Bayesian1701

I also think apps may be up across the board. Not sure by how much considering since it goes up almost every year but it could have increased more than usual. More applications could delay timelines. Not trying to be condescending here but we know that the results survey has nonresponse, possible misclassification or falsified data, and decision dates vary year to year. I totally struggle with overanalyzing results too though. I know it has issues but that doesn’t stop me from creating predictions of when my results will come out and what they will be.

Got into Kansas State. No funding info, but I hope that will come later. They may not fund me because I am not a very good fit in my opinion. I was hoping to hear from Duke today but I haven't yet.

Do you have the money to pay for tuition and living expenses for 5-10 years? It don't think turning a rejection into an unfunded admission would work because the program might have size constraints unrelated to funding. Even if you went to an in-state public university you would need maybe $30,000 (conservatively) a year to pay tuition and living expenses and a private university or one in a high-cost area would be more. Your other post was about History PhD programs so I am going to assume that is still your field. If you are willing to pay and don't have an MA in history why not apply to those programs, getting into a MA program should be less competitive and some of them might still have open applications. Unless you have external funding or are independently wealthy (i.e. you can easily afford to spend six figures on your education) unfunded PhDs are a bad idea since it would be difficult to pay off potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans.

A&M probably still has a lot of offers to send out. Where else did you apply (if you don't mind sharing)? Only mainly the top programs (roughly) are beginning to send out results. A lot more of them should start releasing soon, and I wouldn't count yourself out.

Yield rates look to be around 40-50% in general, and I think it is because people get multiple offers frequently and you can't attend everywhere.

This week is when I think the (general) stats admissions are going to start to pour out, based on 2016 and 2017. UT, Duke interview, UNC, NCSU, and Texas A&M being on schedule is a good sign IMO about response times. I am expecting at least two results from the following programs: Kansas State, Baylor, Duke, Virginia Tech, and Missouri. Florida State and Columbia may not be out until late February/March. Thankfully I am going to be pretty busy with school and work this week and I already have two offers so I am not that stressed. I hope all y’all still waiting for a first admit will get one soon.

I am a female applicant applying to Statistics programs. In recent years about 40% of Statistics Ph.D. recipients are female, but certain subfields (including my main interest) can be even more male-dominated. A lot of the programs I am applying to our small and due to the nature of small number statistics it is likely that five and six-person cohorts could only have one woman (especially if they aren't purposely aiming for gender diversity). I don't have anything against men, but I feel I might feel socially isolated (from other women) in an extremely male-dominated cohort. I am not saying I don't want male friends, but I want some female friends as well. I doubt any department has only one female student but if there are only a couple it might be hard to connect. Would I be crazy to consider this as a factor in my decision? I could see this possibly affecting the probability I will complete the program if I feel alone and like the token woman (even if that's not why I was admitted). I know that I can always meet other women elsewhere, but I don't think I would go out of my way to meet people. Anyone have some thoughts on this?

Was anyone else with a Duke stats interview told when to expect results or has received a result? I thought my interviewer said that results would be out by the end of this week, but she might have said it was their goal meaning it is not necessarily happening today. I need to commit to UT's visit weekend (2/22-2/24) soon but I don't want to until I know if I got into Duke and in case it is the same weekend.

I had the interesting experience of getting two acceptances in two hours today. For the first one I called my dad like immediately, and emailed my mentor, and called/texted other people too. I then went to my tutoring job and between sessions got another email but then got back to work. After work, I surprised two of my rec letter writers in person with the news. I spent the entire afternoon calling/emailing/texting the news to those I hadn't heard. I opened my graduate school acceptance bottle of champagne and gave myself the afternoon off for homework. I almost cried tears of joy like a million times today. The first time it was because I knew I was going to graduate school, the second time because I realized that it is more likely someone will get into an Ivy League university than someone to get a first round acceptance to the UT Austin stats program, and again when I realized I cracked the top 20. I have waited two months basically, and almost every day I feared that I would get no offers. I literally had the what if I don't get in conversion YESTERDAY with multiple people. Now everything else is gravy. I have two funded offers now, am on the shortlist for another and have 6 more places to go. I can now say with confidence that I will be attending graduate school. And that is an amazing feeling.

Sure. I have research experience from basically day 1 of undergrad. For over two years it has been on a project that I have designed myself that is independent (and in a different subfield) of my mentor's (associate stats professor) research. I am graduating in three years with a math major and econ minor and working on my second manuscript. The first one is still unpublished but was an honorable mention in a national contest. My undergrad institution is a Texas state school and has a joint math/stat department. It has a Math PhD program, but definitely is not highly ranked. Another thing to note is that I am a Texas resident so that might have helped a little bit. More details are here. My SOP was not customized at all to institutions and I told them all I want to do applied Bayesian statistics focusing on social science applications. I also got into Texas A&M with funding and they are recommending me for a diversity fellowship. My research experience is probably why I got into UT Austin and A&M and made Duke's shortlist. I am not declining any offers until I know all my results. I need to know that I can continue my research. You might be able to identify me, but please keep that info to yourself.

I just got my first acceptance and it is one of my favorites. Now I can finally sleep at night and not stress over waiting because I have a funded offer at a program I like and what more can you ask for?

I just got in to UT Austin! I’ll put it into Results later.

1 day later the UW stats acceptance is looking pretty odd. Sometimes I wonder if people put fake results in to mess with people or something. Do the outliers (in general) have an explanation or are they just made up? Could nonresponse bias mean that the outliers aren't actually outliers? I just want the waiting to be over already. I wish more places reviewed applications before the deadline. I get that they want to see the entire pool but you could begin to sort and rank the applications early and add applications as they came in.

Where are you applying? There are probably 2-4 weeks to go on decisions from the historically later schools (Kansas State, Texas A&M, Missouri). A lot of results are going to likely come out but some places (especially those with late deadlines) just take longer. Duke interviews were pretty much on schedule (arguably a few days late) so that isn't surprising. I was told during my interview that they were aiming to send out responses by Friday so I would imagine they have notified almost everyone about an interview. And if you didn't make the Duke interview cut that doesn't probably mean you won't get in elsewhere since it is one of the most competitive programs.

An acceptance popped up for UWashington stats (international no details) when I checked before class a few hours ago. Usually, there is a pretty big wave of notifications once they start coming in. It could be spam since there is only one right now and the interview result is weird since it is still the only one. If a bunch of uwashington results come out today the earlier interview may have been for biostats or an outlier. Possibly after some of them get declined by people who choose to go elsewhere. Their admissions faq suggests it is more like a rolling system. Their yield is probably low so it's definitely possible they will send more out and that you might have your application reviewed. Have you emailed them?

Did we ever get confirmation that there are only 1,000 spots due to potential budget cuts? Also, does anyone know if the shutdown goes on for a few weeks does that mean that we could not hear back before April 15th? I am a senior undergrad applying to PhD programs and getting the fellowship could change my decision on where to attend. I don't think the shutdown will last that long, but what if it does affect the turn around time. I know the odds of getting one are pretty slim (especially if there is a cut in awards), but I want to know before I accept an offer.

Not in your field but I wanted to contribute my errors. So I applied for a fellowship (NSF GRFP) and I reused my SOP for graduate application. The application is not necessarily evaluated by someone in your subfield I so explained what my subfield, Bayesian statistics, was. I did not remove this statement in the SOP I used to Duke which is a department where almost everyone does Bayesian statistics. I still made the shortlist so it turned out ok. Another error I made was the typesetting language I used (TeX, common in STEM) has some weird formatting quirks one of which is occasionally ignoring apostrophes and removing them from the text unless you use a special code. I had three apostrophes in my fellowship application that were omitted. I said things like University Xs conference instead of University X's conference. I will see how that turns out later but since it is very competitive I might have ruined my chances. I still have 2 months of waiting left. I am not rereading my SOPs or CV since there is nothing I can do about it now so I don't want to stress. Plus I have read enough paper to realize that almost everyone has a typo (at least in my field) in most of their publications. It is very easy to make a mistake in a big document, no matter how many times you proofread it.

I went ahead and sent it to all 9 universities I applied to. You can send it to 10 places. If you are applied to more than 10 programs maybe you could send out to your top 5 places and hold the other spots until later.

The professor did apologize on January 7th, which was before the rejections went out. There is a twitter thread here with her apology and the original tweet. I don't know if it was directed at that specific applicant even if it was apparently a direct quote. I wouldn't be surprised if multiple people started their SOP's with childhood stories and mentioned the deaths/illnesses of family members. I think she brought it up because it was a common problem. She probably could have said it a better way and not have quoted it directly, but she had a good point. If the rest of your application was that impressive then you could have written a great SOP just based on your undergraduate years. I don't know anything about that program but it looks super competitive and the SOP probably wasn't the only factor in the decision.

Are apps maybe up this year? Is anywhere else running late that we know of?

Silence but I am expecting silence until like the 29th of January. It was a pretty quiet day on results. UWashington stats and UNC stats might send out results this later this week based on last year. I think things might start to really pick up next week. @statbiostat2017 I am surprised NCSU rejected you. cyberwulf thought you had pretty good odds at top programs so I think you will be fine.

What is your field? Do you have an advisor picked out? Are there people at your institution with expertise in the topics you suggested? What are some past topics?

A possible pattern I noticed in stats PhD programs is the high application volume programs were slightly more likely to have an due date earlier in the process. This was not a hard and fast rule and some programs known to get hundreds of applications did have late deadlines. Winter break and the holidays make things a little difficult for early deadline programs to make decisions. But, I could see why there would be little time difference between a 12/15 deadline program and 1/08 deadline program when they release decisions. I feel like you need to add 1-2 weeks above the normal response time in your field to for 12/1 and 12/15 deadlines to cover the holidays. I could see how certain programs and certain fields would be able to make decisions in 4 weeks, but a 8 week waiting process could be normal for some programs and is kinda what I am expecting for one of my programs (A&M) since they have a free app that doesn’t require anything official so hundreds and hundreds (500+) of people apply.

I don't think interviews or results are out yet for international applicants (not currently in the US) yet at any of those places. The app season is still young for stats/biostats so don't lose hope yet.

Thanks. As a Bayesian, I am updating my beliefs with this new information. Thank you. Have you heard anything? I did some math and about 75% of domestic interviewed Duke applicants (if the 15% cut is constant and it appears to be based on past posts) are eventually offered admission. My results may be a case study in the importance of research fit. I was clear about my narrow research interests (applied Bayesian statistics for social science) in my SOP and mentioned that I really want to continue my undergraduate research. Duke is a pretty good fit for me, but some of the others are not. If fit is very important I could still get rejects at places that would look surprising given my profile.