Fall 2019 Stats PhD Profile Eval

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Hi and thanks for taking a look! I’m finishing up my senior year of undergrad and I’m planning to apply to Stat PhD programs for Fall 2019. I would appreciate any opinions on my chances at the schools I have already started my applications to and any advice on picking more schools to apply to.

 

Undergrad Institution: Large state school with a big statistics department (~200 majors)

Major: Mathematics & Statistics, Analytics

GPA: 3.9 Cumulative, 3.86 Major (4.0 Scale)

Applicant Demographics: Domestic White  Male

GRE General Scores: 163v/164q (Unofficial since I took the test this week)

Statistics Courses: Intro Statistical Modeling (A), Probability (A-), Regression Analysis (A), Statistical Programming (A), Statistical Learning (A), Data Visualization (A), Inferential Statistics (A), Time Series (A), Intro Bayesian Statistics (in progress), Statistical Consulting (in progress)

Mathematics Courses: Calculus 1-2 (AP), Linear Algebra (B+, honors course), Calculus 3 (B+), Differential Equations (A), Abstract Algebra (A), Real Analysis (A), Numerical Analysis (A), Optimization (A-)

Computer Science Courses: Data Structures (A), Database Systems(A), Algorithms(A), Artificial Intelligence (in progress)

Research Experience: I’ve worked with one advisor and various other students throughout undergrad. From a project freshman year I’m an author on a paper that is currently accepted pending minor edits in a B tier stats journal, hopefully will be accepted before applications are due. Sophomore year I worked largely independently on a project that I went on to present at the JSM and placed in a graduate/undergrad competition. Junior year I also presented a project at the JSM that resulted in some useful tools that I published as an R package on CRAN.

Awards/Honors: Participated in our school’s DataFest a few times and was on the winning team twice. Awarded scholarships from the math/stats/business school analytics programs. President’s list/Dean’s list each semester.

Relevant Work/Teaching Experience: I’ve had an IT internship at IBM, which led to a year long co-op as well as a summer research fellowship in the biostatistics department of a large children’s hospital. I’ve assisted professors as an unpaid TA in our stat learning, inferential stats, and intro modeling courses (mostly office hours, helping with classwork/programming and teaching occasional small lessons)

Letters of Recommendation: One from my research advisor, one from our stat department head, one from a professor I’ve helped in class, and a final from my real analysis professor. I think these will be relatively strong. Additionally, if I decide to apply to any biostats schools my mentor from the hospital will write a letter.

Concerns: the low grades in my first few math classes, but will my later grades mitigate that? Also I know my gre quant could stand to be a bit higher. If you see any other concerns from my profile let me know so I can consider those in my personal statement!

Programs I've started applying to:

NC State, Iowa State, Purdue, UC Irvine

Programs I’m considering applying to:

Pitt, CMU, Duke, Michigan, (JHU/Harvard for biostats)

I’m not sure how many programs I should apply for. If there are any programs doing data science/stat learning/spatial where you think I would fit in please let me know! Also, I don’t know if any of my options are too safe so it might not hurt to add a safety.

Again, thanks for reading this!