data_scrub

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!

I have two PhD offers from Purdue and Iowa State and am primarily interested in the fields of statistical learning. What are the general guidelines that I should follow in order to decide which program is better?   I ask this as my area of interest is quite broad and am having trouble differentiating the two depratments..so some advice on how to go about it will be really helpful.

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.

Xiaofeng Shao's work is impressive but he is not a Bayesian. And his recent work doesn't seem to be focused at all on spatial statistics. Bo Li seems to do the type of research you're interested in though.
It seems like of the schools you listed, Purdue has the biggest group of professors who work on spatial statistics:  http://www.stat.purdue.edu/research/spatial_statistics.html
There are also a few very strong faculty who do work in Bayesian statistics at Purdue as well, including Faming Liang and Guang Cheng, although I am not sure how much spatial statistics research they do.

Update from my last post - just heard from Purdue. Accepted with half time assistantship, should be an interesting offer. Good luck to anyone still waiting!

Update from my last post - just heard from Purdue. Accepted with half time assistantship, should be an interesting offer. Good luck to anyone still waiting!

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. 

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. 

@BL250604 So far as I know, Ohio State's only visit day was this past week, and it's getting kinda late in the cycle.  Bayessays mentioned that they offer people even in April sometimes, but if they might do so with you, then you need to start really researching them to decide how much you like it.  As such, I'd say that you probably should call them to get a sense of what's going on with your application status.
There are several people here who went to Ohio State's visit week -- I'm one, so you can DM me if you want a rundown of the visit, and I bet the others would be willing to offer their perspectives too if you asked.

Rejection from CMU, email said to check website. No surprise after NCSU! Looks like a few others got the email.
On the other hand who else will be at OSU this weekend?

Rejection from CMU, email said to check website. No surprise after NCSU! Looks like a few others got the email.
On the other hand who else will be at OSU this weekend?

Anyone knows what's up with Penn State rejecting a lot of seemingly qualified applicants?

I see that some folks reported getting waitlisted by Carnegie Mellon yesterday and today.  It looks like waitlists and acceptances came out at roughly the same time last year (and fairly similarly in 2017), so it'll be interesting to see if any of our forum superstars get accepted today.  Congratulations to everyone who gets in, congratulations to those waitlisted too (with a special extra allocation of luck)!

Nothing yet from Columbia or CMU for the regular PhD. Didn't apply to Harvard, so not sure there. 

I applied to stats programs but I have some visit/decision advice here.

I began my PhD at age 28 after working for some time, and I definitely think it was an asset for me personally. Years of work experience allowed me to mature and gain some real-world experience (not just work-wise but also with regard to "life skills" like budgeting, paying bills and loans, etc.), and it also gave me some more clarity about why I wanted to do the PhD. Anecdotally, most of the PhD attrition I saw was from students who enrolled in a PhD straight from a BS/BA, whereas slightly older students who had worked a few years were more likely to stick it out to the end.
That said, there are other pros with going to a PhD program right out of college. You're still young so you likely don't have as many financial/family obligations and probably don't mind living on a graduate stipend for 4-6 years (in my case, it was a huge adjustment going from a well-paid industry job to earning about $25k a year as a grad student).
*Most* PhD holders also do not end up working in academia (there are only a finite number of professorship jobs, and of course,  there are other things like two-body problems, family/geographical constraints, etc.). There are a lot of people who finish the PhD and later decide academia is not for them, and that's quite alright too. The unemployment rate for a PhD in STEM is very low, so  the chances are high that you will be able to get *some* job after getting a doctorate. So I might disagree with bayessays that you should only take the PhD offer if "you couldn't imagine yourself not getting a PhD and have an extreme passion to academic research or teach." I actually think it's perfectly fine to do a PhD for "fun" or with the explicit goal of going into industry afterwards, as long as you really want to do it *for yourself* (too many people are enamored by the perceived "prestige" of the degree, but the truth is that most people don't really care if you have a PhD, and if you work in a setting with a lot of other PhD's/researchers, the degree itself is not enough... you still have to earn their respect and demonstrate your competencies).

Got rejected from NC State earlier... oof. That was my first choice by far so should make for a more interesting few months of deciding where to go ?

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.

@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.

Congrats to whoever got accepted to CMU! Has anyone else heard from them today?

Hi everyone,
I'm applying to PhD programs in pure mathematics, and I had some concerns about what will happen next year; I'm wondering if any of you have the same concerns or have similar experiences. To give some background, I'm a woman in pure mathematics, and I've had some pretty negative experiences in undergrad that I believe were linked to this fact, to the point that I realized that I'm often scared to work with other students in the field (e.g. problem sets, general discussions about math, etc), even though I know that I'm a pretty competent mathematician and have been accepted to a "prestigious" PhD program already.
I've concluded through lot of the very passive-aggressive comments I've gotten over the past four years of undergrad (e.g. "getting through this major must be easy for you, all you have to do is bat your eyebrows at the guys and you'll get help," "I don't think you can handle anything like my math course load."), that the actually competent people don't say these things and tend to be generally kind and understanding, and that these comments mostly come from very insecure math majors. Even knowing this, I'm pretty worried about next year, and I would really like to start my graduate career on a positive note. I know I should ignore such comments, but they do affect my self-confidence, and confidence is really important in mathematics.
Does anyone have any advice or experience regarding this? Thanks in advance

I wouldn't take everything you read on thegradcafe as gospel... For instance in the math results, there's someone (or maybe a group of people) who keeps on putting fake acceptances. It's better to just be patient and stop obsessing over the Results page (easier said than done, I know).

By the way, I saw 2 NCSU offers recorded yesterday from the Chinese forum, is this the 2 round???

@Monte Carlo Guess they're really setting us up for the ole' "This year's batch of applicants was the most qualified in department history, and we had to make some very tough decisions" email.  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.
Also, just had a professor reference my statement of purpose in an interview, so either I'm a weirder candidate than I thought or that's more of a thing now.

Not yet! Think I remember their first acceptances were Feb 1st last year