conflitz

For anyone who received a decision: was it only through email or is your result also on the portal? Thanks!

I'm very fortunate to have been admitted to the statistics PhD programs at UChicago, Columbia, Duke, and the University of Washington. Now I'm having a hard time choosing between them! I'm mostly interested in statistical machine learning, causal inference, and Bayesian statistics (particularly as it relates to the first two topics), but my interests are definitely not that specific yet. I'm also not married to Bayesian statistics -- I find it interesting, but I think I would also be fine if I didn't end up doing research in that area. I enjoy both theory and applications in the sciences and social sciences. I'm not entirely sure where I stand on academia/industry at the moment. UChicago pros: tons of advisor options between statistics/CAM/TTIC/Booth, big city, lovely campus, highly prestigious, high stipend relative to cost of living. UChicago cons: far from family, very cold winters, less safe than the other options (at least according to the grad students I've spoken with), the 9 week quarter system seems intense and stressful. Columbia pros: good number of faculty with compatible interests, big city, nice campus, highly prestigious, close to family, great location for tech and finance internships. Columbia cons: low stipend relative to cost of living, cold winters, maybe a little less prestigious than Chicago stats. Duke pros: good research fit, warm weather, very high stipend relative to cost of living, great campus, no written qualifying exam. Duke cons: not a ton of advisor options, far from family, not in a big city, probably less prestigious than the above 2. UW pros: decent research fit, lovely city, great campus, great location for tech internships, the students seem very happy. UW cons: very far from family, cold and wet winters, low stipend relative to cost of living (but better than Columbia's), probably less prestigious than Chicago and Columbia. I'm also on the waitlist for UPenn Wharton, CMU, and Yale. Would love to hear any thoughts from people more knowledgeable than I am!

Which email address did you contact? They usually don't respond when I email them.

I really have no idea what it means unfortunately. Hopefully it's a good sign.

Yep, both these things happened to me.

Excellent, thank you! I just got my GRE math subject test score, which was 820 (79th percentile). Would it be to my advantage to submit this score? Some of my schools say they “highly recommend” taking the test whereas others just say that it’s optional.

Thank you so much! Do you think my application would be competitive for top programs?

Undergrad Institutions: Large state school (top 30 for math) and community college Majors: Math and computer science (double major) GPA: 4.0 from my university, and >3.95 from my CC Type of Student: Domestic Hispanic male, first generation college student GRE General Test: 169 Q / 167 V / 5.0 W GRE Subject Test: Just took it, so unknown. Planning to retake in October. TOEFL Score: N/A Grad Institution: None Programs Applying: Primarily statistics and operations research PhDs. Some applied math programs as well. I'm hoping to get into a program like the ones at Stanford, UC Berkeley, Princeton, UPenn, etc., if possible. Research Experience: Did statistical machine learning research with a professor at my school for a year. Hasn't led to a publication yet, but the results are pretty interesting. Awards/Honors/Recognitions: Three named scholarships, dean's list every semester of college, and graduated summa cum laude. Pertinent Activities or Jobs: Tutored math, statistics, and physics for a little over two years. I also took a self-directed reading course (not for credit) in quantum computation and presented on quantum teleportation. Letters of Recommendation: I expect to have at least two great letters, one from my research mentor and another from my analysis professor. The third letter will most likely be from my probability theory professor, and I did extremely well in his class (got perfect scores on every exam). Relevant Classes (all A's): Math: AP Calculus BC, AP Statistics, Calculus III, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra, Discrete Mathematics, Honors Intro to Proofs, Probability Theory, Honors Linear Algebra (Theory), Honors Mathematical Analysis I (had to self-study the regular analysis class to get permission to take it), Honors Abstract Algebra I, Topology I, Mathematical Statistics, Stochastic Processes. Computer Science: Intro to Programming, Data Structures & Algorithms, Computer Architecture, Graduate Artificial Intelligence, Analysis of Algorithms, Programming Languages, Databases, Software Engineering, and Deep Learning. (note: I also took graduate machine learning last year, but I withdrew so I have a W for that. whomp whomp) I also have a lot of coursework in physics, chemistry (up to organic II), and biology, but probably not very relevant as I'm looking mostly at mathematical statistics programs.