Bayesian1701

I made my decision where to attend, but I can't decide on an apartment. I thought it would be easy, but deciding where to live in a new town is very difficult. I just don't know which one to choose. All I want is somewhere safe, quiet and close to campus. I have like 5 places in mind but I can't choose which one I want because they are all pre-leasing and don't know enough of their fall availabilities to tell me what floors and buildings I can live in. I don't want to be put on the fourth floor in the floorplan I don't want so I am too afraid to sign a very vague lease. And to make matters worse, if I wait too long I may have no options. I thought my waiting was over, but it's not.

I wouldn't follow up. If you did what the acceptance materials said to do you should be fine. If they need anything else they should contact you. I haven't heard anything back from one of the places I declined but they never contacted me outside of the portal.

I am struggling to find a safe 1 bedroom close to campus ( no more than a 15-minute commute) that I can afford in the city I am moving to for grad schools(I don’t want to say where exactly). Almost all of my options are student-oriented housing (either on campus or off). I have literally spent over 50 hours looking for places plus driving around during a visit. I am graduating early so I will be undergraduate aged when I start graduate school which makes me less hesitant to live in student housing. I will obviously attempt to avoid places that have parties a lot (by reading reviews and looking for crime data on alcohol-related offenses). This market there is very student oriented which with three different kinds of apartments: student, low income, and super luxurious professional apartments that I can’t really afford. The cheaper places don’t have a lot of students but I am a single woman and a lot of those places I have looked at have crime issues. I live in a college town now, and I know that a lot of graduate students here live at some of the student places because they are cheap, safe, and close to campus. Is it a horrible idea to live in a complex alone that caters to undergraduate students if I live in one of the quieter ones alone in a building of one bedroom apartments? I could do a house but I don't know anybody in the town and I think finding random roommates is a bad idea and it's not likely I can find someone in the department to live with my first year.

What time of day do maintenance notices usually appear? There is nothing yet. I signed in to my grfp fastlane account to see if there was anything I needed to do with the changes that came out today and it didn't look any different.

I am antideficit but cutting NSF funding is not the way to do it in my opinion. You could probably save more money by being more efficient when it comes to the big expenses: defense, entitlements, and bureaucracy. Banning student loans for for profit programs would also save a ton of money since a lot of for profit graduates default and have tons of debt. I think the NSF is important because we need basic research for our society to advance. I don’t think we are inventing research jobs with NSF that wouldn’t have existed otherwise. There are over saturated fields and under saturated ones. Maybe in some fields where industry opportunities are low we are producing too many PhDs but I think there is a case for a shortage in certain fields where industry demand is high (stats, cs). Also a 2.1% unemployment rate is pretty good. The goal unemployment rate they always talked about in my economic classes (it was my minor) is 3-5% so that the market can be fluid. That probably indicates to few PhDs over not enough.

I know there are some places (Duke in particular) that don’t look at subject GRE so it wouldn’t matter if the program doesn’t look at it. Also at programs outside of the top tier it doesn’t really matter for a domestic applicant to have a Math GRE score if there application is otherwise strong. I don’t think there is a generic answer. It would depend on the rest of your application(math grades, research experience, domestic vs International, undergraduate institutions). What are your stats and where do you want to apply?

My reasons for wanting NSF GRFP are because it or another similar fellowship are my only option for an RAship to work on my problem. I am in stats where enough grant money to support students is rare if your not a Ivy League level of school. So people usually teaching for their entire careers or if they are really lucky get an RA when they are working on their dissertation. This fellowship would give me freedom and that is something I desperately want. I am funded at a livable stipend if I teach but I would get extra money with the fellowship which would be nice. I want to work on my proposal so bad and I know I can’t the research like I want to while teaching. That’s why I am still hopeful that maybe I have a chance because I actually have three years of independent research experience as an undergraduate senior while most people in my field have just an REU. My department has NEVER had a winner and I am a woman and hopefully those things will help me.

@fpga_bored Hopefully we can get enough data on rejected applications. I wonder how many people with similar profiles to the awarded candidates get rejected. I also wish there were more math/stat people on Alex Lang's website.

That's like everyone's worse nightmare right? I held off on telling people I was accepted to grad school until I got the official notification because I was afraid it was a mistake.

@GoldenDog My theory, which may be totally wrong, about the January and March gap is the panelists don't necessarily make all the final decisions. Perhaps they recommend 1.2x (I am guessing) people beyond the number of awards to go onto the next phase of final picking to ensure a good representation of women, minorities, and a variety of undergraduate/current institutions. Who does the overall reviewing or if it even happens is anyone's guess. I also think apps will be up relative to last year because I think some of the current second years didn't apply last year and waited. Plus there was an upward trend so I think an increase might be likely. I wish there was better data so I could do some actual statistics.

I definitely disagree. Austin has a lot of tech/business jobs if that's what you are looking for. Dallas and Houston will also have great opportunities. I might be a little biased as a native Texan, but our economy is very good. I met some of the statistics professors split between the statistics department and the business school and I had the impression that they were extremely high-quality faculty. Their statistics program is pretty new but they have gotten good industry placements and I imagine that would hold since most of the statistics department is an extension of the older business school stats related program. Most of the stats PhD students who want local internships can get them. UT definitely beats Indiana in terms of local opportunities, but it may not be as good as New York or California.

UWashington is definitely a reach school. I don't think anyone would suggest you apply to UWashington, but if you really want to pay the application fee for probably a 5-10% percent chance of acceptance. UWashington is a top-tier program that's hard for even the best applicants to get into. The problem is you don't have graduate coursework, statistics research, an Ivy League level undergraduate institution and those things are typical among applicants to that level of program. Did you take any proof based mathematics courses (intro to proof, real analysis, abstract algebra)? What are you reasons for liking the University of Washington? Ideally, you need to look at places in the middle and lower half of the ranking to start. Since you are out of school the easiest way to increase your chances is studying for the GRE. Ideally, you want 167+ on Quant, but if your practice scores are in that range already practicing wouldn't be helpful. There is probably nothing else you can do in 9 months to significantly improve your chances. Statistics PhD admissions are very difficult, especially at a place like UWashington. Look at the profiles of this year's applicants, where several people with much better profiles got rejected by UWashington stats in particular.

So the best thing I can think of to do right now is to figure out the processing time, add 5 business days excluding holidays for the various delays (1 government shutdown, 2 weather closures, and 2 days of extra processing of the hurricane-affected applications. I don't think there were any major delays (at least not multiple ones) in 2014, 2015, 2016, or 2017, but let me know if there is anything you know of. I came up with two methods: one assuming a linear relationship between number and processing time, and another which is basically an average processing time. 2014: 100 business days of processing, so 0.007 days per applicant 2015: 100 business days of processing, so 0.006 days per applicant 2016: 104 business days of processing, so 0.006 days per applicant 2017: 98 business days of processing, some 0.007 days per applicant Applicant Based: So let's say 0.0065 days per applicant assume 14k applicants, which makes 91 days with no delays and 96 with delays which was March 11 so rounded to March 13, but that didn't happen. Pattern Based: Let's assume it takes approximately 100 business days rounded to the nearest Tuesday/Friday to release winners, we get 105 days of processing after adjusting for the delays, giving a date of 3/26 which is a Monday so round to Tuesday and get 3/27, this Tuesday. So this indicates it is coming very soon but the error on this is probably plus or minus a week.

@fpga_bored Do you have any ideas on where to scrape. There are some results in the survey but they aren't very detailed. Here's hoping for a Tuesday release.

I don’t think so. Most of the programs I interacted with (Baylor, UT, Duke, TAMU, Mizzou, Virginia Tech) have a significant (40%+) portion of their students go into industry. I haven’t seen places with a lot of people going into government work but I don’t there is as many positions (I maybe be wrong) as industry/academia. If people do at all the time there shouldn’t be much of a bias. That being said, there are probably some advisors and programs that look down on industry work but I don’t know of any.

I rejected places I didn’t visit and I was pretty sure where I was going before my visit to a program and the visit was more of a formality. It sounds like you made up your mind and that’s perfectly fine.

True, but correlation indicates slightly more evidence for a causal relationship than no correlation. If only I had real data on chances and release dates to do something. I feel helpless because I can't run the numbers.

I wouldn’t give up yet. Maybe maintenance is no longer necessary. It could come later today.

@pinkcrystalthumb senior undergraduate applicants can apply again in their first or second year at least for now.

I don’t know. If I am competing only with senior undergraduate statisticians I have a reasonable chance because I think have more research experience than most of the people in that group. But if there aren’t field quotas my odds aren’t good. I really hope it’s tomorrow so that I can say I predicted the release date and I can stop worrying about it.

I would try working out a monthly budget for both programs especially figuring out housing, fees, and state taxes to see what the money difference is really like if you haven't already. If Rutgers is doable financially it sounds like the better fit. Also email the Rutgers about placements (they should be willing to give you it) and see if they have cheap university owned graduate housing.

I think that's too top heavy. Duke, UNC, Harvard, Texas A&M, Michigan, and UT Austin are probably all reaches. It's just hard to get into top 10/20 programs. I would probably cut the reaches in half and add places like Baylor, Mizzou, Florida that you would be more likely to get into. Rice, SMU, and Alabama should be doable but I don’t think they are the best fit for Bayesian research (they might be good for probability). Check to make sure everywhere you apply to has at least 3 advisors with Bayesian and/or Probability research you are interesting. Virginia Tech might be worth looking into but I am personally not a fan of it since their completion rate is abysmal (30%) and funding is slightly unstable.

I am definitely coming back when I reapply next year or the year after that.

Undergrad Institution: R1 Large Public, no statistics department, Major(s): Mathematics Minor(s): Economics GPA: for fall deadlines: 3.78 overall, 3.86 Upper-Level Math, For spring deadlines: 3.81 overall, 3.89 Upper-Level Math Type of Student: Domestic White Female GRE General Test: Q: 167 (92%) V: 160 (85%) W: 4.0 (60%) GRE Subject Test in Mathematics: M: Didn't take TOEFL Score: N/A Programs Applying: Statistics PhD Research Experience: independent research almost all of undergrad, 2 University conference presentations, 1 presentation at Nebraska Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics, presentation at graduate seminar, 1 Manuscript submitted anywhere where a writing sample is allowed, and a semi-invited(?) talk a local community college (asked our undergraduate director to pick an undergraduate to talk about undergraduate research and he chose me). My research was probably as independent as it can get for an undergrad, I wrote all the code and the manuscript, and made about 95% of the modeling decisions. Pertinent Activities or Jobs: Paid for research Letters of Recommendation: One from research advisor that was definitely amazing and definitely said that my research was highly independent and done almost entirely by me because he told me that, One from math stats professor, for UT, Duke, Columbia, and Kansas State letter from Real Analysis professor, for others letter from research ethics professor Math/Statistics Grades: Calc 2 - A, Calc 3 - B, Probability - A+, Math Stat - A, Independent study math stat - A+ (grade not seen by fall deadlines), Real Analysis 1 - A, Numerical Analysis - B, Diff Eq - A, Intro to Proof - A, Real Analysis 2 - A (grade not seen by fall deadlines), Econometrics - A+, programming class - A, Game Theory - B, Any Miscellaneous Points that Might Help: graduating in three years with honors Applying to Where: (Color use here is welcome) UT Austin - Submitted 11/20, Accepted 1/24 (20k stipend), funded visit 2/23, Duke Submitted 11/26, Video Call Interview Request 1/15, Interview 1/19, Waitlisted 2/14, withdrew 3/22 Texas A&M - Submitted 11/13, Accepted 1/24 with funding, received additional fellowship on top of $20k typical stipend for TA work averaging out to about 32k a year in support Columbia - Submitted 12/31, rejected 3/2 Baylor - Submitted 12/10, Requested Visit 9/15, Visited 10/26 (Department paid for gas, hotel room, and food) , waitlisted 3/8, withdrew 3/22 Virginia Tech - Submitted 11/20, unofficially accepted with funding 2/7, officially accepted with $1826 stipend and offered paid visit 2/22, declined 2/26 Florida State - Submitted 12/21, Accepted with funding ~15k for unspecified teaching work Kansas State - Submitted 12/31, Accepted 1/30, was not told funding information before I withdrew University of Missouri - Columbia Submitted 12/21, - Admitted 2/7 (18.6k a year plus one time $2k fellowship), funded visit 3/5 Advice: I did things a little differently than most applicants. I have very strong and specialized research interests stemming from my research experience. Honestly, my main motivation for graduate school is to get a better statistical background so that I can work on the same problem. I didn't really customize SOPs at all I said I wanted to do applied Bayesian statistics with a social science focus even if that is not what the program is known for. I also only name dropped professors at UT and Missouri. I figured this might backfire and lead to a lot of rejections but it thankfully didn't in most cases. At Baylor, a lack of research fit was mentioned in why I didn't make the initial cut which is something that I knew might happen. I didn't think I could get out of the middle and lower tier but I did. Honestly, I undershot my chances because I was aiming for 3+ acceptances and I underestimated the value of my research experience. I decided to stop waiting on Baylor and Duke and made my decision which I am not revealing at this time. This was a crazy process and I am glad it is over.

I made my decision. I am not sharing it to remain anonymous. I am the process of declining my offers and removing myself off waitlists. Best of luck to the people still waiting and deciding.