I am still deliberating which schools I should apply to. I was wondering if you guys mind looking at my detailed profile and see if I have a realistic chance. I am thinking of cutting the list down to save some $.
School: Large public university
Major: Math & Econ.
Cumulative GPA: ~3.9 (Math: 3.8; Econ: 4.0)
Math Courses: Calc. I-III, Diff. Eq., Lin. Alg., Advanced Lin. Alg., Advanced Calc., Numerical Analysis I-II, Probability Theory, Stochastic Processes, Nonparametric Statistics (Grad), Variance Analysis (Grad), Numerical Optimization (Grad)
Econ. Courses: The standard curriculum + Advanced Micro., Game Theory, Industrial Organization
Programming Courses: Intro to Programming (C++), Intermediate Obj.-Oriented Programming (C++), Applied Computational Methods (FORTRAN and C)
GRE: 800Q / 480V / 3.5AWA (Horrible verbal ; should I retake?)
Recs (and where they'd studied): 3 Math/Stats (Harvard/MIT/Gatech), 1 Economics (UCLA), 1 Finance (Chair, MIT)
SOP: Still writing; recommenders think it is good so far
Research: Senior thesis about combinatorial optimization (will not be finished by the time of application); RA for Finance prof. (1 yr); RA for Civil Engineering prof. (1 yr)
Internship: Programmer at data mining company (2+ years); analyst at mid-sized hedge fund (1 Summer)
Research Interest: Combinatorial optimization, game theory, network flow, financial math
PhD Programs:
MIT (Top choice)
Princeton
UC Berkeley
Stanford
NC State
Arizona State
University of Arizona
M.S. Programs:
Columbia
Cornell
UMichigan