2019 statistics PhD profile evaluation and school

[Stati]

-Undergrad Institution: Asian University
Major: Statistics
GPA: 3.96/4.0

Type of Student: International

Relevant Courses: Calculus1,2(A+,B+), Multivariate Calculus(A+), Introduction to Analysis1,2(A+,A+), Linear Algebra(A+), Complex Analysis(A+), Numerical Analysis(A+), Mathematical Statistics1,2(A,A+), Regression Analysis(A+), Probability(A+), Computer Programming(A+), DATA Mining(A+), JAVA(A+), Micro,Macro Economy(A+,A+), Econometric(A+), and other topics of Statistics(CDA, Multivariate Data Analysis, Sampling Method...)(A+)

 

TOEFL:94(30/26/20/18)   I will retake to get 100 with S23 W23

GRE: 150/170/3.0  (V/Q/AW) I concern whether my low verbal score would kill me...

GRE Subject Mathematics: 670(53%) registered September test. aim to 70~80%  

 

Programs Applying:  Statistics PhD

 

Research Experience: 

-As an undergraduate research team leader, write two papers and give presentations, but not published (about 1 year)

-Give three presentations at the school mathematics seminar.

-Undergraduate Thesis

Teaching Experience:

-Elementary statistics TA for a semester

-High school math teacher for 1 year

(Are those experiences advantageous?)

 

Recommendation Letters:

-My research advisor. attended 4 courses and got all A+

-TA advisor.

-Statistics Professor. attended 3 courses and got all A+

 

Computer Skills : R, SAS, Matlab, JAVA, C++

Applying to: Statistics PhD 

CMU

NCSU

UMN

TAMU

Perdue

OSU

Johns Hopkins

Rice

UT-Austin

Northwestern

GWU

UMBC

SMU

ASU

 

Thank you for reading my profile.

I am not sure that I can get into one of those schools with funding.

Any recommendation for other schools would be really appreciated.

Edited August 28, 2018 by Stati

[Stat Assistant Professor]

You didn't mention what the prestige of your university is. For international applicants, the prestige of their undergrad carries a huge amount of weight. Most of the top programs could fill their incoming class with *just* students from Peking, Tsinghua, Fudan, Seoul National, KAIST, ISI, etc., if they wanted to. So if the university is not well-known to the admissions committee, they might just automatically reject the application. The only way I've seen international students from less prestigious schools getting admitted to Statistics PhD programs in the U.S. is by first doing a Masters degree at a more prestigious school (either in their country or in the U.S.)

[Stati]

8 minutes ago, Applied Math to Stat said:

You didn't mention what the prestige of your university is. For international applicants, the prestige of their undergrad carries a huge amount of weight. Most of the top programs could fill their incoming class with *just* students from Peking, Tsinghua, Fudan, Seoul National, KAIST, ISI, etc., if they wanted to. So if the university is not well-known to the admissions committee, they might just automatically reject the application. The only way I've seen international students from less prestigious schools getting admitted to Statistics PhD programs in the U.S. is by first doing a Masters degree at a more prestigious school (either in their country or in the U.S.)

Unfortunately, not a well-known university... Do you recommend any Masters program in the U.S. that provides some funding?

[Stat Assistant Professor]

33 minutes ago, Stati said:

Unfortunately, not a well-known university... Do you recommend any Masters program in the U.S. that provides some funding?

I'm not aware of any Masters programs in the U.S. that give funding to international students (although I'm sure that there might be a few that exist?). Is there any way that you could complete a Masters degree in your home country at a highly ranked university? That would help your case a lot.

Unfortunately, as things stand, I think that at a lot of schools in the U.S. would immediately reject your application, just because of the sheer volume of applications that already come from the top 15 or so schools in China, the top 5 or so schools from South Korea, and ISI, University of Calcultta, and a few of the more well-regarded IIT's in India.