Goal: Statistics/Data Science PhD
Education:
BA Economics + Statistics minor from a university in my home country; university is not very internationally known.
Undergrad GPA: 3.4/4.0.
A/A- grades in most statistics courses.
Msc In economic research from a German university
Master’s grade: 1.4 German scale, which seems to translate roughly to a 3.8-4.0 GPA
The university is one of the top economics departments in Germany/Europe, though I am unsure how familiar US statistics departments are with it.
Master’s program allowed me to take PhD-level economics courses and potentially fast-track into the PhD.
Math / stats / quantitative coursework:
3 PhD-level econometrics courses: two around A-/A range, one B+.
Advanced microeconomics: A-, quite proof-based and involved analysis / measure-theoretic arguments.
Concern: because many of these courses are listed as economics/econometrics, it may not be obvious to statistics committees that they involved real analysis, measure theory, linear algebra.
Research:
One paper published in a reasonably well-known statistics journal, though it is a short technical note rather than a full-length article.
I think I could also published another paper in TMLR by the time of admission but still uncertain
I also have my master's thesis on arxiv which is about bootstrap inference and extreme value theory
Letters:
Two expected strong letters from econometrics professors who know my research and mathematical ability well and one of them used to be a professor at Columbia but in the economics department.
Both are more theoretical than applied and have some publications in statistics journals.
another strong letter from a statistics professor at my undergraduate university (they did their PhD at LSE).
Concern: most letters may come from economics/econometrics faculty rather than statistics faculty.
Target schools:
Reach: Columbia Statistics, UCLA Statistics, University of Washington Statistics, NYU Data Science.
Target University of Michigan Statistics, University of Toronto Statistics, LSE Statistics,Chicago Statistics, UW Madison, UNC Chapel Hill
safe: Penn State Statistics, North Carolina State, University of Minesotta
Question:
Given my profile, how would statistics PhD committees evaluate an economics/econometrics background like this, especially if the mathematical content of the coursework is not immediately obvious from the course titles? Which departments should I add to make the list more balanced?
