Fall 2021 Profile Evaluation for Nontraditional Master’s in Statistics Applicant

[Plexor2]

Hi! I am planning on applying to various Master’s in Statistics programs for Fall 2021, but I am somewhat uncertain of my chances of being accepted into these programs.

 

Type of Student: Domestic White Male

 

Undergrad Institution: Regional university that is top 10 in its region
Major: Applied Mathematics and Statistics
GPA: ~3.2 Overall GPA, ~3.6 GPA each in upper division coursework and last 60 semester credits of coursework, ~3.7 Major GPA
Courses in Major (In order from freshman to senior year): Calc II (B+), Statistics I (B+), Calc III (B), Actuarial Statistics I (B), Actuarial Statistics II (A), Linear Algebra (A), Advanced Probability (B+), Econometrics (A-), Software Application for Mathematics (B), Statistics II (A), SAS Programming and Applied Statistics (A), Statistical and Mathematical Decision Making (A), Applied Mathematics and Statistics Capstone Seminar (A)

Programming: I have mainly used Stata, but I also have a small amount of familiarity with SAS and SQL

 

Q: 168 (92^nd percentile)
V: 155 (67^th percentile), 159 (82^nd percentile) when super-scored

W: 4.5 (80^th percentile)

 

Programs Applying: Master's in Statistics

 

Research Experience: I am currently working on a single-authored publication manuscript that is in the revision stage and that was submitted to a low-impact factor journal. I do not anticipate resubmitting my manuscript until after I apply to most, if not all, of my desired programs. I also performed research for my capstone project, which I presented at my school, but I am much happier with my manuscript. Both projects contain significant amounts of statistical analyses.

 

Work Experience: I have approximately 2 years of full-time work experience as a Research Analyst at my alma mater. I also have approximately a year and a half of part-time internship and contract experience performing varying degrees of data analysis.

 

Letters of Recommendation: One recommendation is from the head of the mathematics department at my alma mater who oversaw my math placement test, who I took one of my statistics courses with, and who was slightly involved in one of my internships, another recommendation is from another statistics professor who I took a few classes with and who was my advisor for my capstone course and project, and the last recommendation is from the editor of the journal which I submitted my manuscript to. I am not expecting my letters of recommendation to be anything out of the ordinary, but I am uncertain as to what the strength of two of them will be.

 

Research interests: I am the most interested in environmental statistics and public policy analysis. To a lesser extent, I am also highly interested in data science and Bayesian statistics.

 

School List:

• University of Chicago
• Duke
• University of Wisconsin
• UCLA
• UIUC
• University of Missouri
• Oregon State
• UC Santa Cruz

Currently, I am also considering Ohio State and Virginia Tech. As far as I know, every school on this list, with the exception of Chicago, Duke, and Ohio State, does not take overall GPAs into consideration, but instead, only looks at grades in math & stats courses and either GPAs concerning last 60 semester hours of coursework or grades in upper-level coursework only. I know that Duke super-scores the GRE, UIUC probably does as well, and Virginia Tech is considering it, whereas either the rest of the schools only take the most recent GRE scores into account or I do not know what their specific policies are regarding GRE super-scoring.

I am wondering what my chances of admission are for each of these institutions, and if there are any details that I may be overlooking that may factor into my chances of admission within any of these schools? It should be noted that while evaluating my chances, it has been approximately 8 years since I last took academic coursework of any kind. Are there any schools that I am overlooking that may also be good fits for me, and is there any reason for me to believe that any of the schools on my list are not good fits? Ideally, I would like to join a Master’s in Statistics program that has had a high degree of job placement success in the past compared to other Master’s in Statistics programs, that has the best networking opportunities for Master's in Statistics students and alumni, and that has a mixture of both theoretical and applied statistics courses. I plan on entering industry once I graduate, but a PhD is not completely out of the question.

Edited October 16, 2020 by Plexor2

[Plexor2]

Correcting my first post, some of the aforementioned schools from Wisconsin to UC Santa Cruz and Virginia Tech do appear to take overall GPAs into consideration, but prioritize GPAs concerning last 60 semester hours of coursework or grades in upper-level coursework over overall GPAs.

Edited October 30, 2020 by Plexor2

[Plexor2]

I'm 0 for 5 so far, with those schools being University of Washington, University of Chicago, Duke University, University of Wisconsin, and UC Santa Cruz. Though I did not consider UC Santa Cruz to be a safety school and I considered the rest to be reaches, I am paranoid that I won't get into any programs, especially since I have had massive problems obtaining job positions in the past. I REALLY need a response to better understand my chances of getting into the remainder of my programs and honest feedback regarding my admissions profile. At this point, I am still waiting to hear from UCLA, The Ohio State University, UIUC, Florida State University, University of Missouri, Virginia Tech, Oregon State University, and Kansas State University. I am hoping that those who work in admissions actually do look at admissions profiles holistically, and that overall GPAs are not the end-all, be-all regarding who to admit and who to reject.

[statats]

I am an international student but I've heard that for master's programs, it doesn't matter that much if you are domestic or international so I will just share my experience. I applied last year with pretty similar GRE(V159/Q169/W4.0), GPA(3.3), and course work with you but with Real Analysis and without any research experience (but I doubt this would matter that much for terminal Master's degree). I got admissions from several top 20-30 schools (mainly state universities in midwest) while I was rejected from The Ohio State University. I think OSU only admits a very few master's student and they offer TA positions to some master's students. I think master's admission for UC is quite competitive because of their locations regardless of their rankings. Admissions for master's programs is quite different from Ph.D programs. It highly depends on the size of the program and whether they pay their students and its location. That being said, I think you might have chance at FSU because they don't fund their students (They even sent some non-funding offers to their Ph.D admits last year). I didn't apply to any other schools that you listed, so I can't comment on them.What I can suggest is, go to their websites and see how many master's students they admitted last year. I hope you hear a good news from those schools soon!

[Plexor2]

On 2/28/2021 at 12:51 AM, statats said:

I am an international student but I've heard that for master's programs, it doesn't matter that much if you are domestic or international so I will just share my experience. I applied last year with pretty similar GRE(V159/Q169/W4.0), GPA(3.3), and course work with you but with Real Analysis and without any research experience (but I doubt this would matter that much for terminal Master's degree). I got admissions from several top 20-30 schools (mainly state universities in midwest) while I was rejected from The Ohio State University. I think OSU only admits a very few master's student and they offer TA positions to some master's students. I think master's admission for UC is quite competitive because of their locations regardless of their rankings. Admissions for master's programs is quite different from Ph.D programs. It highly depends on the size of the program and whether they pay their students and its location. That being said, I think you might have chance at FSU because they don't fund their students (They even sent some non-funding offers to their Ph.D admits last year). I didn't apply to any other schools that you listed, so I can't comment on them.What I can suggest is, go to their websites and see how many master's students they admitted last year. I hope you hear a good news from those schools soon!

Thank you for responding. Fortunately, I received an acceptance letter from Mizzou yesterday, so I won't be shut out this application cycle. While filling out the FSU application, undergraduate GPAs are calculated using applicants' GPA during their last 60 semester hours, so I labeled FSU as one of my safer schools.

Additionally, I am hoping that choosing to pursue assistantships hasn't hurt my chances at any schools, especially given that I probably won't need those assistantships in the end.

Edited March 2, 2021 by Plexor2