MidnightMoon

It's a tough year, things are not really stable in the US right now regarding funding and other things from what I understand. It's not you. Hope you can take some time off and refresh soon, and start looking into suitable alternatives

Sorry to hear that, I spent about $1000 and that's with the GRE and as many waivers as they'd grant me. I don't think it's an issue with humility or hubris from your end, but just reflective of how many people want to get into the US and how their selection process in. I ended up having some more luck from European institutes (~top20 worldwide) that are normally considered harder to get in than a lot of the places I applied to in America and got rejected from, so it seems like a problem with the US or their expectations for international PhD applicants to me. I had much better research alignment with a lot of the US places I applied to (I built on some of their faculty's recent work for my MSc thesis), so getting 10+ rejections with no interview/explanation is pretty disappointing. Maybe it isn't the best time to go to US anyway 😅 Best of luck in your next cycle

It's looking like a very rough year in the US, I'm in a similar situation and many people I know with much better "perfect" profiles than mine ( 2+ publications, courses in very advanced statistics, stochastic and functional analysis etc) in my well regarded school (top UK) are experiencing blanket rejections from the US too. Have you considered applying to other places?

Nothing at all from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, UMichigan, CMU, Columbia, Duke etc Many of them don't even do interviews. Historically, Stanford and Duke send out decisions in early February without interview

Hi, I also have a similar profile to OP minus the US master's, and I was curious about a few things. To OP: With part iii at Cambridge and your background, you already seem strong for PhD options. Why'd you go for a US master's programme instead of a PhD? To others: I have two summer research projects in Probability and numerical analysis, no publications. It's hard to publish in a good math/stats journal! How much do publications realistically help or matter for schools if top10-ish calibers? I've seen some people say it's absolutely required for serious scrutiny from the best programmes, and others say it's a bonus of some kind, not sure if it's more important than GRE, GPA, strong LoRs etc. I've also heard people are increasingly coming in with publications due to ease of publishing in related venues in ML conferences, so things are more competitive now than ever The UK, even at top5 math schools, doesn't really have a strong push for research experiences and publications as US so I feel like we're at a systemic disadvantage if it's a key factor in the admissions criteria. I wonder if the adcoms take that kind of thing into account in good schools

Hello, I'm currently a UK student in a 4 year integrated master's degree, about to enter my final year, and starting to consider applications to the US for a stats PhD starting on 2025 autumn. I'm not sure how my profile is, and where I should be aiming at, so I'd really appreciate suggestions. I'm interested in robust statistical ML and Bayesian non-parametric techniques. Undergrad & Master's - Mathematics at Oxford University GPA: 85% (converts to a 4.00 US equivalent apparently) Award for exam performance in first year. Courses: Besides the standard first and second year courses, the options I chose in my third year were: Probability Measure and Martingale, Functional Analysis I, Functional Analysis II, Optimisation for Data Science, Continuous Martingales and Stochastic Calculus, Applied Probability, Foundations of Statistical Inference, Statistical Machine Learning I got 80+ on all of these, except for functional analysis ii which was 64 (so everything should be equivalent to A and only one on B). For my final year I'll be doing: Continuous Optimisation, Theories of Deep Learning, Advanced Statistical Learning, Numerical Linear Algebra, Uncertainty in DL, Computational Learning Theory, Graphical Models, Random Matrix Theory Research: I'm currently doing a research project in numerical techniques to solve SDEs over summer which is going well. Previously, I'd worked on a professor on a stochastic analysis project last summer, and one on Bayesian modelling of perception before that. Unfortunately, none of these resulted in a publication, and my work on the Bayesian project in particular wasn't very good (got little supervision and had little knowledge at the time). Letters: I think I'll get a strong one from the professor I worked on stochastic analysis with, and from my supervisor on my current project. I'll also try and ask my master's thesis advisor next semester for a good letter. I'm a little worried that the top US schools would value substantial research projects and experience over good exam grades, so I'm really unsure about where I should be aiming at. I'd appreciate feedback and suggestions. I'm thinking about applying to 10 programmes in the US and 5-6 in the UK. Not sure if I should consider applying to more than these.