whiterabbit

Hopefully this means that they're uploading results? On another note, y'all weren't kidding. This certainly takes the cake for the most opaque series of responses. Shortly = within a week --> soon = ?????

Best wishes to everyone on their applications! Waiting eagerly along with you for my husband's results.

Research-wise, I'd be hesitant to make a decision based on a single advisor at TAMU, if you haven't already gotten some sort of commitment from them. I know of the 4 (!) people I initially thought I'd want to work with in my department, half of them turned out to be no-go's for various reasons.

I haven't seen anyone mention the financial aspect. When I applied, on average, each PhD application cost about $90. You should really think about if you can/should/want to spend over 1 grand on applications (on top of GRE fees). And be honest with yourself about your application package; my recommenders were maybe a little too nice to me. (Personally, I regret wasting a couple hundred dollars on applying to Top 5 programs.) Maybe you can better allocate that time/money elsewhere, eg. retaking a standardized test, networking, building up your academic/research/work experience.

I want to throw in a vote for the iPad + Apple Pencil combo for any incoming grad students reading this. I have always struggled with organizing paper notebooks/binders, given the volume and variation of notes/homeworks/syllabi for each course. I'd end up with a mountain of paper by mid-semester, and things would get misplaced or lost. I ditched pencil/paper and switched to centralizing everything on my iPad and it made my first year of grad school so much easier. There are plenty of great notebook apps for the iPad, that create "binders" for each course that get backed up to the cloud (so you can view everything on your computer as well). You can do the same if you have a tablet computer + stylus (for PC's, I really like OneNote for notebooks). It has also been a great toolkit for TA'ing remotely.

In addition to whether a university is public vs. private, another major factor to consider is whether grad students at the university are unionized. Graduate students who are part of a union will tend to have stronger funding protections. I will add that at my university, the provost approved admissions/funding for students entering this fall. I expect that cuts will be more apparent with admissions next year.

With a caveat that I know that this is ultimately department-/university specific.... Is it common/accepted for PhD students to do summer internships? Right now, I'm thinking that I want to work in industry after finishing my PhD, so I'd like to get a head start by doing an internship every summer to better figure out what area I want to work in, what kind of work I want to do, build a professional network, etc. Would this raise eyebrows in your department?

Got into UMass Amherst for the statistics PhD today, with guaranteed 5-year funding as well as first-year fellowship. That puts months of stress to an end, finally I'm officially going to grad school!

I think the person who posted that was referring to someone on the Chinese-language forum that reported an acceptance at the beginning of the month. I haven't seen anything else about acceptances for the PhD program yet.

Heard back from Harvard stat and Brown biostat today! Looks like those decisions are finally coming out. Now if only BU stat would come out soon...

Got my UConn acceptance today!! They must win the record for fastest turnaround, I think that was within 2 weeks.

Don't think so, I haven't heard back yet and there's nothing on the results page either.

I'm applying to stat and biostat PhD programs. I double majored in math and economics in undergrad. Two of my letters of recommendation will be coming from math/statistics professors with whom I've both taken classes and worked for either as a TA or doing research, and I am confident that they will be strong letters. For my third recommendation, I have a trade-off I'd like some advice on. I can choose between: Economics professor who will write a glowing review about my analytical skills, but will not be able to speak to my quantitative skills Math professor who will write a good enough but not glowing review, but will be able to speak to my quantitative skills I know the latter is the more natural choice, but I'm hesitant to forsake a glowing review for just a solid one. Would I be shooting myself in the foot choosing one over the other?