SheldonCopper

As no one started this year's thread, I am starting it. Please share any information related to this year's admission process. FYI: According to my source, some biostatistics Ph.D. programs have already sent interview requests.

Hi, I got waitlisted from several top 10 statistics/biostatistics PhD programs last season, but ended up not getting into anywhere. Some said waitlist simply means the department does not have funding available to admit the student. So is it worth reapplying to these programs? I have contacted several director of PhD programs to get helpful/frank feedbacks on the application. They replied back saying either "I am pretty sure that you have another offer" or "There were too many strong candidates last season". In addition, in SOP for the last application, I specifically mentioned that my research interest is in high-dimensional statistics. One stat PhD told me that being too specific about research interest(in this case, high-dimensional statistics) is not good and try to be generic, while another said high-dimensional statistics is broad enough. Any opinion on this?

Taking more analysis and optimization courses definitely helps. I have a chinese friend who got into stanford this year. He basically took all possible graduate analysis courses and convex optimization class in his institution. Bars for international students nowadays are significantly higher than the past. Publications are often seen and majority of them already took phd level courses. I have seen people with similar stats with you getting rejected from all top 15 including biostat. You should definitely expand your list to at least top 25, if your sole purpose is attending a PhD program. I would strongly recommend including larger programs like NCSU and Iowa. Things are damn hard nowadays for international applicants.

I think one should also consider a size of the department and other closely related disciplines like computer science and economics. You can meet more people in the field and its related fields, which could provide you with more research opportunities. Especially nowadays, as the statistics and computer science merge together as a so-called field “Data Science”, having a strong computer science department is a huge advantage if one wants to study statistical learning.

@BStat It was like two weeks ago.

Can you guys please share information regarding professors’ move? It would be heartbreaking if one realizes that the program he/she accepted no longer has the POI.

@Radon-Nikodym I think you should ask your department. It is weird that you haven’t received anything till now based on the gradcafe result. Rejection, acceptance, waitlist all came out couple weeks ago. Or maybe is it because you are from Uchicago? I believe many programs encourage their promising students to go different places. Maybe in your case they hold the admission just in case you get rejected from everywhere? At the meantime, may I ask your other preferences? Cause I have rarely seen one declining Berkeley over other school when it comes down to statistics.

@statscan9 Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your admissions results! I am just wondering do canadian programs send out admissions to domestics first? Cause I haven’t heard anything from McGill and Waterloo yet.

@ileeminati @statscan9 May I ask your profile? And your decision or top preference?

When would people start to get off from waitlist? I suppose one should wait till early April as the visiting days are spread around March?

Both are published in the proceedings of computer science(machine learning) conferences(not top tier ones like nips, ICML, AISTAT, but just local one) And I have been working for software company for three years due to my financial issue. I had to support my family before pursuing PhD degree. Actually I never took algebra class back in my undergraduate. But I took three analysis courses(basic analysis, analysis on R^n, complex analysis) with all A. I never took measure theory class but I learned it by myself during my research experience. Would that be the reason? Including waitlisted school, I am waiting for Harvard, JHU, Cornell, Columbia, Yale, Upenn(both wharton and AMCS), Berkeley, Wisconsin, UNC.

International student from top 30 US University very well known research institute with GPA above 3.9, took 5 graduate level math and stat classes with all grades above A-, have two minor publications, got all my recommendations from research supervisors, GRE subject math > 85 percentile, GRE all above 90 percentile and still got no admission but 1 waitlist and 5 rejections(CMU, UW, Stanford, Chicago, Michigan). I applied for 15 programs in top 20 stat phd program, did i aim too high? What else should I do to get into these programs? Was it this competitive in past years?

Based on your research interest, I think CMU is a better fit for you. They have more faculties working on high dimensional statistics, nonparametrics and statistical computing(I think they are relatively less strong in Causal inference and Statistical genetics compared to UW). Among them, you can find an advisor whom fits your work style. Such practical consideration would be much more important factor at this point. CMU also has a nice epidemiology lab. I double the argument that reputation doesn’t matter much at the level of CMU and UW in statistics. Anyway, both programs are fantastic and congratulations again!

Haven’t heard anything back here as well. I applied for 15 programs and only received one wait list. I am also assuming rejection from CMU.

I doubt this year would follow historical data. Many programs are getting behind.