Stats PhD Profile Eval and School Recomendations

[stathesh]

Undergrad Institution: UC Berkeley (large public school)
Major(s): Applied Math
Minor(s): Data Science
GPA: 3.8 overall, 3.75 major

Type of Student: Domestic Asian Male

GRE General Test: 
Q: 166 
V: 167 
W: Not released yet but 4.5-5.5 expected
GRE Subject Test in Mathematics: N/A (not offered in 2021 anymore due to Covid-19)
 

Programs Applying: Statistics PhD

 

Research Experience: (At your school or elsewhere? What field? How much time? Any publications or conference talks etc...)

• None really, am doing a directed reading program where I will be self learning a topic of my choosing (stochastic differential equations) while supervised by a 3rd year Math PhD student

 

Relevant Coursework: Real Analysis, Numerical Analysis, Bayesian Inference, Linear Modeling, Time Series, Probability Theory, Statistical Methods, Linear Algebra, Abstract Algebra, computer programming in python, data science foundations (basically doing stats in Python)

Awards/Honors/Recognitions: 

• Dean's list every semester

Pertinent Activities or Jobs: 

• Math tutor and study group leader: led classroom style study groups twice a week for Calc II (Calc BC equivalent) where I prepared worksheets, and lesson plans
• Quantitative Consulting at large financial firm: worked with ML model validation and analyzing parameters and model assumptions

Letters of Recommendation: 

1. Stats Prof - knows me fairly well has been guiding me with grad school apps past year
2. Stats Prof - also knows me fairly well
3. Math prof - real analysis professor, seems to like me pretty well, am currently in his course

Any Miscellaneous Points that Might Help:

All my letters of recs are from assistant profs, so nobody too established

Applying to Where: Stats unless stated otherwise

• UCSB
• USC (Data science and Operations)
• UCLA
• Northwestern
• Yale
• Columbia
• Penn
• Duke
• University of Washington, Seattle
• Any other recs for schools?
   

 

[Stat Assistant Professor]

Your list seems reasonable, but I don't think you need to add Northwestern. I think UCLA and UCSB seem like good bets. I would recommend removing Northwestern and replacing it with a school like University of Minnesota or NCSU to be 'safe.' I think you have a great shot at UW and Duke as well.

The Ivies are hard to say because they admit few domestic students. But since you have a great GPA from UC Berkeley, you should be "in the discussion," provided you have strong letters of recommendation. However, since some of them are super competitive (for example, UPenn Wharton only has 5 incoming PhD students each year, and only one or two in each batch is domestic), I would maybe recommend removing one of the Ivies from your list and replacing it with Carnegie Mellon.

Edited September 15, 2020 by Stat Assistant Professor