Fall 2023 Stats PhD Profile Review

[TopDownHockey]

Undergrad Institution San Jose State University

Major(s): Business, Concentration in Marketing

GPA: 3.07

Type of Student: Caucasian male, American

Programs Applying: Statistics PhD, Fall 2023 admission. (Might end up applying to Master's Programs instead).

Courses taken: Calculus I-II, Statistics for Business & Economics

Currently taking and plan to take: Calculus III, Linear Algebra, Introduction to Statistical Inference, Discrete Mathematics

GRE General Test: 162V/167Q

Research Experience: Independent research using various statistical modeling techniques to evaluate hockey players and teams. (Research has been featured in ESPN, Sportsnet, and The Athletic).

Pertinent Activities or Jobs: Data Scientist at Snowflake, where I build statistical models to ensure the safety of the company's cloud infrastructure and reduce expenditures across a number of operations, including Legal and SaaS. Also, my research in hockey led to me starting a data science consulting business where I offer subscription-based access to the outputs of my statistical models to various thought-leading analysts and bettors.

Awards: Dean's list in two semesters in Undegrad.

Letters of Recommendation (prospective):  One from my boss (Director of Data Science), one from my boss's boss (VP of Engineering Applications), one from a business partner in the hockey analytics space, and one from a Business Professor at SJSU. I believe these are all strong letters.

Schools applying to: I'm not sure yet. I'm targeting good schools one notch below the very top like UW Madison, University of Washington, and UBC (I understand UBC requires me to do a Master's first), but I'm not sure I have any chances of getting into those either. 

Would it make a significant difference if I re-took the GRE and scored 170 in Quant, or am I doomed by my grades and lack of math-based coursework either way?

[cyberwulf]

Your math background and grades are well short of what is needed for admission to any well-regarded stats PhD program (e.g., US News Top 50). If you can afford it, your best chance to improve your standing is to get into a decent Masters program and rock it there with great grades and meaningful research experience.