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data_scrub

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Posts posted by data_scrub

  1. Will you be visiting Iowa State next week? If so I'll see you there! Also, I'll be visiting Purdue next Tuesday so DM me if you want to hear about that!

    I'm choosing between Iowa State, and Purdue, UIUC (and OSU) so it looks like we have a similar decision to make. I've found from visiting UIUC and OSU that visiting the department and getting a picture of how well I'd fit in means at least as much to me as rankings and reputation. So, I definitely recommend you visit both before deciding. In addition, you'll get a better idea of which faculty are currently doing research that is interesting to you. It may help to look at the department pages to get an idea of research areas for each professor, then look up their google scholar page to see if they have a track record of publishing in good journals (other people here can better speak to how to chose a research advisor). 

    As far as what I personally have heard about each program, I've met some faculty members from Purdue who seem to do interesting research and who are generally friendly, but I've also met a couple folks who've recently dropped out of the program after quals or moved to another program. They do have a large group of researchers tackling computational stat problems, which probably fits in nicely with your interests. 

    For Iowa State, I know two PhD's from there in my department who speak highly of the program, one who has had some success publishing papers in stat learning. I also know a couple professors from there who are involved in the stat education community. Their reputation is certainly better than Purdue, but I'm not sure if they can still claim to be on par with programs such as NC State (in the past they were considered pretty comparable). I would make sure to look at their stat learning faculty first, though!

    Feel free to reply or DM if you want to discuss further! Tough decision for me as well. Here's a recent thread from me if you haven't seen: 

     

  2. On 3/13/2019 at 11:52 PM, Bayesian1701 said:

    If you think you want to go Bayesian/spatial then go with a place where you have good advisor options in those fields. You might change your mind but you don't want to put yourself in a position where you are struggling to find an advisor to match your interests. I would cross Ohio State off the list.  At the end of the day, you can only choose one, and a good program overall may not be a good program for you.

    Thanks for your advice Bayesian ? After visiting UIUC I think I'm pretty sure I won't be headed to OSU... I really enjoyed the visit and definitely like I'd fit better in Illinois. Now to visit the other two in the next few weeks!

  3. 26 minutes ago, Geococcyx said:

    Just because I'm a contrarian, I'll say that Nate's presentation at the Ohio State visit's poster session was on spatial statistics, and that the program is generally pretty Bayesian.  I definitely get being overwhelmed by Ohio State's sheer size (and Columbus is pretty big too), but I guess I'd be a little more positive about their research fit for you than you are, in case you are interested in staying in Ohio.  I have way different interests, though, so I'm guessing your concerns are more on the level of individual professors' research than my super blanket-y assessment.

    As you've likely seen, Stat PhD Now Postdoc seems pretty positive about Xiaofeng Shao's research, and looking at where he's publishing I really have to agree that he seems great.  I'm having a hard time doing Iowa State justice from a cursory google search, but it seems like Philip Dixon does some spatial statistics, and spatiotemporal statistics might be a good fit for working with a visualization-focused professor like Heike Hofmann (these both had AAS publications that I saw, but they don't quite have the JASA/JRSS-B profile Shao has).

    Something that might be useful:  how much smaller of a college town would you like?  Ames is 60-70K, Urbana-Champaign comes out closer to 200K by urban area (although I have no idea how dense it is in the middle).  If you wanted to go somewhere bigger, Des Moines is 600K or so and fairly close to Ames, while Chicago's more like a 2/2.5 hour drive from UIUC but is obviously gigantic (plus Indianapolis is also a 2 hour drive).  What are you looking for?  If you have interests that might involve national tours (e.g. musicals, major comedy shows, attending major professional sports), then I'd suggest that Illinois would be a better fit, but it's hard to prescribe that.  In fact, it might help to know what factors beyond sheer research prominence are most important to you -- do these programs have similar times to degree?  Does one have a really tough qualifying exam that you might worry about?

     

    You're right about Nate's poster, Dr. Craigmile does do Spatial research. I'm mainly concerned that Dr. Calder is leaving OSU, as I was even more interested in her research and applications. You make a good point about visualization focused profs, as that's an interest of mine as well. I'll need to dive further into ISU's directory before the visit day.

    I'm not too concerned about living by a big city, as far as my hobbies go I'm more outdoor oriented ? That being said the music scene in Chicago is pretty good... Thanks for asking some good questions to follow up on!

     

  4. As of yesterday I've heard back from all of the schools I applied to, and now I'm trying to decide where to go! I'm interested in doing research in Spatio-temporal stats as well as Bayesian stats (seems to be some amount of overlap between the two), so am looking into advisors with experience in those areas. I'm open to other research areas as well, as I'm sure my interests will change as I get more involved in the field.

    By the rankings Iowa State seems to have an edge over the others, but it seems like the research fit is still most important. I know Mark Kaiser is there, but not entirely sure who all in the department does Spatial/Bayes research. UIUC seems to have a few potential advisors I'd like to work with including Bo Li and Xiaofeng Shao. I have heard some negative past student perspectives from Purdue, but working with Vinayak Rao would be interesting considering my research interests are a near match and he recently finished a post-doc at Duke with Gelfand.

    As of  now, I'm feeling best about Iowa State and UIUC. I'll be visiting all of these programs in the next few weeks, and would love to hear any opinions or advice on choosing between these schools. I would have TA funding at any of these programs.

    I've also been accepted to OSU, but after visiting I'm not so sure about the research fit (and personal fit, I'd much prefer to be in a smaller college town) as well as their relative lack of solid academic placements in recent years. Still, I really liked the people there as well as the other prospective students at the visit day!

  5. Can anyone who applied to Purdue's PhD program speak to the results posted earlier? I haven't heard anything yet from them but things aren't looking too great with the no TA acceptance and the accepted to Masters not PhD deal.

    @BL250604 I was at that visit as well if you end up wanting some information! A lot of people there (including myself) weren't 100% set on going there since visits are still going on for other schools, but I definitely have a better opinion of the program after visiting. 

  6. 3 minutes ago, Geococcyx said:

    @data_scrub I think your options so far are still pretty good!  I'll be at UIUC's visit day, so hope to run into you there.

     

    I'm really hoping some schools release more decisions before the weekend.  I'm getting pretty stir-crazy about Carnegie Mellon in particular, but for CMU or those who interviewed at Harvard/Hopkins, or any other school, I have to figure Super Bowl weekend's about the best weekend to help you momentarily forget that you didn't get into your dream school.

    Thanks roadrunner! I'll be at the visit day as well, seems like a very interesting program.

    I just read on CMU's website that there's about 10 people in each entering class, so I'm not too optimistic for my chances but still excited to hear back. Seems like they put out some acceptances around this time last year so hopefully we'll see soon.

  7. 9 minutes ago, Geococcyx said:

    I wish we heard the second wave of NC State admissions too, but I guess all the application envelopes in the research triangle got put in the wrong P.O. box or something.

    Last year today (Friday 26) NC state sent all the waitlists... but since their first round of acceptances was before the app deadline I'm holding out hope

  8. Hello! Senior undergrad majoring in Math + Stats and minoring in CS (so take my opinion with a grain of salt!) My CS background has been very valuable to me, but as far as coursework goes introductory classes in CS aren't super helpful if you already know some statistical programming (R, python, SAS, matlab, etc). Later courses such as Data Structures and Algorithms have helped me improve as a programmer and mathematician, but I do not value those courses over any of my research experiences or internships. I would recommend to go the research route this summmer, especially if you can apply to an REU! One thing I regret is not getting a letter for my phd application from my REU advisor.

    Speaking of which, I'm applying to 8 different phd programs for next fall, and have been accepted to one so far! If you think you want to get a phd soon, I've been told there's no need to get a masters, but that it still can be a valuable experience. Those who do better in masters than they did in undergrad obviously have a more competitive phd application

  9. Hi and thanks for taking a look! I’m finishing up my senior year of undergrad and I’m planning to apply to Stat PhD programs for Fall 2019. I would appreciate any opinions on my chances at the schools I have already started my applications to and any advice on picking more schools to apply to.

     

    Undergrad Institution: Large state school with a big statistics department (~200 majors)

    Major: Mathematics & Statistics, Analytics

    GPA: 3.9 Cumulative, 3.86 Major (4.0 Scale)

    Applicant Demographics: Domestic White  Male

    GRE General Scores: 163v/164q (Unofficial since I took the test this week)

    Statistics Courses: Intro Statistical Modeling (A), Probability (A-), Regression Analysis (A), Statistical Programming (A), Statistical Learning (A), Data Visualization (A), Inferential Statistics (A), Time Series (A), Intro Bayesian Statistics (in progress), Statistical Consulting (in progress)

    Mathematics Courses: Calculus 1-2 (AP), Linear Algebra (B+, honors course), Calculus 3 (B+), Differential Equations (A), Abstract Algebra (A), Real Analysis (A), Numerical Analysis (A), Optimization (A-)

    Computer Science Courses: Data Structures (A), Database Systems(A), Algorithms(A), Artificial Intelligence (in progress)

    Research Experience: I’ve worked with one advisor and various other students throughout undergrad. From a project freshman year I’m an author on a paper that is currently accepted pending minor edits in a B tier stats journal, hopefully will be accepted before applications are due. Sophomore year I worked largely independently on a project that I went on to present at the JSM and placed in a graduate/undergrad competition. Junior year I also presented a project at the JSM that resulted in some useful tools that I published as an R package on CRAN.

    Awards/Honors: Participated in our school’s DataFest a few times and was on the winning team twice. Awarded scholarships from the math/stats/business school analytics programs. President’s list/Dean’s list each semester.

    Relevant Work/Teaching Experience: I’ve had an IT internship at IBM, which led to a year long co-op as well as a summer research fellowship in the biostatistics department of a large children’s hospital. I’ve assisted professors as an unpaid TA in our stat learning, inferential stats, and intro modeling courses (mostly office hours, helping with classwork/programming and teaching occasional small lessons)

    Letters of Recommendation: One from my research advisor, one from our stat department head, one from a professor I’ve helped in class, and a final from my real analysis professor. I think these will be relatively strong. Additionally, if I decide to apply to any biostats schools my mentor from the hospital will write a letter.

    Concerns: the low grades in my first few math classes, but will my later grades mitigate that? Also I know my gre quant could stand to be a bit higher. If you see any other concerns from my profile let me know so I can consider those in my personal statement!

    Programs I've started applying to:

    NC State, Iowa State, Purdue, UC Irvine

    Programs I’m considering applying to:

    Pitt, CMU, Duke, Michigan, (JHU/Harvard for biostats)

    I’m not sure how many programs I should apply for. If there are any programs doing data science/stat learning/spatial where you think I would fit in please let me know! Also, I don’t know if any of my options are too safe so it might not hurt to add a safety.

    Again, thanks for reading this!

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