Actually I am also waiting for news from UNC at Chapel Hill. They told me that I had a strong application. In fact all of the schools that I have mentioned have nice advisors that I would like to work with, such as Yuedong Wang at UCSB, Hongtu Zhu at Rice(jointed), Rosenthal at Toronto. It's hard to tell which one is the best.
When considering programs' reputation and the number of advisors that could be worked with, UNC is certainly the best choice. However, they are lack of funding and they've lost many good professors for the past few years, which makes me worry about the prospect of the school...
Rice have collaboration with MD Anderson, which is a great advantage. But Rice's Stat department is young and the placement records in academia is not very appealing to me.
