Chance Me: Math or Stats PhD

[tau6283]

Undergrad Institution: Smaller school (St. Louis University)

Major: Math
Minor: CS
GPA: 3.97 (Summa Cum Laude)

Type of Student: Domestic White Male

GRE General Test: Have not taken yet, though I expect high scores.
 

Programs Applying: Statistics PhD or Math PhD

 

Research Experience: Some in Number Theory. Was working on a paper, but COVID interfered big time. I'm working on it again now. Hopefully I can finish soon.
Awards/Honors/Recognitions: Received our school's award for the top performing math student.

Letters of Recommendation: My academic advisor, who I believe thinks very highly of me. My Number Theory professor/research advisor (a little worried about his if I don't finish the research paper). Professor from my Bayesian Statistics class, who I believe thinks very highly of me. Professor from undergraduate and graduate Analysis, who I'm confident thinks very highly of me.

Math Grades:  (All A's) Calc II-III, Linear Algebra, Intro to Proofs, Geometry, Differential Equations, Complex Variables, Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos, Number Theory, Advanced Undergrad Algebra and Analysis, Advanced Linear Algebra, Metric Spaces, Graduate Algebra and Analysis (Fall 2020)

Statistics Grades: (All A's) Foundation on Statistics, Probability Theory, Bayesian Statistics

CS Grades: (All A's) Intro to  Scientific Programming, Intro to Object-Oriented Programming, Data Structures (Fall 2020), Machine Learning (Fall 2020)

EDIT: Work Experience: About two years as tutor for athletes, a semester as a Learning Assistant for Pre-Calc, a semester as a Teaching Assitant for Calc I, and another semester as a TA for Calc II (Fall 2020).

Schools: Looking for recommendations for Statistics options.

        Stats: WashU, UW-Madison, UMinnesota-Twin Cities, UMass-Amherst, UConn

        Math: UChicago, UW-Madison, Brown, North Carolina State University, Clemson, SLU

 

Hey everybody. I am a senior math major. I've spent the last four years planning to do pure math. But in the last few weeks I've been seriously considering instead doing computational statistics, or Machine Learning. Still haven't decided. A large factor will be whether or not I can get into a good grad school for math.

 

I'm looking for any advice you can give on school recommendations. I'm trying to apply to very few places. My financial situation is good enough not to qualify for support, but bad enough that I would really like to not spend much at all on application fees. Also, for schools not requiring the General GRE, how bad would not taking it be? I'd like to avoid costs there as well, if possible, though I believe it may not be.

 

For my recommendation letters, I'm going to talk to my advisor to get more personalized help/advice.

Edited August 30, 2020 by tau6283
Added Work Experience

[StatsG0d]

I think your stats list is much too bottom heavy. I'm sure you could get into some top-10 stats programs and some top-3 biostatistics programs. Check out U Washington biostats--they have some interesting faculty doing ML research. 

[MathStat]

I could definitely see you get into either duke math or stat phd with your profile. I'd apply to duke math if I were you (several profs in the duke math department have cross appointments with stat, eecs, etc.; many of them do great ML research;  the department is also extremely supportive; the math phd cohorts are a little smaller than the stats ones; however the stat program is also great). 

And I agree with @StatsG0d, your lists are somewhat bottom heavy.

Edited August 31, 2020 by MathStat