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Anyone heard back from PhD programs?


George

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That's odd. Maybe they will get back to you soon. ( I applied to Penn State but have not heard about acceptance or rejection)

Just got off the phone. The main reason they wanted to call me was to determine my level of interest and based on that decide whether or not to nominate me for a graduate fellowship. The fellowship basically reduces the teaching load, but are offered by the graduate school, so the math dept. is actually competing with the other departments for these fellowships, and if it happens that I get the fellowship but decide not to attend, then the math dept. would essentially "lose" that fellowship, so they don't want to nominate people for whom penn state is low on their list of priorities.

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I got a rejection from Wisconsin-Madison a week or two ago and the other day I was notified I had been accepted to University of Kansas! I'm excited that I definitely get to do math next year and won't have to figure out something else out.

Still waiting to hear from: Cornell, Illinois - Urbana-Champaign, CUNY Graduate Center, WashU, Dartmouth and University of Buffalo

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I emailed Washington about my application and got this in response:

"We are just now making offers. I'm 99% certain to make you an offer in the next few days, perhaps as early as this weekend." followed by a bunch of information about stipends. Absurdly excited, ~98% sure its where I'm going to go (1% chance I don't get in, 1% chance I'll like one of my other schools better, ~ because I don't know probability theory and don't feel like figuring out the proper %), but I'm trying hard not to get out of control until I see that official letter in my mailbox :D

On 2/26/2010 at 1:57 PM, Reynolds said:

I got a rejection from Wisconsin-Madison a week or two ago and the other day I was notified I had been accepted to University of Kansas! I'm excited that I definitely get to do math next year and won't have to figure out something else out.

Still waiting to hear from: Cornell, Illinois - Urbana-Champaign, CUNY Graduate Center, WashU, Dartmouth and University of Buffalo

Hey, I go to UB! (its University AT Buffalo, by the way). If you have any questions about the area/school/department, I could give some honest answers if you want, though looking at the rest of your list it seems firmly in your safety school zone ?

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Just got off the phone. The main reason they wanted to call me was to determine my level of interest and based on that decide whether or not to nominate me for a graduate fellowship. The fellowship basically reduces the teaching load, but are offered by the graduate school, so the math dept. is actually competing with the other departments for these fellowships, and if it happens that I get the fellowship but decide not to attend, then the math dept. would essentially "lose" that fellowship, so they don't want to nominate people for whom penn state is low on their list of priorities.

Thanks for sharing the info and congrats!

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Hey, I go to UB! (its University AT Buffalo, by the way). If you have any questions about the area/school/department, I could give some honest answers if you want, though looking at the rest of your list it seems firmly in your safety school zone :/

My mistake! I go to Geneseo, so I'm used to just calling it UB or Buffalo, but I wanted to be clear about what school I was talking about. No one ever pointed out to me that it's AT Buffalo. And yes, sadly UB is probably the school I'm least likely to go to, but you never know!

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As a follow up, I just got official acceptance from Washington, now I can party without that 1% fear! :D

Reynolds, to add to the confusion, it actually used to be University of Buffalo, it switched to at when it became a SUNY school in the 60s.

Edited by origin415
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Not really. The only "research" I did was an REU this past summer; I learned a lot, but I didn't get any new results or publish a paper. I did get a very strong recommendation from my REU advisor (not such a well known professor, by the way) - in his words, "everyone exaggerates a little." My other recommendations were from pretty well-known professors and were probably OK but not amazing, one regret I have about my undergrad career is that I didn't spend enough time "getting to know" professors (I'm terrified of a lot of them). I have a 3.89 GPA, 3.95 in the math department (which mostly gives out A's and A-'s); I took enough classes to get a solid background, but not so many that I drove myself crazy. I got a 850 on the math GRE, which probably didn't hurt. I didn't take any grad classes, but I did take some somewhat advanced classes in my field. I think my statement of purpose was pretty good and showed that I had some clue what is going on in the field (and at Stanford) and what grad school is about (I mentioned that I was excited to teach . . .).

I get the impression that it's mostly about being an American citizen, going to a very good school for undergrad and having solid coursework. I think they do want to see a decent score on the GRE, and a lot of it probably comes down to how your research interests align with faculty and how you compare with other students with the same interests (they can't accept 15 people who want to do the same thing). In any case I don't think I'm a superstar, so hopefully this is encouraging for people who are intimidated by those with 3+ years of research and 5 publications :-).

Thanks for sharing!

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Just got off the phone. The main reason they wanted to call me was to determine my level of interest and based on that decide whether or not to nominate me for a graduate fellowship. The fellowship basically reduces the teaching load, but are offered by the graduate school, so the math dept. is actually competing with the other departments for these fellowships, and if it happens that I get the fellowship but decide not to attend, then the math dept. would essentially "lose" that fellowship, so they don't want to nominate people for whom penn state is low on their list of priorities.

@oxeimon: What did you finally tell them? As in even if there is a good chance that your penn state is high on ur priority list, you cannot rule other options on the phone itself right? How did you convince them of that?

@cantorset : How do you know that you are in the waitin list for Caltech? Did you mail them personally or did they contact you ?

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@oxeimon: What did you finally tell them? As in even if there is a good chance that your penn state is high on ur priority list, you cannot rule other options on the phone itself right? How did you convince them of that?

@cantorset : How do you know that you are in the waitin list for Caltech? Did you mail them personally or did they contact you ?

I said that Penn state is one of my top three choices, though one of them I'm unlikely to get into, and the other is Rutgers, from whom (at that time) I had yet to hear from. Also if I get into Rutgers, I'm probably going there (all else equal). I estimated that there'd be a 50-50 chance of me going to Penn State, and based on all this he ended the conversation saying that he will probably nominate me for the fellowship.

Basically, just be straightforward. Even if you're not perfectly honest, your personal rankings and thoughts are constantly subject to change, and they know that, so as long as you're not evasive (which they'll no doubt interpret as being bad for them, and hence for you), I don't think you can go wrong.

If they're relatively low on your personal rankings, but you feel that your chances at getting into your preferred places are not great, you should definitely mention that too.

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I have been accepted to Johns Hopkins this afternoon (Applied Maths). But only 80% tuition waiver and waitlisted for a TA position... But it always feels great to hear this kind of news. The email was a bit weird by the way: it was an empty email (utterly blank) with 3 files attached, lol.

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I have been accepted to Johns Hopkins this afternoon (Applied Maths). But only 80% tuition waiver and waitlisted for a TA position... But it always feels great to hear this kind of news. The email was a bit weird by the way: it was an empty email (utterly blank) with 3 files attached, lol.

Mind sharing your stats? I applied to this program and didn't hear anything today. Seems like all the posts on the results page were from international students. Any Americans get notification today?

Oh yeah... and is it possible to tell anything from the online login for JHU?

I suggest everyone check out www.mathematicsgre.com and share their stats!

Edited by BongRips69
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Hey guys,

I heard back yesterday that I got into Hopkins (applied math and stat) too! Same as above (80% tuition, TA waitlist). I've also gotten into Ohio State.

Waiting on a bunch - Spoke to Columbia yesterday, and they said that they should be letting people know next week....

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I just got an acceptance+TA email from the University of Nevada - Las Vegas. It's my first acceptance... so you could knock me over with a feather, right now.

:lol:. Still waiting on Virginia Tech, KU, and South Carolina.

Congrats!

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I got accepted today. It was an unofficial acceptance from the graduate director, though. He said that details will be sent next week. I'm assuming this means more acceptances will be sent next week.

Oh, and I was referring to Minnesota.

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