in general UMN is 17, CMU is 33. Yes its really cold, but its not going to be too much warmer in Pittsburgh, and I personally wouldn't advise something like that to influence your decision so much. Research reputation and fit is a much better indicator than average winter temperature. Look at professors research interests, which school has more people doing something that sounds interesting to you?

Thats an entirely different market, I'd say. The car I bought was $3800, a 2001 Hyundai Tiburon. Regardless, if someone offered you $1000 to learn to drive a manual, you wouldn't? Thats basically what your choice was, and I don't why someone would turn that down, but to each their own!

I'd like to reiterate this. I sent out emails to all the schools I hadn't heard from at the end of february and got back an acceptance, a rejection, and a bunch of responses detailing when they expected to send decisions. It can't hurt you, despite what it seems many people feel on this board, so go for it. Just say something to the effect of "I applied to the graduate program but have yet to hear back. I'm very interested in University of Whatever and I was wondering when I could expect to hear a response" Where appropriate I changed "very interested" to "top choice" to give more emphasis.

I actually just got back from visiting both of my schools, so can answer these and any other questions from that experience, but obviously my answers will only hold for those individual schools. Although neither school has an open house, they were completely different in their structure. Utah was completely structured, I was contacted a couple days before my trip and given a tentative itinerary which spanned getting off the plane to getting back on. Washington, on the other hand, sent me an email the first night I was in Seattle saying to meet the grad admissions director at 8:30 on friday (this was wednesday night), and besides that day had my trip entirely to myself. Basically, my point is that schools will do it very differently. I didn't do any preparation or work besides printing out a list of professors who do research in the areas I'm interested in and some maps of the area. I didn't contact any professors because I didn't have anyone specific in mind, but if you do then it might be a good idea. I contacted students beforehand, by grabbing some random email addresses off of the student list, and generally got either a friendly and helpful response or nothing. I used those responses mainly to plan what neighborhoods to look at for living and to have some incoming idea of the nature of the department. At the one I was more interested in, I stayed 3 nights, the other 2 nights.

As someone passionate about manual, it is extremely hard to find manuals. It took me a couple weeks to find the one I currently own. Basically if you look on craigslist and it doesnt say its a manual, then it is definitely an automatic. I would say the rarity would mean that used automatics are cheaper, but I have never shopped for one.

While I haven't officially accepted, after visiting I doubt I won't, and I'm just waiting to hear back from the last two schools before making my final decision. Any other future huskies out there?

The Harvard name is only good for impressing non-academics. What is much, much more important is the reputation in your field, which you are saying this other school has. Regardless, funding is vital, you need to eat, after all. Unless your earning potential is going to be vastly higher with a Harvard degree (and as above, it won't be), the debt is not worth it at all.

As a general rule of thumb, ambiguous titles like 'Admissions decision' are bad news, good news will sound like 'official offer of admission' or 'offer letter' or something like that, at least in my experience.

Visit and talk to grad students. I find it hard to believe that no one normal goes to MIT.

Those are definitely questions for the department. I would guess that instead of accepting, you say you want to defer your admission up front, and you won't have to apply again, but just ask.

The NRC rankings are from 1995, the US News are from 2008: http://grad-schools....ograms/rankings I would also ask your professors. Make sure they are doing the research you want, JHU has a very small department so its important to make sure they have at least one professor who you would like as an advisor.