origin415

Just got my first response, an acceptance from Utah. It isn't the highest on my list, but it definitely feels great to have a baseline. Will definitely have to visit though, not sure about living in Salt Lake City. If you are sure about this, than it would be great if you could withdraw your application from all those lesser schools, so everyone else has a chance

Depends on the school. Look at results from the previous year and see if their acceptances were spread out or all at once.

1) Going through all 9 seasons of Seinfeld. I've probably seen every episode at some point, but I've never watched them sequentially. 2) Working on my honors thesis, I guess even if I need to try again next year, I'll have big points in my favor to have this finished and published. 3) Planning post-graduation road trip, regardless of what I'm doing next fall. (Anyone have any must-stop ideas?)

Iron Chef-style battles. I would own so much face, I basically learned to cook by watching every episode and battling friends.

I am actually from Long Island, so I can tell you from experience that SB is in a small town. LI is just a bunch of small towns sitting next to each other. If you wanted to go to the city, you have to get to a train station, pay $10.75 one way (last time I was there, the could have raised it since), and sit in a train for an hour and a half (possibly longer for the SB stop, I believe you have to transfer somewhere on that line). Its doable, but you aren't going to do it every weekend, its far too expensive. Driving takes about an hour, but driving to manhattan is really silly. Bronx and Brooklyn have stuff to see that you can drive to though. While I lived there I went into the city maybe once a year, but then again I've lived there my whole life, so I've seen the big things to see. I'm not saying you shouldn't go if you think you'll like it, I'm just trying to make sure you have all the facts, you'll still be living in a small town, just this one happens to be a day trip away from a big town. Make sure you visit.

I don't know much about statistics programs, but I can offer some advice: It will be much easier to judge where you should aim if you have math GRE scores. Don't worry too much about the college you came from. A bigger/better university might mean more famous recommenders, but grad schools understand just because you went to some place without a reputation that doesn't mean you aren't a great mathematician. I hope you don't think that Rutgers and Stony Brook are in big cities. Both are knee deep in the suburbs, which is why I'm applying to neither, a criteria for my school selection was my ability to live in there without a car. Also, while Penn is a big school, its math department is fairly small. If you are looking for a bigger program, look to public schools: Washington, Texas, UC San Diego, CUNY, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago, etc, are all big state schools in big cities in the rankings range of the ones you are already looking at, at least for their math programs, as I said I don't know about stats programs.

I'm in.

Well we applied to two places in common, Texas and Michigan, both of which my advisor has said to be hopeful about despite my score because they are very large programs. Good luck to us both.

I also did quite badly on the subject test (a 690, 63rd percentile), so I know what its like. Personally, I was doing around 90th percentile on the sample tests the ETS released, so my score was purely a screw up on my part come test day, one which I can do absolutely nothing about and will be haunting me for quite some time if I don't get into the school I would have because of it, hopefully adcoms can look past it. Regardless, I handled my coursework just fine, a 3.86 gpa (3.96 if you don't count a semester travelling abroad), including an honors thesis and a grad class. Actually I was the sole recipient of a math departmental award, so I am first in my class. I don't think my score is indicative of my ability or foundations at all, and hope my application as a whole makes my subject score look completely out of place and irrelevant. Regardless, back to the OP: I have to agree you aimed a little high, and not that you shouldn't have applied to where you did, but simply to apply to more schools. Personally I'm rooting for you, as one subject test screw up to another.

If there was a way to choose to have your data hidden from the results page and only for statistics, this may help people like repatriate.

Haven't heard anything, but only one out of ten has sent out anything so far, and I wasn't expecting to get in there anyway. If last year is any guide, I have 6 whole days left until more start responding!

I wouldn't, not while they are in the middle of the decision process. I definitely would take the chance to scope out the area, campus, and department building though, if you haven't already.

Actually if you don't pick up, you will be immediately rejected from the program and your spot will go to someone else. More seriously, others on this forum have said that they attempt to call multiple times before trying anything else.

Depends entirely on the department. It seems that many schools in my field are notifying much earlier than last year (unfortunately none of mine), and perhaps many others will notify later.

I've been checking them, mainly because of not having anything better to do. Better than checking my email 10,000 times a day. Only thing I've seen is that two of them have updated to say that my application was forwarded to the department (why didn't the department already have them?)

From the UMN FAQ "The TOEFL exam is also required, unless you spoke only English at home while growing up." That is really absurd, I would call them to sort this out immediately, if you have been in the US and Canada most of your life and went to an english speaking university, there is no reason to take the TOEFL. There are plenty of students in the US who grew up in families that speak in spanish as well as english while at home, and I don't see how that should be punished this way. Hope it all works out for you, though.

My professors have assured me that the rankings don't matter much at all, your research and recommendations are going to be whats going to get you a nice post doc and such later, but I imagine reputation is more important in other fields. I can't say that I wouldn't prefer to go to a school with a nice name, though. I have yet to publish, so I wouldn't know about journals.

It depends on the program, looking at schools' results from last year, some sent out a round of rejections a bit before the first round of acceptances. Probably means the department went through and removed the uncompetitive applications ones and sent out rejections while continuing to deliberate over the rest. I'd take it as a good thing, you are on to the next round.

Sometimes, yes, but it depends on the university and department. If you are already at the university, I don't think its unreasonable to talk to your professors about staying.

Most of the time the fields are "mailing address" and "permanent address", so I would say you should expect to get it at your school.

They are probably torn between my terrible subject GRE scores and top notch everything else. Hopefully they choose to place more weight in the latter!

What I mean by differentiate is that not everyone gets the same score, which isn't the case for the quant section of the regular gre. Regardless of it being on calculus, it is still a much more accurate representation of ability at mathematics than the verbal and writing sections of the regular gre, wouldn't you agree? That is my point, that verbal is still useless for math programs. Besides, my professors have told me specifically that the regular gre is inconsequential in comparison to the math gre (even the quant section), so its not just me. Of course, even if getting a better score won't help, getting an especially bad score could hurt

The field my ideal mate studied wouldn't matter, what would matter is that they were passionate about something academic, even if it were *gasp* a humanity or social science. While mathematics is my personal focus, I just love intellectual conversation in general.

I don't believe this is the case for mathematics. While its true that the quant score won't differentiate, the mathematics subject gre is very difficult even for math majors and differentiates just fine (whether what it is differentiating between is relevant to a mathematics research is debatable though). I'd assume the case is similar for other sciences, like physics, where the subject gre is important.

I already use an RSS reader, so I just added the rss feed for the search "math*" to that, so now I don't have to check it.