Weierstrass

Since the MS&E program is relative large (300+ students), I am pretty sure that there are a few if not many people within the program that came from a non-engineering major. That said, it is safe to assume that these individuals have a strong math background. From the program's requirements, "students must have had or must take the following (or equivalent) courses before the M.S. degree is conferred: Mathematics 41, 42, 51 (one full year of college-level calculus), CS 106A (one quarter of computer programming), and an additional 15 units (one year) of engineering, mathematical sciences, or natural sciences." You seem to have the math background and a great GRE quantitative score and so I don't think you need to worry much about the non-engineering background. Based on the statistics found here, you have a good shot. I applied for the PhD program so good luck to the both of us!

Your profile looks pretty good. I think all you need to do is focus on your current courses and see if that will boost your GPA. Also, if you can, sign up for a grad. course or two. My advisor recommended that I took a few grad courses to see if graduate school is actually for me. I also think it is beneficial in the application process as well.

I am currently applying to PhD programs in Operations Research. I have a private scholarship that will cover most of my graduate studies. My advisor told me that this is definitely a plus as a lot of schools are having funding issues and that I will definitely need to incorporate this into my SOP. However, I do not know how to do so without sounding like I am boasting. How should I go about mentioning this in my SOP? For those who are in a similar situation, where and how did you mention external funding?

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