vertuz

Thank you both so much for your replies! @glennss3, thank you for the tip about statistics committees, I'll definitely ask around about that. If you're comfortable with sharing, I'd love to hear how it all goes for you when you begin hearing back. And thanks @Sepensfor the tip about when to apply! Best of luck to both of you with everything!

Hi, I'm currently a senior at a liberal arts college. I'm going to join the Peace Corps next year, teaching English. I also want to do a PhD in Statistics after getting back from the Peace Corps (which will be in August 2020). Do you think me doing the Peace Corps will hurt my chances at admission? I'm worried it will look bad that I took a gap of two years doing something unrelated to math/statistics. I'll talk to my professors about it, but also wanted some thoughts about it from all of you, in case anyone has gone through this or something similar. I will definitely ask them whether they could write me letters right now and hold on to them for when I apply later so they don't forget me. In case it helps, I am a math major with a 3.74 overall GPA (4.0 in math) and a decent amount of math courses (the more relevant courses I took are Real Analysis, Measure Theory/Probability, Complex Analysis, Harmonic Analysis, PDEs, Asymptotic Analysis. Less relevant ones are Representation Theory, Homological Algebra, Algebraic Number Theory, Combinatorics, Topology) and research experience at an REU in number theory. Got 79th percentile on the math subject test. Haven't taken the general GRE but I will study for it and take it sometime before graduating, so hopefully I'll do alright. I would guess I'll have one good letter and two decent ones. Really appreciate any comments! I'm kind of worried that I'm shooting myself in the foot with this.