2019 Stats PhD Profile Evaluation.

[Sansa314]

I'm an international student looking for advice on which schools to apply. I would really appreciate your insight, recommendations and criticism.

Bs Degrees: Mathematics, Economics, Statistics. GPA: 3.28

Msc Degree: Mathematics. GPA: 3.39

Type of student: Latin male.

Program desired: PhD in Statistics

Research Experience: coauthor of one published chapter for Springer's Contributions to Statistics.

Teaching:  5+ years as an adjunct teacher. Teaching calculus and statistics for engineering and social sciences.

Programming: Proficient at R, MATLAB.  Basic knowledge of Python, STATA, SPSS and Julia.

GRE: Verbal 165 (96th percentile), Quantitative 166 (91th percentil), Writing 4.0 (60th percentile)

GRE Subject Math: 840 (85th percentile). Planning on retaking it.

TOEFL: 112/120.

Course Work:  calculus 1-3, linear algebra 1-2, abstract algebra, real analysis, measure theory, stochastic processes, stochastic analysis (grad level), probability, differential equations (ordinary and partials), data mining, econometrics at undergrad and grad level, linear regression, sampling theory, spatial analysis, design of experiments, microeconomics, macroeconomics, multivariate statistics at undergrand and grad level, statistical inference, bayesian statistics, time series, toplogy. Low grades though, average GPA is  3.3.

Research interests:  I would like to do research on statistics on manifolds. Or, more generally, applying geometry/topology to statistics. I'm open to many other problems like functional data analysis, time series,  regression, etc, etc etc.

Applying to:

Pittsburgh University.
Arizona State University.
University of Illinois.
University of Texas.
UC Davis.
Duke and Stanford.

Clearly, I'm having trouble assessing my real options here. So that's why I wanted to kindly ask you to point me in the right direction for "match" and "safety" schools.

Thanks again!

[StatsG0d]

I think your chances will be largely determined by the prestige of your undergrad and grad institutions. Your GPAs at both your bachelors and masters institutions are very low relative to other applicants. I think you might have to apply in the 30-50 range to have any realistic shot at getting in.

[Sansa314]

When you say 30-50 you mean in the US News school rankings?

Edit: I'm an International Student, so I don't think my institutions have much prestige in the US. In my home country though, they are flagship institutions.

Edited July 23, 2018 by Sansa314

[Bayesian1701]

I think footballman was talking about this list.  The rankings are a decent (but far from perfect)  indicator of the competitiveness of applications to programs.  In that range, there are a few places that are more competitive than their rankings suggest:  Yale (which is a small program and highly competitive), the UCs (a little bit more competitive since some people prefer their location), Northwestern (small and desirable location), and UT Austin (a new program that is small).  I would apply to as many places you can afford to pay application fees.  It may take two cycles to get a funded offer.  Some places will admit international students without funding, partially because some of the international students have some sort of external funding and also partially because they can sometimes get people willing to pay.  

[StatsG0d]

Agreed with @Bayesian1701. The rankings aren't perfectly correlated with acceptance rates (particularly for Ivies as they mentioned). For the state schools, particularly those in less desirable locations (i.e., suburban or rural settings), I think it's at least a good proxy.