miserablefunction

And I do not know why your advisor thinks like that but there are actually quite many qualified applicants among the pool. Statistics program is just not as big as other engineering, and surprisingly their size has remained similarly for the past 10 years. I am one of those who wish them to expand their size to provide more education opportunities who wish and I believe they should, given the interest of the discipline nowadays.

Canadians are different. Here I am talking about international students whose native language are not english. As many others in the forum indicated, US programs treat Canadians quite differently from other international students who are from Asia. Believe it or not, I am from top 10 stat department and this is what I heard from the admission chair in a private conversation. Recently the bars for admission got higher and candidates at the level that they used to accept were not accepted in the past two years(they made a long waitlist but still they ended up giving rejections to most) He carefully guessed that due to increasing popularity in statistics many more asian students from top universities like peking, tsinghua start to apply for phd in statistics. Those who are top math not statistics major nowadays also apply to statistics/machine learning programs and indeed stat phd programs love them. If you are from Peking, Tsinghua, ISI and are top student, no one will doubt your capabilities. Just count the number of prominent statisticians who have BS in Peking. It is just massive. In addition due to huge chinese community in statistics, the university that is well respected in admission does not just stop at Peking, Tsinghua. There are at least 5-6 universities in china which would be regarded on par as competitive universities in north america when it comes to PhD admission. I haven’t seen any single top program who did not have a chinese admitted student from tsinghua or peking. They have a solid record of students. Canadians are better in terms of communications but not international students in north america are in general better than those who studied in top universities in China or India. Come on, India’s native language is even english. It is true that the chance is higher for those who studied in north america will get better letters of recommendation, but nowdays there are just so many good researchers in statistics in peking or HKU as well. And given the population in china and india, the stat department openings are quite smaller than you expect when you experience this year’s application, especially for international students.

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

My impression is that, for international student, for statistics PhD, I think the lower bar is 80%. Programs which require or encourage GRE math subjects are very competitive. For domestic, I think it is lower, somewhere 70%. If you check the stanford website again, I believe they updated that their average subject test score for incoming students are like 89%. So for internationals, to have an edge through gre subject test, I think 90% or above is a safe guess. Indeed, many students at the top programs have near perfect scores. At least my friend who is in top 10 statistics program, his raw score was above 900. And similar for other asian international students that I am aware of. But this is just my impression.

As many of you are already aware of fantastic qualities of Canadian statistics programs(Toronto, UBC, Waterloo, Mcgill), I am wondering if their faculty job prospect are at the level of top 20 US Ph.D. programs. If not, what schools in US do you think are at the same level as the above four in terms of faculty job prospect in North America or Asia? Are those four programs as reputable as schools like PSU and NCSU or Purdue and Minnesota? In addition, what about their curriculum and research environment? School like Waterloo seemed to have so many faculties in math, which could be ideal for someone who wants to collaborate with adjacent fields of statistics. Any opinion would be appreciated!

How do you compare LSE, Imperial and UCL with Warwick? Are they comparable?

I am thinking of applying statistics PhD programs in Europe(UK and Switzerland) and would appreciate a lot if anyone could answer the following questions. 1) How is statisics PhD perceived in US or Canada? I know ETH Zurich phds are perceived very well in US. 2) With master’s curriculum in north america, would there be any problem following their PhD program? 3) I can’t really find the number of admitted students each year, anyone knows their application details? 4) I also find that many programs specify their deadline as like XX weeks/months prior to your intended start date, does this mean they admit PhD students in rolling base? 5) Is the funding in UK similar to that of US/Canada for international students?

You could boost your GRE scores, but it won't be a big issue. And make sure you get "strong" letters from famous professors. What I learned from this year is that funding situtation of the programs, your ethnicity background(international male always gets the most fiercer competition), your undergraduate/master institution(especially if there are many applicants from your institute, they would only admit two at most, no matter how strong you are), admission committee's research interest that year, and all sorts of idiosyncratic stuffs come in role. Another reason for applying so-called safety schools is that, if you check the number of admitted PhD students of past 5 years of any school, you will see that the openings have slightly dwindled recently, this may due to the Donald Trump's administration. In addition, many programs you listed actually do prefer their own master's student. This is what I have heard from several guys doing PhD in the programs you listed.

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.

Hi all, Although I applied for roughly 20 statistics PhD programs this year, I was not able to get in any. So I decided to accept my only offer, 1-year funded master's program. And I am wondering if anyone has gone through this. As the duration of the program is 1-year, I would not have enough time to get a recommendation letter nor write a report/thesis from my master's program. In this case, should I just pick all three letter writers from my undergraduate? And how should I elaborate my master's work in application? By the time when I finish first semester, all the application would be already closed. I would appreciate any advice.

@stattats Yes, UBC does offer funding for international students.

Hi all, As an international student with mathematics and statistics major at top 5 public university in the US, I applied for roughly 20 statistics and biostatistics Ph.D. programs this year. Here is my rough profile: GPA: 3.96/4.00 (Summa cum laude) GRE: 87%/99%/60%, Math Subject: 87% Courses: Undergraduate level: Intro to Analysis(A+), Abstract Linear Algebra(A), Analysis on manifolds(A), theoretical stat(A), Econometrics(A+), Applied Statistics(A), Statistical Learning(A) MS level: probability theory(A), stochastic process(A-), statistical inference(A-), complex analysis(A-), statistical computing(A) Research: 1) My undergraduate thesis won both departmental and national awards and got published in an undergraduate journal. I developed a methodology in clinical trials. 2) I also did independent study in penalty estimators and high-dimensional graph estimation, which again led to a paper in statistics conference proceedings. 3) In addition, I also participated in a research on large deviations and gave an oral presentation. Rec Letter: I submitted 4 letters. All Rec letters were from research supervisors. One senior(Stat), One full professor(Stat), One associate professor(Stat). One assistant professor(Math). They all told me that they wrote a very strong letter. And the result: I got rejected from 19 Ph.D. programs which I applied for and currently am waiting for 1 program, but honestly, I do not think I would get in. All of my supervisors and their graduate students told me that they would be surprised if I do not get in any program in top 20. What I do not understand is that I got initially waitlisted by 4-5 programs in so-called top 10, but got the flat-out rejections from Cornell, Wisconsin, UNC, UCLA. So this really puzzles me. I kinda regret not applying for NCSU and IOWA. I just thought their size is too big and to be honest, I was pretty confident that I would get in somewhere before getting the result. And I must say that though the ranking of Ivy league programs is low, but much more difficult to get in. Next Step: Luckily I have couple admissions from Canadian masters(Waterloo, UBC) and ETH Zurich. The former provides funding while the latter doesn't, but I think the overall ranking and reputation of faculties in the latter school are significantly higher. I am also waiting for Mcgill and Toronto, and I will end up likely choosing masters program this year and reapply for Ph.D. next time. Which program should I pick and based on what criteria? At this moment, I am leaning towards to Canadian programs since it is funded and the coursework is more rigorous. The only concern regarding Canadian program is that if there is any professor willing to supervise if I say I want to leave after finishing MS degree. Do you have any suggestions for strengthening my profile? Or did I just aim too high? Or is it that I am just out of luck? If you have any information regarding Canadian MS programs please share it with me!