Purdue vs Minnesota vs Ohio State vs Univ of Toronto

[statapp]

Hi! I am trying to decide between the current offers for Stats PhD I have from Purdue, Minnesota, Ohio State and Univ of Toronto (Math Finance track in Statistics dept). I am interested in the areas of Machine Learning and high dimensional statistics, although I am open to explore new areas and then decide. Other than UoT where supervisors are already assigned, I have the flexibility to choose my supervisor in the other 3 places. In UoT, I have the chance to work at the interface of machine learning & finance which I find appealing. My questions are:

1. Which would be a better choice if I want a career in industry and which would be more suited for academia?

2. Among the US universities, is there any significant difference in the reputation of the 3 places? How close does the best of the 3 come to UoT in terms of research and future prospects?

It would be really helpful if someone could suggest well-reputed faculty members or someone doing good research in the areas of ML and  high dimensional statistics at Purdue, Minnesota & OSU.

Note: Due to the COVID-19 issues, I am considering deferment to next fall. While the US universities have given me the option to do so, there has been no such assurance from UoT so far.

[SPIWizard]

Minnesota should be very strong in high dimensional stats. Prof. Hui Zou goes without saying but I have also seen plenty of influential papers by Prof. Y. Yang from the same department. I think it's also the highest ranked of the US universities there on USNews.

[Spaghettini Plot]

I'd say Minnesota and Toronto are probably pretty similarly strong, and overall probably stronger than the other two.  If you're looking specifically at mathematical finance, Toronto is a bit niche that they have it as an option.  But just overall in terms of high-dimensional statistics/ ML they're both very good options. 

Additional factors may depend on where you want to end up living for 5 years or if you in fact did want to defer a year. 

Edited April 10, 2020 by Spaghettini Plot