biostat_prof

I'm not quite as optimistic as cyberwulf. If you have three rock-solid recommendations, sure, but it may be tougher if your recommenders don't know you as well. One way or another your chances at admission to a top-ranked department are good, but I would add some "safeties" (at the point where such a thing exists in PhD admissions) if you aren't sure how enthusiastic your recommenders will be.

Make sure you get recommenders who will spell out in very clear detail how to read your transcript. They need to be very specific: "Top 5% of students," "Best student in 5 years," something along those lines. And if they are not willing to classify you as "best student in x years," my guess is that it will be an uphill climb to be admitted to the top-ranked departments. PhD admissions for international students is brutally competitive. My department could fill all of our slots for foreign students several times over with students from Tsinghua/Peking/ISI/SNU/HKU alone. Quite honestly, we usually don't admit foreign students from outside this short list of "feeder universities" unless a person's credentials are really amazing. I would also apply to a number of MS programs as a backup; you will have a much easier time if you can get a recommendation or two from a well-known professor at an American university. Good luck.

Yeah, definitely take real analysis if you can. My department will occasionally admit people who haven't taken it, but it's very rare. Usually you either need to be a minority or your credentials have to be almost perfect. But if you maintain your GPA and do well in real analysis and mathematical statistics, you should be competitive everywhere if your recommendations are solid. If they strong/outstanding, you could run the table. Good luck.

Can you get a recommendation letter saying that you did well on your qualifying exam? Did you do equally well in your analysis coursework? If so, can you get a recommendation saying that? My gut reaction is that it's going to be an uphill climb at most of the top-ranked departments. In my (highly ranked) department, your undergrad GPA would probably sink you unless it is offset by very strong recommendations or very impressive research/work experience. Taking some classes using the Lehmann books would definitely be helpful, especially if you do well enough to get a strong recommendation out of it. Good luck.

I'm going to second cyberwulf's comments and say that if anything, he is being conservative. I worked with one student a year or two ago with comparable numbers to the OP who literally ran the table when she applied to grad school: She applied to every single top-ranked stat/biostat department and was accepted at all of them. Granted, she had some very impressive research experience and absolutely ridiculous recommendation letters (and being female also helps at stat departments), but I think you are competitive everywhere if your recommendations are strong. Don't be scared by DMX's experience; the competition is far, far more intense for foreign students. I would just apply to all of the top-ranked stat departments (and maybe biostat as well if that interests you at all). You should definitely get in somewhere. I don't know that you even need to bother applying to MS programs unless you want the option of reapplying in two years if you're not accepted at a top-ranked school. I can't imagine you get rejected everywhere unless one of your recommenders says that you are a psychopathic felon or something equally disastrous. Also, check your PM.

If you can take real analysis, you should; I'll put it that way. You may not need it if you are applying to MS programs, but it will definitely help. And if you are giving any thought to applying to a PhD program, it's pretty much mandatory. I only know of one case where my department admitted a student without taking real analysis in recent years, and this student had basically a 4.0 with glowing recommendations and had taken a number of other advanced math courses, some of which required proofs. In general it's pretty tough to be admitted without real analysis.

For what it's worth, if you have any idea about how strong your recommendations are, that information is worth posting. I know most of the time you won't without seeing them, but recommendations are possibly the most critical part of the application.

Well, off the top of my head, Harvard's biostat program only requires one semester of theory, and Berkeley's biostat program has no required courses at all. That said, they certainly offer more advanced courses, and my guess is that most students end up taking the more advanced courses even if they aren't necessarily required. I just quickly eye balled the publication records of their faculty, and while it's certainly not a top-tier department, all of their biostat faculty seem to be publishing. Indeed, all of them seem to have at least some recent methodological papers, even though they generally weren't in the best journals. And at the end of the day that's what's most important for a PhD program. The vast majority of employers won't even ask for a transcript or care which courses you have taken, so the fact that their course offerings are weak is not a major concern in my mind. I certainly wouldn't describe their program as "fraudulent." That said, I would be nervous about enrolling at Stony Brook with the hope of landing a job in finance. I have never heard of any biostat PhD graduates working in finance. That isn't to say that it has never happened, but I think it's safe to say that it's not common. And I have also been told that Wall Street strongly prefers graduates of "name brand" schools because they want to impress clients by saying "our Harvard guys are working on it." I don't know how important that is, but I will say that the people I know who have worked in Wall Street after getting a stat PhD have all been Stanford or Chicago graduates (mostly Stanford). I can't say whether or not Stony Brook is your boyfriend's best option without knowing what his other option is, but I will say that if his other option is offering funding and Stony Brook isn't, he should take the other option, period. As I have noted elsewhere, getting a PhD is a questionable financial decision even with funding, and it is virtually never a good idea without funding. If one were choosing between a top-ranked school with no guaranteed funding but the possibility of finding funding later versus a much lower-ranked school with funding, then maybe, but even then it's a questionable call. I would never turn down a funded offer for a place like Stony Brook. Hope that helps. Feel free to PM me with any other questions.

While I agree that the advantage is probably greater at biostatistics departments, the limited data I can find suggests that domestic applicants have a considerable advantage when applied to statistics departments as well: http://www.grad.washington.edu/about/statistics/admissions/admissions12-by-major.pdf http://www.grad.wisc.edu/education/academicprograms/profiles/949.pdf http://gradschool.unc.edu/pdf/2010-ADMISSION-STATISTICS.pdf http://gradschool.duke.edu/about/statistics/admitsta.htm I just picked four schools that I know post their graduate admissions statistics online; there is no other rhyme or reason to these four schools (other than the fact that they all have good stat departments). In each case, you can see that the percentage of domestic students admitted is much higher than the percentage of international students. Granted, three of the four are state schools, where international students may be at a particular disadvantage since international students are typically not eligible for in-state tuition. But presumably that's not an issue at Duke, but the admission rate is still noticeably higher for domestic applicants. (If anyone knows of any other private schools who make this data publicly available, I would be interested to see it.) And while I don't have any hard data to back it up, conversations with faculty at several top-ranked (and hence wealthy) stat departments suggests that even they favor domestic applicants. So if you can afford to wait a year to apply with a green card, I would definitely do it. The advantage to being a U.S. citizen/permanent resident when applying to graduate school in stat/biostat is substantial.

These numbers are misleading for a couple reasons. First, it depends on how you define "minority." Sometimes Asians are classified as minorities, and the harsh reality is that being Asian will not help you in the admissions process. (Generally speaking only African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans can expect an admissions boost. This is especially unfortunately for groups like Hmong or Filipinos who get lumped into the "Asian" category even though socioeconomically they are much closer to African-Americans or Hispanics, but it is what it is.) Also, the sad truth is that many minority applicants' have such weak profiles that we have to reject them because we simply don't think that they will be able to survive in the program. But I have seen my department admit minorities with a GPA in the 3.1-3.3 range. That's not going to happen for a non-minority unless the rest of their application is really spectacular. As for gender, once again, you see fewer female applicants with solid grades in upper-division math courses. Unfortunate, but true. Also, being female generally doesn't help nearly as much for international students. But it can be tough to find enough qualified female U.S. citizens to maintain some semblance of gender diversity in an incoming class. We deal with this degree to an issue in my biostat department, and the problem is even more acute in stat departments, which tend to get fewer qualified female applicants. Having talked to several friends involved in admissions in various departments in the country, the bar is definitely lower for female U.S. citizens and the bar is far lower for minorities. Well, first I feel the need to say that this type of decision should not be based on rankings and that these "tiers" are just one person's opinion. (With the general caveat that I think rankings are silly and that prospective students rely on them too heavily, at the bare minimum I think Stanford and Berkeley should be on a separate tier and Stanford is arguably a tier above Berkeley. But whatever. The fact that reasonable people can disagree about these types of rankings just shows how you shouldn't place too much faith in them.) Also, rankings don't tell you anything about the type of research that actually goes on in a department. In particular, there is no meaningful way to compare a department like Harvard (which is extremely strong in a few narrow areas) to a school like Berkeley (that has a much broader focus). Having said that, I will repeat my earlier advice: Just carpet bomb all the top-ranked schools, assuming you have the time and money to do so. If your recommendations are solid, your application should get a look everywhere. The top-ranked schools will be a reach, but it's not out of the question. (And I would suggest that you apply for some of the top-ranked biostat departments as well. I generally discourage students from focusing exclusively on stat or biostat departments since the curriculum will be very similar in both types of departments.) As for "safety schools," you can apply for MS programs. My guess is that you will have almost no trouble being accepted to the vast majority of MS programs to which you apply, so I don't think you need to worry about that. (And I would definitely recommend that you apply for some biostat MS programs if only because funding sometimes exists for such programs. Funding for MS stat programs is very rare in my experience.) There really is no such thing as a "safety school" when you are applying to PhD programs. Ironically, it's sometimes more difficult to be accepted to a lower-ranked school than a higher-ranked school. Lower-ranked schools tend to have less funding, so their class sizes are smaller, and they tend to place more weight on "fit" than simply having the best credentials. (If you can only admit three students, you don't want to admit someone who will jerk you around until April 15 before choosing a higher-ranked program. Thus, you can easily get a rejection despite strong credentials if the school thinks that you see them as a "safety school.")

Interesting. I guess it's more competitive than I thought. In general, though, MS admissions are usually far less competitive than PhD admissions, since MS students aren't funded at most schools.

First, I don't know about Stanford and Berkeley specifically, but MS programs at many (most?) schools are just "cash cows." Usually the bar to admissions isn't very high. And your work experience is likely to help you quite a bit, since you are likely to have a good chance of getting another job on Wall Street when you are done, and pointing to alumni working on Wall Street is a great way to sell your department to prospective students. So I definitely think you should be competitive. That said, I would definitely favor academic recommendations if you think you can get strong ones. What we mainly want to see in recommendation letters is a comparison between you and your classmates; are you in the top 25% or top 5% or whatever? A letter from an employer that says that you are an outstanding employee is much harder to evaluate. That said, if you are working with other "quants" and you can get a supervisor to say that you are better than many of the other quants from prestigious schools, that will definitely help. Taking linear algebra and real analysis will help, too. (And if there is any benefit to taking them at a "higher-ranked" school, it almost certainly isn't enough of a benefit to justify paying drastically higher tuition. The only real reason to attend a "higher ranked" school is if you are worried about your recommendations and you want to try to cultivate a relationship with a well-known faculty member, but that is going to be awfully tough to do in a few months before applications are due.) And I doubt visiting either department will help unless you are an extremely borderline case (and probably not even then). Good luck.

It is definitely not true that a lower real analysis grade results in your application being trashed. I know a student who had a mediocre grade in real analysis who literally got in everywhere they applied (and they applied to virtually all of the top-ranked programs). Granted, the real analysis grade was literally the only blemish on the student's resume. The student had some of the strongest recommendations I have seen in my life (think multiple senior faculty saying that they were the best student in 5-10 years at a very highly ranked school) and multiple papers submitted for publication, both in top-ranked statistical methods journals and in high-impact applied journals. But a lower grade in real analysis won't sink you if the rest of your resume is solid (which appears to be true of the OP). That said, I agree that the math GRE isn't like to compensate for a poor real analysis grade. I think most schools have recognized that it covers a lot of material that you never use in statistics and is a poor predictor of how well you write proofs. Your time would be better spent trying to get a better grade in a more advanced analysis course and/or cultivating relationships with potential recommenders. I don't know about this. The international students that my department has admitted in recent years still tend to be Chinese the vast majority of the time. I can only think of one Canadian we have admitted in recent years, and that was a special circumstance. Granted, I have no idea how many applicants we get from Canada (I am sure there are far more from China). But generally we know that students at even lower-tier Chinese universities have the equivalent of an MS in math in the U.S./Canada, and they have to be very smart to be able to be accepted to a Chinese university in the first place. And the grading system makes it easy to compare applicants; you know that a student with high grades at Tsinghua or Peking is going to be very good. So I'm not sure there is much of an advantage to being Canadian, if any. At the end of the day we want the best applicants possible, and with limited funding available for international students, we tend to favor the Chinese students from top-ranked schools with extremely strong math backgrounds. This may be less true at other departments with more funding for international students, though; I'm not sure. If you want to talk about advantages to certain groups, if you are a minority (i.e. basically African-American, Hispanic, or Native American) the bar is far lower. We get so few applicants from these groups that we are willing to admit almost anyone who we think will survive the program. Being female also helps in statistics departments, although I think that is less true in biostatistics. (The proportion of women in biostatistics programs is always much higher than it is in statistics for reasons I have never fully understood.) Maybe I shouldn't admit to these things in a semi-public forum, but that is the reality.

I assume you are not a U.S. citizen or permanent resident? If you were a U.S. citizen, you would be competitive anywhere with strong recommendations. Unfortunately, if you are a non-citizen, you are going to be relegated to the same pool as the Chinese applicants who have won international math competitions. Still, if you have strong recommendations, you would stand a chance at probably any school in the country. A lot depends on recommendations, though. Try to have a candid talk with your recommenders about how strongly they can recommend you. If you have three recommenders who will say that you are in the top 1% at your school and that you are as good as previous students that have attended top-ranked departments, you are probably golden. If they are only willing to put you in the top 10% or top 25% or something, you still stand a good chance at a top-ranked program, but it will be tougher. I would also try to find a recommender who is willing to note that your advanced calculus grade is approximately average at your university to try to do some damage control. If you do well in your graduate courses and can get a recommender to say that these courses have a real analysis prerequisite, that would also help a lot. In any event, if you are willing to spend the money, I would just carpet bomb all of the top-ranked stat/biostat PhD programs in the country assuming you have some good recommendations. My guess is that at least one will bite. Good luck.

Yeah, we don't ever come out and say, "We will admit you but we will not be offering funding." That would be tantamount to a rejection unless the person is independently wealthy. (Given that a PhD is a questionable financial decision in the first place for most people, I would certainly never advise a student to enroll in a PhD program without funding.) The issue in my department is that while we try our best to make sure there is funding for everyone we admit we can't always predict how many people will accept our admissions offers or how much funding will be available. Occasionally we guess incorrectly and don't have funding lined up for some admitted students by April 15.

Yes, that is another issue, and that is another reason recommendations are so important. A 3.6-3.7 at some of the Ivies is pretty close to average. But at least there is data on the average GPA's at the Ivies. If someone attends a lesser-known school, it is hard to know if a 3.95 makes the student a valedictorian or it just means that the school hands out A's like candy. This is why virtually every recommendation form asks recommenders to place the student among the "top X% of comparable students." These recommendations typically carry much more weight than the raw GPA. If you attended a lesser-known school with a harsh grading curve, it may be worthwhile to ask a recommender to mention this in a letter. It's pretty powerful when a letter says, "The mean GPA in our program is 2.8. Student X earned a 3.96, which is the highest GPA anyone has earned in our department in five years."

That makes sense, I suppose. If you say that you want to work on longitudinal data with Professor X and Professor X hasn't work on longitudinal data in years, you could look a little silly. Still, many faculty have web sites that clearly explain their current research, so in many cases it's not that hard to figure out. If you are confident that what you say is accurate, I would do it, because it could push you over the top if you are a borderline case. Yeah, in my department we do make unfunded offers sometimes, and whether or not a student gets funding may depend on whether an individual faculty member wants to offer them funding.

I definitely agree that the context of your undergraduate/graduate institution matters when reading recommendations. But I think you might be going a little too far here. "Above average" at an Ivy probably isn't going to cut it (at least not in my department), and you certainly don't need to be the best in your graduating class no matter how obscure your undergraduate institution is. I just quickly eyeballed the credentials of students my department admitted last year, and I think there was only one student who attended an "Ivy-caliber" school. They had around a 3.5 GPA and all three recommenders rated them in the top 10% of students. Most of our incoming class is from flagship state schools or other comparably ranked schools. With a few exceptions, the GPA's were about 3.8+ and usually all three recommenders ranked them in the top 10% with at least two of them ranked the student in the top 5% or higher. So the bar is lower for elite undergraduate institutions, but not that much lower. I don't know how many (if any) Ivy-caliber students were rejected, but I don't remember us admitting any Ivy students with significantly lower numbers in recent years. Granted, I have no idea how many applied, and I don't think it is a large number. (Maybe Harvard grads with good quantitative skills prefer to go work for Wall Street rather than getting a PhD. ) But it's not like we are admitting Harvard kids with 3.4 GPA's year in and year out.

I think everyone on this thread is greatly overlooking the importance of recommendation letters. Strong recommendations can cover a multitude of sins whereas lukewarm ones can sink otherwise very promising candidates. I might go so far as to say that they are the single most important part of an application. The only other thing that comes close is grades in advanced math classes, but even that is hard to evaluate at "less prestigious" schools. For applicants with an MS or non-traditional applicants, evidence of research excellence (i.e. publications in good journals) also helps a lot, but it is very rare for someone coming straight out of college to have much of a paper trail in this area. For the record, I would strongly disagree with the claim that undergraduate prestige "matters a lot." Sure, it matters some. If you have a 4.0 at Harvard, you are probably going to be accepted. But I would say that the majority of the students admitted to my department in recent years have not been Ivy League grads but rather students who attended solid state schools and did very well. (And my department is usually considered to be one of the best.) And it's a sample size of 1, but I attended an extreme "no name" undergraduate school and I was still admitted to every graduate program to which I applied. The main difference is that if adcoms aren't familiar with the rigor of the courses at your school, they will rely more heavily on recommendation letters. If a recommender says, "Student X took my proof-based advanced calculus course and got the highest grade of anyone in 10 years," you will be fine. But if you get three tepid recommendations, that may not be good enough. As for undergraduate GPA's, a low undergraduate GPA will not sink you, although the burden of proof will be on you to show that it is not an accurate reflection of your true ability. As I mentioned on another thread, my department recently admitted a student whose undergraduate transcript was almost entirely C's, D's and F's (mostly D's and F's their first two years). But this particular student enrolled in an MS program and got three recommenders saying that they were one of the top MS students in years. They also wrote a publishable paper while in this program. So it is definitely possible to be admitted to a top-ranked department despite a spotty undergraduate record, but you will have your work cut out for you. My advice would be to have a candid talk with your potential recommenders about how strong they are willing to recommend you. If you are in a top-10 department and you can get three recommenders who say that you are strong enough to be in their PhD program, that could carry you quite a ways. And if either of your research projects could result in publishable papers in a good methodology journal, be sure to find a recommender who will say that as well. As cyberwulf correctly noted, your MS GPA probably won't help you that much since usually the curve in these programs is very generous. (If you took some form of advanced calculus/real analysis course where the curve was not inflated in either of your MS programs, try to find a recommender who will say that.) One way or another it's going to be a crap shoot. Your best advice is to apply very broadly. It's unclear to me whether you really cannot stay in your current program or if you just don't want to, but if you are serious about getting a PhD, you should try to make sure you have some kind of backup option. It's really hard to predict what will happen to you. Good luck.

Weird. Did did this professor say why? That seems odd to me; from my point of view, showing that you are sufficiently interested in the school to at least look at their web site would only help you. I always tell my undergraduates to do this, particularly if they are applying to "lower-ranked" schools. (Often times these schools admit only a small number of students with funding and they don't want to waste a funding offer on someone who sees them as a "safety school." So showing actually interest/enthusiasm for the school can go a long way.) But maybe there are adcoms who see things differently. I still think demonstrating that you know something about the type of research/faculty in a given department is going to be a good thing more often than not.

Well, this doesn't help the OP, but for the benefit of others reading this thread, I have it on very good authority that while this may be the average, the bar is much lower for U.S. citizens. (Indeed, I know of a few people who have been admitted to Stanford without taking the math GRE at all despite the fact that it is supposedly required. That's not going to happen if you are not a citizen, though.) In any event, the math GRE covers a lot of material that you will never use in statistics (e.g. measure theory), so generally adcoms don't give it very much weight (and hence the reason nobody really requires it any more). It's probably not going to help you get admitted unless you absolutely ace it. If your recommendations were lukewarm, that may have been what killed you. For better or for worse, these letters may be the most crucial part of your application (with the possible exception of grades in upper-division math courses). So yes, do everything in your power to get to know your professors so that you can get a stronger letter. And you don't need any biostatistics classes to be admitted to a biostat PhD program. To the best of my knowledge they primarily consider recommendations/grades in upper-division math courses/research experience, just like stat departments do. Honestly, I think both of you may be right. Generally speaking a SoP has no affect on your chances of being admitted unless you are a very borderline candidate. (Well, if it isn't written in intelligible English or you say something totally outrageous, that could sink you, but a well-written SoP very rarely helps you that much.) However, showing that you are a good fit for a department can help a lot when funding offers are handed out. Personally I'm much more likely to offer to fund a student if they mention my name on their SoP and show that they know something about the types of problems that I work on, and I know that's true for many of my colleagues as well.

First, all students should not that those AmStat numbers are wildly optimistic. You would think that statisticians would be smart enough to worry about nonresponse bias when they conduct a survey like this, but apparently not. (Actually, I think the purpose of this survey is to help people negotiate starting salary offers rather than to provide an accurate picture of the market, so AmStat deliberately ignores the nonresponse bias problem.) The issue is that people who earning six figures in Big Pharma or a tenure-track job at Harvard are far more willing to fill out this type of survey than someone who is doing contract work for $20 an hour. I think some Google research indicates that the response rate for the AmStat salary survey is around 33%, so take it with a very healthy grain of salt. The median starting salary for a biostat PhD in academia is $102K? Really? I'm not sure whether to laugh at the absurdity of that number or cry that some students might believe it. I don't want to potentially embarrass any faculty members by publicly posting their salaries on this board, but suffice it to say that the salaries for all faculty members (including biostatistics faculty members) at UW, Michigan, and UNC are publicly available. You can find these databases and enter in the names of a few of their junior faculty and you'll see most of them are around $100k (and less in some cases). If the very best departments are paying around $100k, that indicates that the median is probably lower than that. I had one student on the job market this year who got a couple offers in the $80k-$90k range in various (not particularly highly ranked) biostat departments. It's only one data point, but I figure it's better than nothing. And that's in biostat. Salaries in stat departments tend to be lower (mainly because it is usually a 9-month salary rather than a 12-month salary). My student had a couple offers from stat departments around $70k at research-oriented universities and around $50k at a couple teaching-oriented universities. As for industry jobs, as I said before, the job market is much tighter for PhD's than it is for MS-level people, which drives down salaries. Employers don't want to hire PhD's for MS-level positions because they assume that they will get bored and quit after a year or two. If you have a PhD and you are willing to move anywhere in the country and sell your services to the highest bidder, you can probably earn more than an MS graduate. But if you have a spouse and a child and a mortgage in a given city and you don't want to move anywhere else, earning $20 an hour as a contractor is a realistic possibility. I continue to stand by my advice that it's usually not a good idea to get a PhD unless you really love research. I don't know; if you know that you want to advance to the top of your field and you'd be bored as a SAS monkey, it's worth thinking about getting a PhD, I suppose. But it's still dangerous. Most students are single when they start grad school and think that it will never be a problem, but if you get married in grad school and have to find a job in the same city as your significant other, there is a good chance that the PhD will actually hurt both your job prospects and your earnings.

Fair point. I'm just trying to provide students/prospective students with as much information as possible, and I thought people might like to know that my point of reference is not a tier-three department with little or no methodological research but rather a top-ranked department with multiple faculty regularly publishing in the best methods journals.

I'm not very familiar with UF's biostatistics department, but just eye balling their list of faculty they seem to be decent, although very small. There is definitely some methodological work going on and some of their junior faculty look fairly promising, but I don't see regular publications in the best journals. And from the perspective of a prospective student, I would be concerned about the fact that they have so few faculty members, because it may be difficult to find a strong adviser in one's area of interest. (I would almost certainly choose UNC over UF unless one wanted to live in Florida or something; UNC's department is much stronger overall.) Also, this is complete gossip, but I was told at one point that there is a long-running feud between the stat and biostat departments at UF to the point that the faculty from the two departments barely even talk to one another. Take this for what it's worth: it may be completely false, and even if there was some truth to this story it may no longer be true. But if I were a prospective biostatistics student thinking of working with an adviser in the statistics department, I would try to find out how often this happens and if both departments are supportive of the idea.

When I say "lower-ranked research universities," I am talking about the types of schools in the "doctoral: high research activity" Carnegie classification: http://classifications.carnegiefoundation.org/lookup_listings/srp.php?clq={%22basic2005_ids%22%3A%2216%22}&start_page=standard.php These aren't terrible schools by any means, and they are definitely research universities. I'm not talking about some small parochial college with a 5/5 teaching load and virtually no research. But they also are not the elite, either. And my department is highly ranked with multiple faculty members regularly publishing in the top methodological journals. I don't know what the placement is like in academia at lower-ranked schools, but I'm sure it's even tougher. If you are considering attending graduate school outside of one of the traditional elite programs, I would ask a lot of questions about the placement of their recent graduates (and I would be very nervous if answers are not forthcoming).