Wzz

The B won't matter as long as you have taken enough other classes in math/stat. The F doesnt matter at all.

This thread is meant to be the place to share results of 2017 applicants. Please make your own thread for this purpose.

Undergrad Institution: Top 5 US Private Major(s): Applied Math, Stats Minor(s): N/A GPA: 3.80 Type of Student: International Asian Male GRE Revised General Test: Q: 170 (97%) V: 167 (98%) W: 4.5 (82%) GRE Subject Test in Mathematics: 760(74%) Didn't have time to prepare, as I didn't realize how important it is until two weeks before the test. Should have spend less time preparing for GRE general to study this. Only submitted to Chicago, Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, Wharton. Programs Applying: Statistics PhD Research Experience: One REU in Math on dynamical systems, two short reading programs in math department, eight months of research with a professor in high dimensional stats (with unpublished paper) Awards/Honors/Recognitions: N/A Pertinent Activities or Jobs: Math TA/grader, Stats grader, CS grader Letters of Recommendation: Three well-known professors in their fields. Two of them I have taken class with, the other my research adviser. Any Miscellaneous Points that Might Help: N/A Others: I was a math major but I didn't take many higher level math courses. Good grades but all on undergraduate level courses. I finished quite a few grad-level stats courses. Applying to Where: Chicago(Statistics) - Accepted Feb.7 CMU(Statistics) - Rejected Feb.23 Columbia(Statistics) - Rejected Mar.9 Berkeley(Statistics) - Rejected Mar.7 Harvard(Statistics) - Rejected Feb.3 Michigan(Statistics) - Rejected Mar.14 NYU-CDS(Data Science) - Interviewed Feb 24, Accepted Mar.15 Princeton(ORFE) - Rejected Feb.10 Rice(Statistics) - Rejected Feb.16 Stanford(Statistics) - Rejected Feb.8 UCLA(Statistics) - Waitlisted, Mar.28, Withdrawn USC-Marshall(Data Sciences and Operations) - Notified for On campus shortlist Interview Feb. 2, Withdrawn UWashington(Statistics) - Accepted Jan.19 Wharton(Statistics) - Waitlisted(???) = didn't make the decision until the very last minute. Wisconsin(Statistics) - Rejected Mar.9 I'm going to attend UW. I am really happy these brilliant programs admitted me, (and USC-Marshall too, their high dimensional team in DSO is amazing). The reason I got a lot of rejections might be the issue with math courses, and since these are all top programs, this is very understandable. And either performing better in subject test or taking a few math courses in functional analysis/ measure theory will fix this. Thanks for the help people in this forum provided.

They gave me the impression that they really want to make sure the quality of the first batch of students, and really don't want to over-enroll. Among the interviewed students (~20) there were even many who didn't get offer. I turned them down early to make room for other people, but I know many others may take a long time to decide. I think they might have over-estimated the acceptance rate when only inviting ~20 people to visit. So, yeah I agree they might lost many potentially interested student in the long process of waiting.

Around 9 am pst.

I visited NYU CDS and quite liked it. I feel like CDS differs very much from those traditional stats programs, let along Berkeley which is very theoretical among stats. So here is some ideas I got from visiting: 1. This is a new program, so people are very passionate. The center has great power to allocate resources, and basically will be very personalized to student's path. This all make sense, as they really want the first year to be a success. Support will be strong, and I suppose they will do whatever they can to make sure this group of student have good placements. Professors are all hired in CDS and another related department (linguistics, social science, math, etc), and promise to spend half of time in CDS. This is a good portal to interact with other departments too. And CDS seems to have a lot of funding. 2. Very good links with industry. They mentions many times that they expect students, if not continuing research during summer, to do summer intern in the companies in NYC. It seems to me that those companies (+facebook maybe) are looking forward to this batch of students to do data science stuff in industry. 3. Flexibility. For example, they said the course system is open to changes. Basically everything is new so many details are planned to be figured out on the run. And the atmosphere is very chill. (4. Though it is in NYC, the stipend w/o TA burden + summer internship would provide better living quality comparing with some other schools. No TA burden is very appealing to me, as it would save much time.) A few thought of mine: 1. The core people at CDS are doing different things (optimization/NLP/ML in social sciences/urban/visualization), and I feel like I would come here only if I am super interested in one of these fields (but not traditional statistics). I am not sure what people would get out of the main courses if coming without a clear idea which facet of data science to jump into. 2. Research. Their research are very interesting, and covers many topics that fascinates me. But it would be totally different from math/stats research. They reminded me that stats research is not the same as data science. 3. This is a new program. Alongside with the benefit of being in a new program is the risk of getting lost, especially when this program is trying to define data science as a subject itself. They say even they don't have a clear definition for data science, and hope to figure it out as the program goes. It is exciting to explore this not-well-defined field with this group, but some (like me) may want to follow a more clear path. In general, I love this program and recommended many people to apply next year, as I can totally see them becoming the leading program in data-science phd. But comparing with statistics, it would be another story. I don't know what the need in academia would be for data science people in five years. And the factors on which to choose between CDS and any stats program is simple: what kind of research you want to do, and what kind of job you wish do after the phd. Turning down this offer is painful, as I can only imagine how happy and excited I will be if I come, but I chose to be conservative in making this choice.

Have you tried call them directly? It seems to me that phone calls are more efficient. Glenda helped check my admission result right away - waitinglist, for which they don't inform the applicant.

I am a current student too which means my words might not be helpful. But according to the impression I get from professors, the W's are no problem, as your overall grades shows how strong you are already. There will be a question in application to explain these sort of situations, and you do have a legit reason for these W's. So I guess don't worry? If I were you, I would do the research. Firstly it will give you a picture of what you like in statistics. Secondly, as I'm doing a thesis for undergraduate now, I feel that at this level a thesis would emphasize more on background research and summarizing what I have already done, which is not as beneficial as doing extra research. Also in speaking of application, I feel that a experience in stats will add more to your profile than a thesis, plus there are probability you finish something within a year and write a paper. Both will be nice, as your math research experience can already endorse your ability. About ML and Chicago, maybe adding TTIC to the list?

Sorry to revive this thread. It's only three days left before 415 but I still haven't heard back from the Wharton stats phd program. I just assume that I'm waitinglisted. There is no way to contact them (phone only only refers to website, email is automatic, and clearly said "policy of the Wharton Faculty not to comment on an individual application"), for which I understand, because there must be a huge amount of applicant. But for previous years, it seems like they reject the final batch of people on waitinglist on April 7. I am just curious if anyone knows how the Wharton procedure works, as it seems to me they will miss many top-waitinglist candidates as people freak out and give up waiting at a time this close to the deadline.

Congratulations! I do not have any real advice, as I'm sure you have more information than I do to decide between the two, but I would recommend making the decision on who are you going to do research with. I feel that research interest is among the few aspects that can make a difference between these two amazing programs. Also, if I were you, I would not take the "dream school" aspect into account, because once you start the program you will focus more on the present than the possible alternative. I have the same feeling to some school as you do to Berkeley, but my rationale for giving it up is that I will spend more time in PhD than the time I spend dreaming about the dream school. So, make the decision conditioning on the fact that you already get into both. However, I'm not suggesting against Berkeley. Do you know people in each program that rejected the other? Maybe they can give you some reasons that help you convince yourself.

That's the reason I called them. I feel like they said they haven't finish making decision because they cant talk about such things over the phone (without identifying who the caller is), which I understand. Thanks for the information. I also called UWisconsin, they said they are still reviewing my application.

I just called Berkeley to ask for decision. They said they haven't make decisions yet (which is not true) but sent an email linked to the decision page five minutes later. rejected. Did anyone else receive the email?

Hi my results (statistics phD) now are: Admits: Chicago, Washington (stat) Rejects: Princeton(ORFE), Stanford(stat), Rice, Harvard, CMU(stat) Waitlist: n/a Interviews: NYU(CDS) on site interview, USC Marshall (DSO) invited me but I withdrew from the program. still trying to figure out which one to go, but I'm more than satisfied with the two I got now.

It helps, but it's hard to estimate the importance in my case. I know people who got into top five programs directly from undergrad with REU being their main research experience (with some other reading experience). I would say it depends a lot on the quality of the paper/presentation for the REU. Also a successful REU would usually result in a good rec.

Hi, I'm a Chinese student in an american college. Our background is slightly different, but I hope my advice might help somehow. I believe the results of phd/master applications from a background in Chinese universities depends highly on the reputation of the school. So the most reliable way to know which program you can get in is by looking at the results from your school last year. Ask the senior students in your school, and basically there will be a somehow fixed mapping from the rank in your class to the programs in phd/ms. For example, some programs would really like the top 3 students from some certain universities. It is a bonus for you since your school is known for its math program. The reason the admission offices put more weight on the academic rank and reputation of your undergraduate university is because people typically don't have that many research opportunities in China, thus the variance of each individual is not high (i.e., people with similar rank have similar backgrounds, and will very likely get similar results), as opposed to here in america (It's hard to find people with a similar background). For research projects, I suspect they are not extremely important for MS. For phd, it would not be a problem if you don't have much experience in research in the field of statistics, but you must have some experience to prove that you can do research. Reading programs in math, for example, would be helpful. (IMO more helpful than a data-processing sort of research). One suggestion for research in math is REU, as mentioned by others above. Some schools DO take international students. UChicago, for example, does, and the deadline is a week or so away from now. The program is mainly taking classes and writing an independent study paper, which doesn't need to be "original" findings. You can read the papers from past years on the website. In general, when I asked my professors what should I do when I was a junior, they all told me to do a math REU.