S. Wu

Really appreciate your comment!

Thank you so much for the advice. I ended up taking the TOEFL and it shouldn't an issue anymore.

I think it won't be a big deal if you explain it in your personal statement.

Institution: Ivy Major: Mathematics - Statistics GPA: Cumulative - 4.1/4.33 (major 4.15/4.33) Type of Student: International Asian Male GRE General Test: Q: 170 V: 154 W: 3.5 Research Experience: Research in computational neuroscience for almost one year, mainly working on spike detection for spike sorting. Senior thesis in math department on nonlinear stochastic dynamical systems. Biweekly meetings with the advisor and composition of a synthesis paper. Behavioral informatics summer project; applying machine learning algorithms to identify the personality traits of individuals using phone data. Work: Summer data analytics intern at a telecom company Courses : Measure theory (taking), functional analysis (taking), Analysis I&II (A), Convex optimization (A), Complex variables (A), PDE (A), Numerical methods (A), Probability (A+), Statistical Inference (A+), Linear Regression Model (A+), Statistical Machine Learning (A), Stochastic process (A) Teaching: TA for Analysis I&II (grad/undergrad), and optimization (undergrad) Letters of Recommendation: From a Stats professor who I have been working with on the computational neuroscience project. From a Math professor who I have been working with on my thesis and am currently taking class with From a professor in the school of communication at another institute who I have worked with in the behavioral informatics summer project Programs: I want to try my luck in many many programs... mainly Stats PhD programs but I will also apply to applied/computing math PhD in the same school if I am allowed to do so. Berkeley Harvard CMU WashU Chicago Michigan Duke NYU Upenn MIT Caltech Cornell UCLA Brown Concerns: 1. I transferred to my current Institute for the last two years of my undergrad. My GPA in my previous institute is ok but not as good as the current one (got B+ in a calculus class and a discrete math class in one semester). Would it matter much? 2. I was wondering how much the SOP's are weighed in the eyes of admission committees? I haven't started drafting my SOP and I thought I may devote more time to the research to get better letters. But it seems that it's late to make a big difference in my letters. 3. Some of the schools require a degree in US to waive the TOEFL score, but I won't be able to get my degree until next year and my TOEFL score has already expired. It is a little too late to take TOEFL again since some schools have their deadlines on Dec 1. Any comments/questions are appreciated!!