PhD Statistics Review

[unkownunkown]

Goal: Statistics/Data Science PhD

Education:

• BA Economics + Statistics minor from a university in my home country; university is not very internationally known.

• Undergrad GPA: 3.4/4.0.

• A/A- grades in most statistics courses.

• Msc In economic research from a German university

• Master’s grade: 1.4 German scale, which seems to translate roughly to a 3.8-4.0 GPA

• The university is one of the top economics departments in Germany/Europe, though I am unsure how familiar US statistics departments are with it.

• Master’s program allowed me to take PhD-level economics courses and potentially fast-track into the PhD.

Math / stats / quantitative coursework:

• 3 PhD-level econometrics courses: two around A-/A range, one B+.

• Advanced microeconomics: A-, quite proof-based and involved analysis / measure-theoretic arguments.

• Concern: because many of these courses are listed as economics/econometrics, it may not be obvious to statistics committees that they involved real analysis, measure theory, linear algebra.

Research:

• One paper published in a reasonably well-known statistics journal, though it is a short technical note rather than a full-length article.

• I think I could also published another paper in TMLR by the time of admission but still uncertain

• I also have my master's thesis on arxiv which is about bootstrap inference and extreme value theory

Letters:

• Two expected strong letters from econometrics professors who know my research and mathematical ability well and one of them used to be a professor at Columbia but in the economics department.

• Both are more theoretical than applied and have some publications in statistics journals.

• another strong letter from a statistics professor at my undergraduate university (they did their PhD at LSE).

• Concern: most letters may come from economics/econometrics faculty rather than statistics faculty.

Target schools:

• Reach:  Columbia Statistics, UCLA Statistics, University of Washington Statistics, NYU Data Science.

• Target University of Michigan Statistics, University of Toronto Statistics, LSE Statistics,Chicago Statistics, UW Madison, UNC Chapel Hill

• safe: Penn State Statistics, North Carolina State, University of Minesotta

Question:
Given my profile,  how would statistics PhD committees evaluate an economics/econometrics background like this, especially if the mathematical content of the coursework is not immediately obvious from the course titles? Which departments should I add to make the list more balanced?

Edited May 15 by unkownunkown