EgoClaudius

Congrats on your offers! It seems like the three depts are similarly appealing to you research-wise at this stage, so, if I were you, I’d focus on the quality of life for a PhD student in each dept. What are the funding packages at each dept? What do these become when adjusted for the cost of living in each city? What are the RA/TA responsibilities associated with each offer? More generally, what college/city environment would you perform best in as a PhD student? When you visited, did students seem happier at one university than another/is the attrition rate lower at one dept than another, etc?

Does anyone know how much time stat phd programmes typically give applicants to respond to offers? Would this become less if they sent an offer around April 15th?

This topic has made me reconsider my personal statement for UWashington. Would it be incorrect/missing the point of the personal statement to write about my culturally-varied background if I don’t come from a disadvantaged background? I grew up in a foreign country and did some volunteering abroad. Does this count as a “culturally-varied” background that admissions committees would be interested in? I’m getting a sense from this topic that they only want to hear about a “culturally-varied” background if it has disadvantaged/posed a difficulty for the applicant in some way.

Would it be advantageous to include a GRE math subject test score of 80% in applications to (top 10) US statistics PhD programmes that don't require submitting it? I have completed a 4 year undergraduate degree (graduating with a 2:1 ~ equivalent to a 3.7/3.8 GPA) from a top 3 UK university in mathematics so my mathematical background is already quite strong. I hesitate in including the math subject score because I think my undergraduate degree speaks more highly of my math knowledge than the GRE test (I could have improved on the score had I spent more time preparing). The only info I can find online re this issue is stanford's statistic that the average score for admitted candidates in stats was 89% (previously 82%) Would including the score improve my application chances to universities that encourage or strongly recommend submitting a math subject test score (such as WashU, Columbia or Berkeley)?