2015 Applicant Profiles / Admission Results - Biostatistics/Statistics

[statagirl]

Hey everyone!  I've seen threads like this in previous application seasons and found their content really helpful.  Can we get this started for the Fall 2015 season?  Here is the general format to follow: 

 

Undergrad Institution: (School or type of school (such as Big state/Lib Arts/Ivy/Technical/Foreign (Country?))
Major(s):
Minor(s):
GPA:

Type of Student: (Domestic/International (Country?), Male/Female?, Minority?)

GRE General Test:
Q: xxx (xx%)
V: xxx (xx%)
W: x.x (xx%)
GRE Subject Test in Mathematics:
M: xxx (xx%)

TOEFL Score: (xx = Rxx/Lxx/Sxx/Wxx) (if applicable)

Grad Institution: (school or type of school?) (if applicable)

Concentration: 
GPA:
 

Programs Applying: (Statistics/Operation Research/Biostatistics/Financial Math/etc.)

 

Research Experience: (At your school or elsewhere? What field? How much time? Any publications or conference talks etc...)
Awards/Honors/Recognitions: (Within your school or outside?)
Pertinent Activities or Jobs: (Such as tutor, TA, etc...)

Letters of Recommendation: (what kinds of professors? "well-known" in field? etc.)
Any Miscellaneous Points that Might Help: (Such as connections, grad classes, etc...)

Applying to Where: (Color use here is welcome)
School - Program / Admitted/Rejected/Waitlisted/Pending on (date) / Accepted/Declined
School - Program / Admitted/Rejected/Waitlisted/Pending on (date) / Accepted/Declined
School - Program / Admitted/Rejected/Waitlisted/Pending on (date) / Accepted/Declined

[Stat Assistant Professor]

Just an fyi, this forum won't allow you to edit your posts after a little while, so to keep us posted on admissions results, put the results in your signature too.I'm sure that will help a lot of future applicants as well.

[Ergodic]

Has anybody heard anything yet from the Grad Schools for PhD statistics or is it too early? I have seen a couple of NCSU and OSU acceptances on gradcafe.

[StatsG0d]

I think it's still very early and the only schools that would be accepting people so early would be those who review on a rolling basis.

[dynamic89]

So Duke has sent out some rejections today, but no acceptances?

[CommonerCoffee]

Yeah, I got a Duke rejection just now also. That's a bit disheartening, to be flat rejected on what seems like the first round of considerations.

[dynamic89]

Duke statistics or biostatistics? I only applied to their statistics department.

[bayessays]

Statistics.

[CommonerCoffee]

Statistics PhD as well.

[dynamic89]

acceptances seemed to come before rejections in previous years tho

[bayessays]

Duke seems to have interviews for people who make a certain cut, so their real acceptances don't come until the end of February.  It seems like they let the people who won't be interviewed know early this time.

[Bespoke]

Has anybody heard anything yet from the Grad Schools for PhD statistics or is it too early? I have seen a couple of NCSU and OSU acceptances on gradcafe.

 

I received an acceptance for NCSU PhD Statistics in December. 

[Ergodic]

Bespoke - many congratulations! I have applied to NCSU as well...waiting to see how far I can go.

[stats_is_cool]

I guess I'll be the first to respond.

Undergrad Institution: Large state school
Major(s): Statistics
Minor(s): Mathematics
GPA: 3.62 (3.9 in-major)

Type of Student: Domestic white male

GRE General Test:
Q: 164 (88%)
V: 158 (78%)
W: 4.5 (80%)
GRE Subject Test in Mathematics:
M: N/A

 

Programs Applying: PhD Statistics

 

Research Experience: Provided programming support for a prof's research over the summer, no publications/conferences.
Awards/Honors/Recognitions: Deans List, Dept. Scholarship for a year
Pertinent Activities or Jobs: Worked essentially as a math tutor for freshman calc classes for 5 semesters. 
                                                 Volunteer with a stat consulting lab from summer - now, working on collaboration projects and walk-in consulting. 

Letters of Recommendation: One from the director of the consulting lab, probably the most well-known.
                                                  One from a new associate professor who taught me for Intro Stat, Regression and Experimental Design.

                                                  One from a professor who taught me Probability and Adv Calc, and was my research advisor for the summer.
                                                 While they aren't all too well-known, they all had really nice things to say about me and helped convey my enthusiasm to                                                   learn more stats/do research

Any Miscellaneous Points that Might Help: N/A

Edited January 20, 2015 by stats_is_cool

[shakira_stat]

Undergrad Institution: Large State School, Top 20 for Applied Math and Pure Math (not ranked for Statistics though)
Major(s): Math
Minor(s):
GPA: 3.79 (3.97 in-major)

Type of Student: Domestic Asian Male

GRE General Test:
Q: 170 (98%)
V: 159 (~80%)
W: 4.0 (~59%)
GRE Subject Test in Mathematics:
M: N/A
 

Programs Applying: PhD Statistics

 

Research Experience: 

1. Created photovoltaics research project.

2. Worked with theoretical ecology post-doc on campus. Presented at out-of-state conference.

3. Did some bioinformatics at REU. Presented at two out-of-state conferences.
Awards/Honors/Recognitions: Campus-wide research award, Dean’s List, a bunch of scholarships
Pertinent Activities or Jobs: Former president of math honor society.

Letters of Recommendation: Just my research mentors from three different research projects. One is a fairly new professor. One is director of lab group. One is director of research lab. None have any relation to the statistics world, which may have hurt me (oh well).

Any Miscellaneous Points that Might Help: Did an REU at two of the schools that I’m applying to (don’t know if that counts as “connections”). Also, I’ve only taken three prob/stat classes, so I may have a weaker foundation than some other applicants.

Edited January 20, 2015 by shakira_stat

[StatsG0d]

Undergrad Institution: Top 100 Private, no math/statistics PhD programs offered

Major(s): Economics
Minor(s): Mathematics
GPA: 3.81

Type of Student: DWM

GRE General Test:
Q: 164 (88%)
V: 157 (74%)
W: 5.0 (93%)
GRE Subject Test in Mathematics:
M: Did not take

TOEFL Score: n/a

Grad Institution: n/a

Concentration: 
GPA:
 

Programs Applying: PhD Statistics

 

Research Experience: 1 year RA for undergrad professor; 2 years RA at international organization; Undergraduate thesis
Awards/Honors/Recognitions: Magna Cum Laude; Alpha Sigma Nu; Received superior rating at current job
Pertinent Activities or Jobs: Working as econometrics RA; volunteering as tutor

Letters of Recommendation: 1 Econ professor (very well known); 1 biostatistics professor (well known); 1 math professor (not well known, but was the top performing student in his differential equations and real analysis classes)
Any Miscellaneous Points that Might Help: Coming from a relatively unknown university with mediocre GRE scores, I think my research experience and letters made the difference.

Edited January 23, 2015 by footballman2399

[ar_rf]

I've pretty much received all my decisions, and I suspect others have or will soon as well, so I might as well bump this.

 

Undergrad Institution: Top 10 private

Major(s): Statistics, Economics

Minor(s): n/a

GPA: 3.86

Type of Student: Male Domestic Asian

 

GRE General Test:

Q: 170 (98%)

V: 167 (97%)

W: 4.5 (80%)

 

Programs Applying: PhD Statistics, Econometrics and Statistics

 

Research Experience: Significant amount of econ research in school. Two years as a full-time RA at a Federal Reserve bank doing econ research.

Letters of Recommendation: Good one from a well known stat professor, good one from a famous econ professor, great one from a relatively unknown econ researcher.

 

Berkeley - Pending, presumed reject (as of 3/5)

Washington - Waitlist (1/23)

Chicago - Reject (3/5)

Carnegie Mellon - Accept, no stat/ml (2/24)

Michigan - Accept (2/9)

Wisconsin - Accept (1/28)

Columbia - Waitlist (2/26)

Minnesota - Accept (1/21)

Purdue - Accept (1/15)

Ohio - Accept (12/30)

UCLA - Accept (1/29)

UIUC - Accept (2/16)

 

Chicago-Booth - Accept (2/16)

Edited March 5, 2015 by ar_rf

[hiolpe]

Undergrad Institution: Public state university

Major(s): Mathematics

Minor(s): Statistics

GPA: 3.59 (3.8 in math/stat classes)

Type of Student: Domestic White Male

 

GRE General Test:

Q: 164 (88%)

V: 156 (71%)

W: 4.0 (56%)

 

Programs Applying: PhD Biostatistics, MS Biostatistics, and PhD Statistics

 

Research Experience: Did research at my home university for a summer.  Published a paper.  Did an REU the next summer.  Both fall under mathematical biology.

Letters of Recommendation: Excellent letter of rec from my advisor.  Excellent letter from my analysis professor.  Good letter from my REU mentor

 

Washington (PhD Biostatistics) - Reject

Minnesota (PhD Biostatistics) - Waitlist

North Carolina State University (PhD Statistics) - Waitlist

Duke (PhD Biostatistics) - Interview

Boston University (PhD Biostatistics) - Interview

Berkeley (MS Biostatistics) - Accept

Michigan (MS Biostatistics) - Accept

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (PhD Biostatistics) - Accept

UCLA (PhD Biostatistics) - Accept

Edited March 6, 2015 by hiolpe

[WhiteLion]

Undergrad Institution: Top 40 Private U.S.
Major(s): Math, Music
Minor(s):
GPA: 3.67(Only 3.0 in Math, bad grades in Algebra/Analysis  )

Type of Student: Domestic White Male

GRE General Test:
Q: 170 (98%)
V: 170 (99%)
W: 5.0 (93%)

Grad Institution: Secondary U.S. State School(Not ranked in Statistics)

Concentration: Statistics (M.A.)
GPA: 4.0
 

Programs Applying: Statistics, Applied Mathematics and Statistics

 

Research Experience: None
Awards/Honors/Recognitions: Had a large scholarship for undegrad, funded master's student
Pertinent Activities or Jobs: Math tutor, taught several different math/stats classes as a TA

Letters of Recommendation: One from a senior faculty member at my master's institution whom I took 3 courses from and is well known, one from my analysis professor, one from my prob theory/mathematical statistics professor. 
Any Miscellaneous Points that Might Help: Took the grad pure math real analysis sequence at my master's school and scored at the top of the class

Maryland(Applied Math and Stats PhD) - 

Michigan(Stats PhD) - Reject

Stony Brook(Applied Math and Stats PhD) - 

Columbia(Stats PhD) - 

Johns Hopkins(Applied Math and Stats PhD) - 

UNC(Stats PhD) - 

NYU(Stats PhD) -

Purdue(Stats PhD) - 

Northwestern(Stats PhD) - 

UC Davis(Stats PhD) - 

Ohio State(Stats PhD) - Accept

Toronto(Stats PhD) - 

Also accepted to the PhD program at my master's school

 

My first letter writer encouraged me to be ambitious with my applications, which I did. I have heard nothing from the majority of schools I applied to, which I assume is bad at this point, but I got into Ohio State, which I am happy about.

Edited March 8, 2015 by WhiteLion

[MLHopeful]

Undergrad Institution: Top math/stats/CS school in Canada
Major(s): Stats, Pure math and C&O
Minor(s):
GPA: 91.4% (90% and above is an A+)

Type of Student: American citizen

GRE General Test:
Q: 170 (98%)
V: 166 (96%)
W: 5.0 (93%)
GRE Subject Test in Mathematics:
M: 750 (71%) (only submitted to Stanford)
 

Programs Applying: Statistics, one CS

 

Research Experience: 2 full-time 4 month terms in pure math, machine learning, 4 months part-time in applying ML to HCI, 4 months full time at a top tech company in ML research
Awards/Honors/Recognitions: Grades honours, fellowships for research, nothing particularly exciting
Pertinent Activities or Jobs: 16 months of full-time intern experience, all in statistical jobs.

Letters of Recommendation: 4 letters - one from each prof I worked with, plus my research supervisor at the tech company (who also had a PhD from a top school). All the profs are senior, although not overly famous. The letters, I believe, were quite strong, I suspect the one from the ML prof put me among his strongest students ever (grad or undergrad). 
Any Miscellaneous Points that Might Help: Taken ~5 PhD level classes, many more cross-listed masters classes, have a first author paper submitted in ML.

Applying to Where: (Statistics PhD unless otherwise noted)
Berkeley -  Accepted
Stanford - Rejected
CMU - Waitlisted, immediately removed myself from consideration (there were some complications here: )

Chicago - Accepted

MIT (CS) - Rejected

Washington - Accepted

Columbia - Accepted

Edited March 9, 2015 by MLHopeful

[MSc_in_SMC]

Undergrad Institution: Small Canadian Primarily Undergraduate
Major(s): Mathematics and Statistics
Minor(s): Economics
GPA: 4.0
Type of Student: Canadian Male

Graduate Institution: Canadian Research University
Major(s): MSc Statistics (2 year program)
GPA: 94%

GRE Revised General Test:
Q: 170 (98%)
V: 167 (97%)
W: 4.0 (56%)
GRE Subject Test in Mathematics:
M: N/A

Program Applying: PhD Statistics

Research Experience: 3 Summer RAs at Undergraduate Institution, RA at Graduate Institution, all in Statistics. 2 publications accepted, 3 submitted. Several Conference Talks.
Awards/Honours/Recognitions: 4 student awards for Conference Talks (2 Regional, 2 National)
Pertinent Activities or Jobs: 6 Semesters TA during undergrad, 1 Semester during Grad.

Applying to Where: 
Carnegie Mellon - Joint Statistics and Machine Learning - Accepted February 20th Attending!
Carnegie Mellon - Statistics - Accepted February 19th 
Columbia - Statistics - Accepted February 11th
Duke - Statistical Science - Interview Offered December 12th, Accepted February 27th
Harvard - Statistics - Waitlisted February 6th
University of British Columbia - Statistics - Accepted February 24th
University of California Berkeley - Statistics - Rejected March 11th 
University of Toronto - Statistics - Accepted March 10th
University of Washington - Statistics - Accepted January 16th

[CommonerCoffee]

Undergrad Institution: Top 15 Liberal Arts College
Major(s): Mathematics
Minor(s): Physics
GPA: 3.91
Type of Student: Domestic Asian Male

GRE Revised General Test:
Q: 170 (98%)
V: 162 (89%)
W: 4.5 (80%)
GRE Subject Test in Mathematics:
M: N/A

Program Applying: PhD/MA Statistics/Biostatistics

Research Experience: 1 Astronomy project at home institution, 1 summer biostatistics REU, SIBS
Awards/Honours/Recognitions: 1 Intro Chemistry award, ASA student membership recipient
Pertinent Activities or Jobs: 10 on the Putnam one year, graded math homework for 3 years, compiled an introductory R manual.

Applying to Where: 

Carnegie Mellon - Statistics PhD - Rejected February 9th 

Columbia - Statistics PhD- Rejected March 17th 

Duke - Statistics PhD - Rejected January 7th 

Wisconsin - Statistics PhD - Accepted February 20th

Harvard - Biostatistics PhD - Rejected February 18th

Minnesota - Biostatistics PhD - Accepted January 13th

Washington - Biostatistics PhD- Waitlisted January 9th, Rejected April 13th 

Johns Hopkins- Biostatistics PhD- Waitlisted (?) / Rejected April 9th (Never formally got back to me with a decision, had to inquire myself) 

Berkeley - Biostatistics MA - Accepted February 4th

Michigan - Biostatistics PhD - Accepted January 4th Attending!

[echlori]

Undergrad Institution: Top 10 UK University (top 3 in mathematics and statistics)
Major(s): Four year integrated masters programme in Statistics
GPA: Second Upper Class Honours
Type of Student: International Asian Male

GRE Revised General Test:
Q: 169 (98%)
V: 164 (93%)
W: 4.5 (78%)
GRE Subject Test in Mathematics:
M: 600 (36%)

Program Applying: MS Statistics/Biostatistics/CS - my interest is mainly in Machine Learning

Research Experience: 
- 2 summer research attachments while in undergrad - 1 first author paper and 1 second author paper. 
- 16 months research assistantship in Deep Learning - 1 second author paper and 1 second author patent.
Awards/Honours/Recognitions: 
Pertinent Activities or Jobs: Currently working in a data science role in government.

Applying to Where: 

University of Washington (Statistics): Pending
University of Washington (Biostatistics): Rejected
Carnegie Mellon University (CS): Accepted Rejected (Yes, I was one of those affected   )

Carnegie Mellon University (ML): Rejected
Carnegie Mellon University (Computational Data Science): Accepted

Stanford University (Statistics): Rejected

University of British Colombia (Statistics): Rejected
UC San Diego (Computer Science): Accepted

After 2 years of trying for a PhD, I changed my mind. While I don't entirely rule out eventually doing a PhD, my aim now is to finish my masters and continue in the data science industry. Whether this has resulted in my SOP being more "focused" or not, I have no idea. Unless UW comes with an offer, I should be headed to San Diego. 

[Portmanteaujam]

Undergrad Institution: Top master's-level private university
Major(s): Mathematics, Computer Science
Minor(s):
GPA: 3.62
Type of Student: DWM

GRE Revised General Test:
Q: 164
V: 164
W: 5.0
GRE Subject Test in Mathematics:
M: N/A

Program Applying: PhD Statistics

Research Experience: 2 REUs in mathematical criminology, 1 research fellowship in statistics and social sciences, 1 published paper
Awards/Honours/Recognitions: MAA presentation awards, departmental awards and scholarships, etc.
Pertinent Activities or Jobs: Civil engineering teaching assistant, NASA intern, currently working as a data scientist

Applying to Where: 

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill - INSTORE PhD - Rejected

University of Texas, Austin - Statistics PhD - Rejected

University of California, Los Angeles - Statistics PhD - Rejected

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign - Statistics PhD - Accepted

Rice - Statistics PhD - Accepted

Northwestern - Statistics PhD - Accepted + Attending!

Edited April 17, 2015 by Portmanteaujam

[hausinthehouse]

Undergraduate Institution: Top 100 US SLAC

Major(s): Philosophy

GPA: 3.84

Type of Student: US Citizen, Male

GRE Revised General Test:

Q: 169 (97%)

V: 170 (99%)

W: 5.5 (98%)

GRE Subject Test in Mathematics:

M: N/A

Program Applying: MS Biostatistics

Research Experience: None

Awards/Honours/Recognitions: An English publication, repeated Dean's List, distinction in my major

Pertinent Activities or Jobs: SIBS, math tutor

Applying to Where:

Michigan - Accepted January 27th (funded) - attending

Minnesota - Accepted February 11th (funded)

UCLA - accepted March 15th

UNC - Accepted February 2nd

Washington - rejected January 11th