statfan
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Posts posted by statfan
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I think overall Toronto is a step above NCSU. As you can see from the faculty list of the statistics department at Toronto, most of them obtained their PhD from top schools in the world and consistently publish at top statistical journals. They even have 2 COPSS award winners. In particular, if you want to specialize in probability, Jeffery Rosenthal is a perfect choice. While NCSU has a good statistics department with a wide range of research areas, the department is generally perceived as more applied with close ties to industry. The academic placements at Toronto are better than those of NCSU.
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Some schools do have an initial gpa cutoff and your gpa is around the borderline. If you can make that cutoff, I guess you will not be held back by your overall gpa too much. If you have strong letters and good grades in advanced proof-based courses, you may have a shot at some of the top 20 schools.
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Your overall gpa is low but you did well in most math courses, and your ability to do math is what admissions committee mainly cares about. If your bombed electives courses that are not relevant, I don't think it's a big deal. If I were you, I would take more advanced proof-based courses such as grad level real analysis and possibly take the math subject GRE to strengthen my profile. If you do well in them, you should have a decent shot at schools between Penn State and Florida and I think it is not impossible to get into a couple of top 20 programs. However, competition is very stiff in recent years and you should add a few safeties outside of top 50.
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You have more than sufficient math background to apply for statistics PhD. It's always good to know more math, and this will help for any quantitative disciplines. Much of the statistics theory is related to real analysis/measure theory, but this doesn't mean that algebra is not or will not be useful. Indeed, algebra is starting to gain its popularity in statistics and there is an emerging area called algebraic statistics. That being said, if you are interested in these courses and have the time, you can take both. However, these are not required for admission to statistics PhD.
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There is no actual safe schools for statistics PhD admissions. It does not hurt to try a few reach schools but I would recommend you apply broadly since your math background is weaker than average applicants at those top schools you listed. I would apply to at least 3 schools in Penn State - Florida range.
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I would mainly focus on larger programs such as Penn State, NC State, Iowa State etc. These are very solid programs and are easier to get into than their rankings would suggest. Since your math background is a bit thin, I would submit the math GRE score to schools that recommend it. Most test takers of the math GRE test are applying to math PhD. A 76th percentile, by definition, is not a low score, especially with your math background.
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I found Daniel's response misleading. A 3.5 GPA from an Ivy is not stellar but good enough for master's admission. Master's programs usually have much higher admission rate than PhD programs and as long as you meet the minimum requirement you will be considered. Coming from an Ivy with decent a GPA helps a lot and I can see you get into top 10 master's programs for statistics.
- jmillar and omicrontrabb
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You have excellent grades in your math and statistics courses. However, your list is very top heavy and your math background is a bit lacking for these top schools for statistics. I noticed that the real/complex analysis courses you took tend to be more computation-focused rather than proof-based. You would be better off if you took the advanced version of real/complex analysis etc. I think slightly lower grades (say 85-90) in more rigorous courses will look more impressive than near perfect grades in easier courses.
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11 minutes ago, omicrontrabb said:
Yeah, they sent out Skype interview requests last week.
I did not get the interview and I am afraid that implies a rejection.
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Has anyone heard back from Washington biostatistics?
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A quick update: I got 760 on the Math subject GRE test, which is the 72th percentile. I don't know anything about abstract algebra, complex analysis and graph theory, so I consider it an ok but not great score. I already submitted to Stanford and UPenn, and I am wondering if I should submit it to schools that highly recommend the score like Chicago and Washington. When they assess my score, would they take what I have learnt into account?
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You have a very good chance of getting into Waterloo. If you are a Canadian PR/citizen, you also have a good shot of getting into u of t. However, without real analysis, it would be difficult to crack top statistics phd programs. You can try to apply a few phd programs but I would mainly focus on masters programs in Canada, as most of them are research based. Assuming you get A's in real analysis and produce meaningful research during your masters, you will stand a chance at almost every top phd program.
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The GRE Q is mainly high school level math and it acts as a filter. Almost everyone who applies to stat/biostat phd got a perfect or near perfect score on the GRE Q. That being said, if you score well, it won't help your application. However, a low score is a big red flag and will likely disqualify you immediately. I strongly recommend you to retake it if you have the time and money, and try to get your score over the 90th percentile (which I believe is 166).
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I am currently working through my phd applications and I noticed that different schools have different requirements for uploading transcript: Some ask for a scan copy of official transcript while others ask for an unofficial transcript. I am wondering would it be ok to submit the official one since it includes the grading scale while there is no grading scale for unofficial transcript in my institution. I also noticed that some schools asked personal information like other schools I am applying to and parents' occupations. Would it be ok to leave these sections blank?
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43 minutes ago, miserablefunction said:
I never said it is the only factor which would decide your admission. I am addressing the question what range of scores will be considered as high. I will only talk about international student case here. It is just a fact that domestic admission bar is much lower since they have many funding resources. I guess they won’t have explicit bar to screen out candidates, but adcomm will naturally expect higher scores for international students. In the view of statistics department, international students require more funding, which makes them carefully screen over and over. You can get into programs which do not require gre subject without a good score, but you should have something strong, like publications to be competitive. My point is schools like Stanford, Chicago, Columbia, Upenn and UW, which encourage(or require, in case of Stanford) one to submit GRE subject score do have pretty high average of scores for incoming students. 820 was stanford’s data 7-8 years ago. The admission got much more difficult recently. If you check admitted international students profile of top programs, you can easily see that they are just perfect. Many of them have publishments and have taken advanced graduate level math/stat courses. So if you are an international, and want to impress adcomm, you defintely need to have a higher score than domestic. And you are right that some people get in with low scores, but I think submitting 700-800 scores for aforementioned schools are quite meaningless for international students. Adcomm will simply ignore it. International openings for the schools I mentioned will be filled by top people from Peking, Tsinghua, IIT, ISI, SNU, NUS and etc. To these kids, getting 900 range score is no problem at all. I agree that gre subject math test is not an accurate measure of one’s math proficiency, but in the view of adcomm, this can be another reliable source to assess one’s mathematical maturity. And there are sufficient number of strong candidates who would do well in their programs, so my guess is that they have no choice but to rely on every little thing they can distinguish applicants. Also math departments are known to have 800 as their bar but if you actually look at profiles who got in, most of them have 85 above percentiles. So I think to give an impression that one did well(fine) on subject test, I think the bare minimum would be 80 percentile. If you add all international openings for the five programs I mentioned, it would be around 25-30 slots. There are many strong applicants from China, India, Hongkong, Singapore, Korea and Europe. And also there are international students in ivy leagues, top public and etc. These number simply outnumbers the openings easily. The link below is updated info of stanford stat phd subject gre test. They did not say it is this year’s data, but recent. Indeed the admission got much fiercer and if you just rely past data on this forum, you are missing something. https://statistics.stanford.edu/admissions/phd/phd-admissions-frequently-asked-questions
I have to disagree with you. My supervisor obtained her phd from a top 5 statistics/biostatistics program and she knows much more about the admissions process than we do. According to her, although more and more people apply each year, the competition does not get fiercer and fiercer. Many students apply to statistics phd simply because statistics gained popularity in recent years. However, some of them did not even meet the minimum requirements and they won't get in. The reason why it is harder for international students to get into top phd programs are: (1) Their referees may not be well-known in statistics. (2) The admissions committees are concerned about their English skills. (3) They come from an unknown institution. Interestingly, applicants from a Canadian top school seems to do much better than other international students because they subject to none of the three. Personally, I know quite a few Canadian students in my school who got into UW/Chicago/Columbia without having taken the math GRE test. But they have great research experience and excellent math preparation.
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On 10/10/2018 at 2:54 PM, cyberwolf said:
Thank you for the reply.My school is nationally unranked as per US news report and falls around (500-600) in Forbes ranking.Regarding track records, for PhD classes starting fall 2018, we had one guy who got admitted to UNC Chapel Hill for biostatistics, however, he had perfect GRE scores and overall incredible profile, another math major got into University of South California for quantitative psychology and so far I know another friend got into Baylor for mathematics but everyone were American.
I will take your suggestions and apply broadly.I am pretty worried about my recommendation from statistics professor.He is an international guy and doesn't know stuffs like REU and all.I had to explain him about Putnam competition I participated, but he knows me well.Do you think I must include one stat professor's recommendation?Also, unfortunately all my referees are not well known.I will surely apply my REU institution.
What universities would you suggest me?
I would get letters from statistics/math professors who can attest to your math skills and research potentials. If you score well on the Putnam, it may help alleviate the concern of coming from an unknown school so definitely put it into your cv. The general GRE scores are pretty much useless unless you really bomb it.
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5 minutes ago, maxent said:
Does Stanford really have an average of 89%? For reference, I looked at https://statistics.stanford.edu/academics/phd-admissions-faq
@miserablefunction It seems odd to me that the score bar should be that high for international students at top programs. It strikes me as very weird that a top program like Stanford requires the test, but another top program, Berkeley, does not require the score. If a really high score was an important signal for success in statistics graduate studies, shouldn't all of the top programs require the score (like they do in Math PhD programs) ? The fact that many programs (such as Berkeley, CMU, Duke, Michigan, Wisconsin, UNC etc) do not require let alone recommend the test leads me to believe that the bar is lower. But again, this is just my (very) naive impression.
@statfan Your description makes a lot of sense to me. It is kind of unfortunate that programs aren't very transparent about expectations, unlike the math world.
The average varies from year to year and the 89% average should be the average for the incoming class last year. Unfortunately, the GRE math test is neither an accurate measure of math skills nor a good indicator of future success in graduate programs so most schools don't take it very seriously. If your math background is relatively light or you come from an unknown school, a decent score, say over 80% may help. Otherwise, your math skills are reflected on your transcript much more than the GRE.
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According to my supervisor, the GRE subject test most often acts as a screening test and is less important than you think, even for schools that require it. With that said, if you score too low, it could raise concerns, however, if you pass the cutoff it won't matter much. For top statistics programs, I guess 70% would be ok and anything over 80% would be considered a very good score, and I doubt the bars are different for international and domestic since afaik some international students still got into these schools without taking the test. If you get rejected with an over 80% GRE math score, it is not because of your GRE.
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You have an excellent math background. However, if your school does not have track records of sending students to top phd programs, it would still be difficult for you to get in. If that is the case, you should apply very broadly. Your chances depend a lot on the quality of your references and if your referees are well known, that will help you a lot and you may get into a couple of the top 20's. You should definitely apply to the school where you did REU at.
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Hello, I am in dilemma of choosing references for (bio)statistics PhD applications and I am kinda in need of your help. I am currently working towards my master's thesis and I got one letter from my supervisor. I also got a letter from a very well-known biostatistician who I took graduate survival analysis with, although he knows me less well. Now I am debating on who I should ask for the third letter. Currently I have two options: An assistant prof. that I took two undergrad statistics courses and did research with during my undergrad or an associate prof. who I took grad statistical inference and experimental design with. The undergrad research did not yield significant results and since I already asked two letters from biostatistics faculties, I am more leaning towards the associate prof. who can attest to my math/statistics skills. However, some of my friends told me that I should get as more letters as possible from people that I did research with and I am really confused now. If I mention my undergrad research in my SOP but did not ask a letter from the assistant prof, would this be looked upon unfavourably?
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When you talk about grading scheme, it depends on the group of students who take the course. I am from a well-known Canadian University and it is not unusual to have average in the 60s (C range) in first/second year core math courses like calculus and linear algebra. But in grad-level stat/math courses, the average is at least an 80 and sometimes it is close to 90. However, this does not necessarily mean it is easier to get high grades in grad-level courses because the students who take these courses are much stronger than those in first/second year courses.
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6 hours ago, miserablefunction said:
As someone who had a similar background with you(while you have more courseworks), I cannot help emphasizing enough to apply for more safety schools. All the schools on your list are very difficult to get in and most of them have openings less than 10 spots out of 300 applicants. I strongly recommend applying for NCSU, ISU, PSU and some good UC schools. No offense but, these schools are by no means easy to get in even with your background nowadays, but definitely more in between safety and reach, given the fact that competition between international students are getting fiercer these days.
Thanks for your comments. There are still many international students that I know who got into top tier programs nowadays. What do you think is the weakest part in my profile?
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10 hours ago, cyberwulf said:
I'd echo what others have said; you might have a shot at a top school, but I wouldn't bank on getting into one of Stanford/Berkeley/Chicago/Penn or UW/Hopkins. I think your chances are better at Wisconsin, Michigan, and Columbia, but I would classify those more as reasonable targets than safeties. If I were you, I'd probably be mostly targeting programs ranked between ~10 and 30 in the combined stat/biostat US News rankings.
Thanks for you advice. Do you think there is a way to improve my profile so that I have a better shot at these schools as of now?
Stats PhD: UCLA or Michigan?
in Mathematics and Statistics
Posted
The statistics department at UCLA is not as prestigious as Michigan's and Michigan is generally perceived to be a step above UCLA. That said, Michigan's program should set you up pretty well for academia given their historical strong academic placements. You will have enough time to figure out your research interests and you'll definitely find some professors' research interesting since both programs have many research areas.