Should be an easy decision, but...

[student12345]

Hi all. I'm currently trying to decide on a PhD program to attend. Here are my options:

UCSD, PhD in mathematics. Standard 30k TA/fellowship award. Would study statistics or probability theory. Seriously considering it due to the feel of the department. All of the faculty were extremely nice and I had a very good impression of the department from their Open House event plus the big Probability and Statistics Day conference that they hosted. However, since the 5 statistics faculty are in the mathematics department, they are not a well-known group.

UNC, PhD in statistics. Stipend is barely livable at around 14k after tax. There are many faculty working in statistics here but I'm not sure if they're all that well-known, in constrast to big names like Ruth Williams at UCSD. I will be visiting only a couple of days before April 15th.

UF, PhD in statistics. They're giving me their best possible offer, a four-year graduate school fellowship at 25k per year with very minimal TA work, and only during my second year. This will allow me to focus on my research. I'm very reluctant to accept their offer because they lost a lot of senior faculty (in particular Casella who passed away last summer) and don't have the finances to recover the faculty they're losing. On the other hand there are faculty here doing some interesting work with MCMC.

UConn, PhD in statistics. So far only a standard TAship, but if they get a grant they'll offer me a fellowship as well. The department is already very big and they're growing very rapidly. There are many probabilists and also several bayesians from Duke here. I had an okay impression of the department from my visit but I feel like I would only go if I was set on industry, which I'm definitely not. I mainly want an academic position at a decent school but I wouldn't mind working in financial mathematics (I already have a foot in that door).

April 15th is only a week away and I feel as if I'm utterly incapable of committing to the obvious choice, UNC (unless Cornell or Carnegie Mellon admit me). Is there anything else I should be considering? I'm not that concerned about location or weather although I have many friends who graduated from high school with me who are sophomores at UF. And obviously I really liked San Diego.

[are_we_there_yet?]

Wait until the UNC visit. There is a lot to be said for feeling comfortable, as it certainly seems you do with UCSD, but who is to say you won't have that same sort of feeling once you have visited UNC.

 

If you walk away from UNC feeling underwhelmed by the department, you can choose the generous UCSD offer with no regrets. On the other hand, if you love UNC, keep in mind that funded research opportunities abound in the Research Triangle. If your work is good I can't imagine you would be locked into 14k for more than a year or two.

[wine in coffee cups]

You have a general interest in statistics and probability now, no particular areas of focus? I would want to make sure you can get exposure to some diverse perspectives to help you figure out what kind of problems you like working on and what your career path could look like. I think that's most easily accomplished at a department that gives you a lot of options: a large faculty across all career stages, lots of researchers currently publishing, frequent seminars and visitors, perhaps interdisciplinary collaborations/funded projects to get inspiration for methods work from applications, things of that nature. I truthfully don't know much about the programs you are considering, but I suspect UNC is the frontrunner in this regard (especially with a good biostatistics department and proximity to NCSU/Duke).

 

I would also want to be around peers who had similar career ambitions as me. If you hope to go on the academic job market, you will really benefit from observing advanced PhD students go through the process themselves, not to mention getting advice from early career faculty. You don't want to be stumbling around without good mentoring, so again, a large department helps out a lot here, particularly one that has good academic placement.

 

Strongly encourage you to wait to decide until after you visit UNC. Nobody can hold that against you. You might save some people on waitlists a little grief and at least turn down UConn now, though.

[wine in coffee cups]

Thank you both for the advice. I will definitely wait until I visit. But wine in coffee cups, I am wondering if you think UCSD would be a decent choice. I am worried about the fact that it isn't a well-known statistics program. I don't actually have too much interest in applied statistics, so perhaps a PhD in mathematics would serve me better than a degree in statistics... But I could be wrong about that.

Oh, I have truly no idea about that, sorry man. I know the UCSD math department is overall solid, so I would guess the prob/stat group alumni fare pretty well, but you'll have to investigate that yourself if you don't know already.

 

I think the issue is more if you feel that your interests can still be served by the department even if they shift around a lot, which they basically do for everyone. Also, you are sooo young and have blitzed through undergrad in two years!! I would be wary of a program that limits your intellectual options and perspective because you haven't really had the opportunity yet to explore or learn what it feels like to hit a wall/ceiling. My interests are still solidifying, but the general areas I've more or less settled on were picked up at various points over the six years from my senior year of college to the present day. My education before that certainly helped develop my mathematical skills but was not informative as to what I wanted to study (even though at age 20 I would have disagreed and told you that I'd do a pure math PhD right out of college, lololol, because that's all I really knew at the time). I personally needed those extra years to encounter some limitations, get sick of where I was heading, try out new things, read a lot, start caring about areas of application I had no interest in before, etc. And now I'm glad to be in a place that serves my current set of interests well but will continue to work even with some evolution.

 

Statistics is a broad field, so I think if you feel awesome about it now you're not likely to have a complete about-face, but I wouldn't count on more intellectual stability than that. Maybe UCSD can accommodate a wider range of interests than I am uninformedly assuming, maybe not, but I think you should mull on that. I also think you'll learn a little more about the possibilities open to you and which doors you feel okay closing at this early stage in your career by way of comparison with UNC this week.

[wine in coffee cups]

Glad you had a good experience and an easier decision

[Statistique]

This is more for future readers' benefit than Kimolas (who we're really happy to have for next year!):

 

 

 

Stipend is barely livable at around 14k after tax.

 

 

That's quite an exaggeration.  It's one of the lower stipends around, but it's more than livable.  For comparison, I found a "cost of living" website that put this as equal to a 19k in Boston.  Personally, I was expecting to live in poverty, but instead I can afford a huge apartment with nice furniture, I go out to eat when I want to, and I spend money on fun things.  I'm not saving, but I'm not going into debt either and I live very comfortably.

 

So I guess I'm saying, don't underestimate the cost of living differences.  Also, don't let a school bribe you into being less happy for 5+ years with 10k.