Yeah, it seems to me that its a theoretical VS applied, also what kind of places I'd want to live.
Interesting - any reason why?
Don't want to give too many details because I don't want to identify myself.
First of all, I am definitely NOT from a famous institution
In my last 2 years I received A+s in every paper except 1 (that was an A)
My major was not math, it was engineering with an operations research specialisation. It was a 4 year honours degree.
GRE scores were 800 for the math bit, 700ish for the verbal bit, 5.0 for the essay bit.
I have one paper that hasn't been published yet, its not in the area of operations research though.
I was second author on a conference paper for a new opensource optimisation tool.
I worked for two summers at companies (one civil, one electricity industry), and have done two summer research studentships.
Apparently a big thing was my references, which were outstanding. I think my application letter was pretty strong too.