R Deckard

Touch of Evil (1958)

The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948)

When I graduated, I learned that I didn't even recognize 99% of the people in my major and class.

I told a student to type his homework or I wouldn't grade it. It worked for a while, and by the end of the semester when he started hand writing it again, I really didn't care anymore.

Don't be silly. There are not boatloads of applicants that have profiles as strong as the OP. I don't think he needs to hedge his bets any more than including BU, Columbia, and Northwestern. Personally, I wouldn't apply to Yale (or BU) and would add Princeton and Cornell to the list.

Honestly, you should be competitive at every applied math program in the country. Apply to whatever schools you would be happy attending.

Coincidentally, almost none of the applicants came from unknown domestic schools. (I can't speak about foreign institutions)

All new ThinkPads coming out next month as well. I'll be waiting for the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, which apparently will be released a bit later this summer.

Some less competitive, but still good, programs would be: FSU Purdue Utah

All of the top math students will apply to MIT, so you will need several (or more) legitimate graduate classes to simply be on par with the other applicants there. It's going to be tough to stand out against the other applicants if your coursework is relatively weak. The same is true of other strong programs that have applied math integrated in the math department. It is also true, to a slightly lesser extent, at some of the more "mathy" applied math programs, such as Brown. For a comparison, I got into several very strong stand-alone applied math (or similar) programs, but the best true math department I got into was ~top 20. If you're heart is set on MIT or Courant then the extra year of study taking the graduate classes you mentioned will probably help, but still might not be enough to get in. On the other hand, if you would be happy at UT Austin, Georgia Tech, Maryland, Washington, etc, then the extra year probably isn't going to make much of a difference.

Courant and MIT are both going to expect you to have an extremely strong math background since their applied math programs are housed in their math departments. Caltech has a very small applied math program, making admission for anybody very difficult. All the other schools listed should be absolutely doable if you excel in your math studies. MIT, Courant, and Caltech may be within reach as well if you can spin your physical science background as being related to/useful for your proposed applied math research. I would not plan on studying an extra year and focus on doing really well and getting started with applied math research. As you said, make sure to keep your GPA high, but the most important thing will be getting strong letters of recommendation. I really can't stress the importance of letters enough.

Banana, I was in a very similar situation to yours, and I decided not to take an extra year. I changed majors and completed my math degree in two years, along with quite a few CS and stats classes. There are several things to consider: (1) Will you be ready for graduate-level math without taking the extra year? (2) Will you be able to do significant research and earn three excellent LoRs without taking the extra year? (3) Can you skip the basic CS courses and take only the important ones without earning a minor (and teach yourself the basic material)? If you answered yes to these questions, then I generally don't see a lot of benefit in taking the extra year, although it depends on your situation. Doing research and taking graduate classes for an extra year will strengthen your application, and you will potentially be able to get into better schools if you work hard for the extra year. I was able to get into a couple of top 5 programs for my area and several more top 20 programs, but I didn't get into every program that I applied to, particularly the most "mathy" programs. What area of applied math do you want to study and how high are you aiming?

The problem with UIS is not that it is a small, liberal arts campus. The problem is that it is not particularly good or well-known. As Eigen mentioned earlier, if you go to small, unknown school like this, people will expect to you have intimate research experience and outstanding letters of recommendations to make up for the the unfamiliarity of the program. And I assure that UIUC does in fact have an excellent CS program, and they recruit some of the top students in the country. Although the absolute best students often choose from the "top 4" CS schools, UIUC does not have any trouble recruiting stronger graduate classes than Harvard and many other "prestigious" schools. Also, you might want to rethink the way that you communicate online -- perhaps you should reread some of you posts.

(1) You were not encouraged to apply. They did not suggest that you would be accepted. (2) The director of your program knowing Roy Campbell, whose name you can't even bother to spell correctly, probably would not help your admission chances unless you actually wanted to work with Roy Campbell. (3) It sounds like you went to University of Illinois at Springfield. This is a small liberal arts schools. Going there will not help you get into UIUC or any other good university. (4) You do not sound in any way qualified to go to an elite CS PhD program. (5) Please stop whining.

Blade Runner (1982/2007) Children of Men (2006) There Will Be Blood (2007)

Hmmm...

Apples.

Here are some recent sports-related mathematics dissertation topics: http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=51126 http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=130507 http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=60670 http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=126217 I'm not sure if any of them would actually qualify as "statistics" though...

If you're interested in computation, I would suggest the following programs: ICES @ UT Austin iCME @ Stanford PACM @ Princeton AMSC @ Maryland CAAM @ Rice

Imagine the $21,000 vacation you could take if you stay at your current school.

I had a very similar experience visiting the computational science and engineering department (ICES). It's nice to know that other departments at UT Austin seem like great places to be as well!

I agree. My mentor encouraged me to visit all programs that were reasonably strong, even after I was planning to accept an offer at another school. It's a big decision that will affect the rest of your life and a visit might change your mind. As they say, you never know until you try.

That cracked me up.

Yeah, the trick is actually reading the message I suppose...

No problem. I sent you some more info via PM.