PhD Stats Profile Evaluation Fall 2021 (need advice badly)

[lpruj]

Hey guys just discovered this forum. I really need some input because I am hearing differing opinions from my advisors and everyone over what types of grad schools I can apply and get accepted to. I honestly don't know what my profile is considered and need some honest advice. I will begin my application process in September.

(Edit: I am a domestic student)

Undergrad Institution: Top 120 in USA (medium sized private college not really top ranked but known in my state)

Majors: Math and Computer Science double major (also majoring in religion but I doubt that will make an impact lol)

GPA: 3.8 Math and Computer Science GPA: 3.95 

GRE: Not taken yet but getting Q: 165+  V: 160s in practices

Research Experience:

• One summer spent in geospatial statistics lab in Germany and have a very good letter of recommendation from that and GitHub project
• Currently working in a bio research lab as statistician and doing data viz. 2 publications under review but not first author
• Accepted to 2 REU's over the summer but both cancelled due to COVID
• This summer I will be doing Google Summer of Code. I will be developing a spatial statistics package in R. Can get a letter of rec from my mentor who is a stats professor

Upper Level Courses:

Linear algebra (A), differential equations (A), statistical analysis (A), graph theory (A), abstract algebra (A), data structures and algorithms (A), vehicular cloud computing (A), data mining (A)

Going to take analysis 1 and advanced linear algebra in fall semester

Schools considered:

Any advice on the schools I can consider? Here are some of my ideas:

• Texas A&M
• Oregon State
• Rutgers
• NYU
• Arizona State
• UC Santa Barbara 
• UC Davis
• University of Washington 
• UT Austin

 

 

 

Edited May 23, 2020 by lpruj

[Stat Assistant Professor]

Are you domestic or international? If you are domestic, I think you could probably add a few more schools in the range of NCSU through University of Minnesota and one other "reach" school besides UW.  With your profile, you can probably get admitted to Rutgers, ASU, and UCSB, so I would recommend applying to more schools around the range of TAMU.  

Just a note though: NYU has only 7 PhD students total, and they appear to all be international, so it might be extremely difficult to get into NYU. 

[lpruj]

I am domestic! I edited my post. Thanks so much for the prompt reply, I will be looking at more schools in that range. 

[Stat Assistant Professor]

If you might be interested in biostatistics, I think you could also get into really good biostat PhD programs. I could see you getting into somewhere like University of Pennsylvania Biostatistics and biostat programs ranked higher than that as well.

[lpruj]

I haven't considered bio stats at all or looked at the field in general but honestly it seems quite interesting! Thanks for the advice, I'm going to look more into this. 

[StatsG0d]

You have a pretty deep math background and a really high GPA. Your letters sound reasonably strong. I think you have a really good chance at a top-20 stats program and a top-5 biostats program.