Bayesian1701

As promised: Texas A&M (TAMU) I paid for a ticket but I will be reimbursed. This was the shortest visit I had (only about 6 hours) but I did an apartment hunting and city tour trip earlier during spring break. Although it is the largest department I visited (40 PhD students and over 500 online MS students) it didn’t feel that way since you they don’t have a lot of in town students. A plus of their huge online program is that you have the option to be a Technology Teaching Assistant and record the lectures for the online classes and help manage the remote Q&A sessions for a higher stipend. While they are probably more known for their Bayesian group they still have plenty of classical statisticians. They revamped the quals process to where if you get at least 3 As and 2 Bs you don’t have to take the qualifying exam. They do have a rough first year which includes Measure Theoretic Probability and a Bayesian class on quals. Delaying quals by a year might be an option if you don’t have a Casella & Berger sequence (they offered me the option) Most of there students are international and/or come in with a masters but they obviously still accept domestic students straight out of undergrad (me). They have demographical and other information here.

I would like to remain semi-anonymous so I am not revealing my final choice. I think it would be to easy to identify me, but you probably could if you tried hard enough.

This conversation is not productive anymore and if off topic. If someone wants to start a are domestic female students discriminated against thread go ahead, but this conversation no longer has anything to do with the rankings.

Not only is the weather bad, but the budget bill isn’t passed yet. CNN says it should go through but I am skeptical that certain people will cooperate. Maybe they will break from tradition due to the last minute delays. I have made my decision but I don’t want to fully commit (sign a lease, accept the offer) until I know I did or didn’t get NSF. I am waiting until April 3rd and then am going to commit anyway, but hopefully, we will know by then.

That just happened to me yesterday. I felt so intimated because the student got a master’s first and took graduate classes before. They wouldn’t have admitted us unless they thought we could handle it. Congrats on making a decision.

@Gauss2017 Stanford’s private and yes they do get federal money they aren’t a public institution. Yes, the Turner insident was wrong and awful I don’t think that had anything to do with their stats department. Domestic and Female students do have an advantage. If I was an intentional male with the same stats (including a US degree at my current institution) there is no way I would have gotten the offers I did. No women or domestic student is going to get rejected just because they are female or domestic. Duke has great admission statistics that show women and domestic students are more likely to be admitted there even though their department has more male than female students and more international than domestic. I would assume this would hold at other places. Also, I don’t think you can tell if a student is domestic or international. Americans can have enthic names and international students can have American undergraduates. I don’t think domestic/international ratio matters unless the domestic and international students tend to be cliquey and not interact with each other but that only happened at 1 out of 4 department’s I visited.

That person is probably just messing with us. It could even be the same person that said they would come out today that created another account. I really wanted it to be today because I had an early flight so I could actually be awake when I got the email. Maybe my initial prediction of 3/23 is right? Are there any explanations for the Tuesday/Friday pattern? Could it be just luck?

Decline emails are hard. If you know you like somewhere better you can go ahead and decline. I am not committing yet but I am starting to decline mine as well. It was scary for me to decline funding offers up in the air but I knew it wasn’t for me. But you don’t need to feel guilty about the people on the waitlist. If you need more time April 15 is over 20 days away.

You shouldn’t be really committed to a PhD program for 5 years. I wouldn’t go into one with the mindset of dropping out but if you realize you no longer want a PhD leaving is an option. If a PhD is what you want why not start one now? It sounds like that’s what you are learning towards, and it is your end goal and it will save you money.

Is there a reason Texas A&M went down?

I agree. A Columbia Masters isn’t going to improve your profile a enough for reapplying in a year. You would be better off saving the money and applying again. You may not even have grades before apps are due (the ones in December). Your application isn’t going to change much and you probably won’t get much credit towards a PhD.

Well I haven’t gotten an email yet. It’s only 4 am eastern though. I checked fastlane as well and found nothing.

No maintenance update yet. It's past business hours in DC so I don't think it's coming. Maybe @GoldenDog is right and maintenance is not necessary.

Maybe the past maintenance could have been coincidences or the results got upload this weekend but they are checking them or something.

In the US it shouldn’t matter much. UMich as a whole is less prestigious as UChicago but for stats UMich is a great program. For a public institution, UMich is better overall than most other public institutions. I wouldn’t consider the difference as a major factor.

I just realized that the government might shut down again on Friday (source) if they don't pass another continuing resolution or an actual spending bill. Hopefully, the government won't shut down or results will be released before the shutdown.

I think it’s odd that you have to become a Texas resident at UNT. I checked their website and found this which has an out of state waiver for graduate assistants that I would check to confirm you are not eligible for (along with other options). Did they tell you needed an outside job to get residency and therefore in state tuition? I am a native Texan and I know we have a lot of laws in place to recruit out of state students by waiving their out of state tuition in various ways and we have many out of state students because of this. If you aren’t 100% certain about what you need to do get in state tuition and check because it doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t make sense that an out of state student with an assistantship would have to get an outside job and establish residency to get all of tuition covered even though it’s a masters program.

UChicago is arguably slightly more prestigious but at that caliber of program ranking don’t matter as much. And I don’t know much about machine learning faculty and which would be better in that respect. I go with the place that has the most advisor options for what you are interested. If one of them has given you a better package after cost of living (Chicago is going to be more expensive) that’s also something you can consider. You can’t go wrong either way so go with your gut.

@BL250604 You should be in good shape then. Submit one the publications as a writing sample not that they will actually read entirely it but some professors definitely looked over the one I submitted. Not everyone will take a writing sample but some will. Try a contest or two (like this one). If you win or an get an honorable mention your odds will increase and if you have something written already they are worth a try. Doing very well in real analysis this semester is important. If you get an A in real analysis that will help alleviate the concerns about your mathematical maturity. Doing well enough to have a rec letter come from that professor might help too. Focus on your research experience and you should be fine. There is a difference between run of the mill undergraduate research and independent undergraduate research so I wanted to know which is was. With an A in real analysis and good independent research you should be a strong contender for most middle and lower tier program (not top 20) with at shot at the reach schools. 15 places is a lot of place to apply to and you can certainly apply to all of them if you want to but I would consider cutting it down a bit (8-10) to save time and money.

No maintenance up. If you applied before did the old list malfunction and the 2017/(2016) banner appear right before results or not? My money is still on this week and probably Tuesday just because it is a common release day.

@BL250604 how independent and involved was your research experience? Your grades aren’t good and your not coming from a top program but good research experience with letters to verify that you are the best undergrad in the department (or something like that) can help mitigate that a lot. How much of the publications you are on did you actually write? Did you make some research decisions or did you just do what you where told? Publications and research experience look good but you would need to set your self apart. You would be a gamble on whether you could handle PhD coursework because you don’t have amazing grades at a great institution like some other applicants. Do you like gerrymandering research? I am interested in social science applications so I have done a lot of reading CVs to find possible advisors and you might only have 1 or 2 advisor options at some of those places. If you know what you want to research check for advisor matches because that is going to be a big factor. The more the better. NC State is a reach but they are huge so that helps with their competitiveness a bit for a program of that caliber. UNC, Michigan and Ohio State are reaches as well. South Carolina, Virginia Tech, and UVA and similar schools would be doable with great letters and above average experience. There probably aren’t any less competitive programs that do a lot of social science research except maybe Kansas State which has someone doing gerrymandering. It’s not impossible for places to gamble on relative preparedness vs independent research experience because that is how I think I cracked the top 10 and did so well. Use your SOP to show your passion and experience and be prepared to answer questions about your research.

I don’t have any experience with this but I had an idea on how they could run out without some more nefarious reasons. Maybe they would run out if they are mixing it and giving it to people who may be on reserve who aren’t receiving money from the NSF for that year. They shouldn’t run out of money unless they are giving someone more money than they should. Have they been paying you more than they should or possibly are taking out money for fees and tuition (I don’t think they should be)? It does seem fishy that the money is apparently gone when it shouldn’t be.

2017 is still down. I tried searching for Brittany Jack and Sarah Blunt because they were on Alex Lang’s NSF GRFP list and it didn’t find them. This is weird. Maybe it will come out on Monday or Tuesday.

I am a Texas native on spring break so I went apartment hunting today and wanted to leave some advice. I went to Aggieland Apartment Finders and they were fantastic. They are a real estate agency for student housing but they knew where to go for safe and quiet away from undergraduates. Here are the places they recommended: Madison Pointe - cheap and well managed but pretty old even though it’s updated on bus route The Element at University Park - nice and while online it look undergraduate focused it’s really not and nice and spread out but pricey at $800+ On bus route The Presidio - nice and gated but a little bit more expensive than the element not on bus route but they have a private shuttle might be a little to studenty West University Gardens - kinda sketchy and far from the bus but very cheap I wanted in unit washer dryer and on the bus route in the $800s range but I think Aggieland Apartment Finders would help you find something else if you have different priorities than me. I was skeptical that they wouldn’t have a wide variety of places to show me but they did.

The last two years there was maintenance right before according to the old threads, but the maintenace notice was quick. I am going with Tuesday because if the maintenance thing is real the notice should be up by now if it is tomorrow. My theory on why fastlane goes down is its hard to do all the results at once without maintenance but I could be totally wrong.