kroner

800 is a pretty good score. There's nowhere that will hurt you; I don't think you need to worry about retaking it. 340 V seems pretty bad, on the other hand I don't think math grad schools care about your verbal score at all, as long as they can be sure that you speak English well enough to TA a class. If you are a native speaker (I'm assuming you are?) then I doubt that's a concern. Besides your writing score is decent. I don't know enough to say anything about the schools you picked, except for some general advice, which is that if you're really committed to going to grad school make sure you have some safeties, especially if you're unsure about how strong your app is.

Just going by the websites, it looks like the math dept at UT Austin includes applied math, while CSEM is an interdisciplinary program between the math dept and some other departments that specifically aims to foster collaboration between them (so the math professors there are actually still a part of the math dept proper). It also sounds like CSEM is tougher to get into. You should probably check out the work being done in each and then you can judge what kind of fit they might be for you. If you can get into the CSEM program that sounds really great, but if not UT Austin math definitely has a very good reputation (although I don't know anything about how strong it is specifically in applied math). You might also try emailing the math department and explain your situation and ask them what they advise. I'm sure they would be happy to discuss it with you.

There's some funding (specifically a lot of what comes from government initiatives) that only domestic students are eligible for, so it's not just limited to state schools. From what I've heard it seems like there is more competition for spots for international students at American universities than for domestic students. I'm not sure exactly how much the disadvantage is though, since departments still want the best, most promising students they can get, so if you're well qualified but international there's still a big incentive to snatch you up.

I haven't done this myself, but there's really no way it could hurt. It's probably a good idea even if most people don't do it. I also don't see any reason why ad com professors wouldn't be at liberty to give you an honest answer, although they might decide they aren't willing to take the time.

I'll be a PhD student in math. Probably will do a physics minor.

Georgia Tech

Has anyone heard anything official out of UCSB math at all? The results search shows nothing besides one rejection a while ago and an unofficial acceptance email from a professor. It just seems weird. I'm wondering what is up with this school.

I haven't visited any schools yet, but I will be later this month. I was wondering if people could share their experience about how to prepare and what to expect. If you've done visits, what work did you do to prepare before you went? Did you contact professors? How many? Did you contact students? How structured were the open houses you attended? How structured were the visits that weren't open houses? How long did you stay? Any other advice?

More like you are interviewing them.

Georgia Tech: April 2-4

Yeah, I got that letter too and had a similar reaction. I saw the slim envelope from UIUC and thought, "oh well I got rejected." Then I opened it and started reading and was like, "ok I get that I'm rejected. Why don't they just say that in the first sentence?" and almost stopped reading there. However as several people mentioned on the results pages, it was a very kind letter, even if misleadingly structured. I wonder how many people are in the top half of the waiting list.

me neither But yeah, they apparently just started making offers so I'm hoping they are still not done with the first round.

How strong the department is also affects what fraction of admitted students they can expect will accept or decline an offer. Interestingly UT Austin actually lists on their website the number of students who applied, were accepted and were admitted last year (271, 71, 28 respectively), although that doesn't tell us much about when the offers were made. The results posted on gradcafe also offer some insight. For example going by that data it appears that Berkeley admits very few people after the first round. On the other hand SUNY Stony Brook appears to string out its acceptances over the whole Feb-April season.

I did well on the math GRE (860) but I'm going to go ahead and say that it's kind of a bullshit test. The intersection between the material on the test and the material I learned in undergrad was very small. And solving simple questions quickly has nothing to do with what you'll be doing as a researcher. Not that I really blame the ETS. I think making a single test that gauges your math preparation for grad school is an extremely difficult prospect. The common foundation ends pretty early on compared to other disciplines, and then people can end up really heavily specializing in one area or another. Plus it seems like what's offered at different schools varies a lot. It's just unfortunate there's not a better way.

I'm pretty sure Berkeley sent out all its first round picks on Jan 28. Based on past years it looks like hardly anyone gets in after that, but who knows what will happen this year. I'm waiting to hear from them too, but not hopeful.

You could just get a car, right?

Got my MIT rejection too. First school I've heard from so far. Boo. Not that I'm too surprised.

It's funny you should ask that. When I started undergrad I was really into both math and physics, but I kinda got fed up with physics at my school and just focused on math. I only took 3 terms of it, which covered mechanics and EM, and also some special relativity. I graduated in 2008, and then took some time to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I regretted not ever taking quantum mechanics, so I got a book and started studying and it was great. So great that for a while I decided I wanted to switch over and go to school for physics. I took the physics GRE, and started studying general relativity, and looking at what schools I wanted to apply to. But as I thought more about it I came to the conclusion that I still love math, and what really interests me about physics is the math end, which tends to be in math departments. Like if I'm going to study topology for physics, it's still topology. So I applied to schools for math, but to places where hopefully I'll have some options. I plan to keep studying both between now and the fall. I don't really know where it'll take me. So to answer the question, I think absolutely if you are interested in physics and have the math background you could get into that stuff. I haven't done any QFT yet or string theory, but of what I've seen, if you have the math down already the physics is not too hard. Of course this is coming from someone who isn't actually doing any physics related research yet, or even been accepted to any schools yet for that matter, so you might want to take that advice with a grain of salt. In fact it could be that I'm totally deluding myself.

Yeah, a lot of times it has much more to do with whether a certain branch has historically been thought of as "applied" than whether the actual work in question has an application. I like algebraic geometry and topology, but I'm also interested in its applications to physics. That kind of stuff is classified as pure math at all the schools I'm applying to, regardless of whether it's being applied.

Here are some responses for math. "Ok what's 15 million divided by 73,426?" "Do you want to be an actuary?" and my personal favorite: "But hasn't all the math been discovered already?"