<p>He should be sure to look at Annals of Mathematics papers written by faculty members at the colleges he is considering, and read the beginning and the end of the papers. (And he shouldn't worry if the "middle" is beyond his level of understanding now.)</p>
<p>Weighing in as someone who admits PhD students to a non-math department I have a few thought that might be generally applicable. </p>
<p>First, we didn't even give a student serious consideration this year after catching wind of her blog and reading it. She didn't said super-troubling things - but she did say some things that made us question her judgment. As some other messages have implied, we are investing a lot in our students. Please, do not put ANYTHING online that might reflect poorly on you - even if it just makes you look goofy or flakey.</p>
<p>Second, while it is critical to get to know the work of some of the faculty at the schools you are applying to (so you can write to the question: why us?) this is a slippery slope. We rejected several candidates this year because they made such a strong case for working with certain people, BUT we knew those people were planning on changing schools (or, we weren't going to tenure them). So, be very careful on this. This is where faculty at your school who may be plugged into the rumor mill (that is VERY active in the academic community) might be able to give you a heads up on who is headed where.</p>
<p>"This is the way to end a career before it's even begun"</p>
<p>I think I understand what you are saying now. This was something that professors had suggested. You know, call them up and say that you have funding and would still like to attend. This may be more of a help in a science where having full-funding for an extra student would be a big deal.</p>
<p>I don't think the section where you say why you want to work with a certain faculty member has to be that elaborate. It's more or less, "I did research in this area as an undergrad, faculty X engages in this research => therefore, I'd like to work with faculty X." In fact, I just mentioned who I would like to work for and didn't give a specific reason. (I think the reason was pretty much implied because I had said that I would like to work in a certain area...)</p>
<p>To the OP, has he thought about what he would do with the degree afterwards. The market is not that good, and people from the best schools are fighting for low paying jobs at lower levels schools or even HS. It is a big commitment, to end up having trouble paying the rent.</p>
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This was something that professors had suggested. You know, call them up and say that you have funding and would still like to attend. This may be more of a help in a science where having full-funding for an extra student would be a big deal.
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<p>As a science/tech person, I have heard this too, even in grad school advice talks by professors. Coming in with your own, full, funding makes you a much more desirable applicant. If you find out that you're getting it in the middle of the application process that you won a big fellowship, you call all the departments to which you're applying and tell them - it looks good, of course, but more importantly, it means that they can take you even if they don't have the funding, or that they can take you AND a student who was competing with you for that funded spot, instead of just one of the two. If you've already been rejected, it might have been because they had no more funding for you, in which case, letting them know that you have your own could get you reconsidered. Worst case (as long as you aren't gloating or something), they had some other reason for rejecting you and tell you no.</p>
<p>Not all fields have the terrifying <= 5% acceptance rates that other posters have discussed. I have heard, however, that strong theoretical math programs do.</p>
<p>MAKE SURE THAT YOUR PROSPECTIVE ADVISOR IS A DESIRABLE MENTOR. You can do this by talking to the advisor him/herself, and talking to students, especially his/her former students. There are plenty of respected scholars in prestigious departments out there who are negligent, exploitive, or abusive advisors. I personally have known people at top schools whose advisors deliberately stalled their completion of the program by multiple years, or emotionally abused them, or stuck them on dead-end projects and let them stagnate, and there are a lot of stories about advisors stealing students' work.</p>
<p>Also make sure that your prospective advisors are still going to be at the department. I know someone (in theoretical math, in fact) who had his heart set on working in a certain subfield, and was admitted to one of the top departments in the country. The year he got there, the profs in his subfield left the department for other universities, and he had nobody in his subfield to work with. The university hadn't told him that these profs were leaving (he was an extremely talented applicant, and perhaps they figured that he wouldn't come if he knew, or perhaps they just forgot).</p>
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Everybody lambasted me on the Rhodes scholarship thread for saying Rhodes scholars weren't that bright, but compared to the Churchill Scholars they really aren't. The Churchill Scholarship program is geared toward the people who are going to revolutionize science, mathematics, and technology. (I don't think it is for humanities majors, but I could be wrong.)
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<p>collegealum314, </p>
<p>Yes, it is for science only. Your comparison, however, is curious, to say the least. To try to compare two different scholarship programs that only have the country of study in common just does not make sense.</p>
<p>The Churchill scholarship is a far more limited scholarship than the Rhodes or Marshall - only for study at one specific college at Cambridge, only for one year, only open to students of specific universities in the US, only open to specific courses of study, and using a different application process and different criteria. Other than that, they are quite similar, so a comparison of awardees is straightforward, right? :)</p>
<p>Even if one could define "bright" or "brighter", which I doubt, how can one make such a comparison between two remarkably able but different groups? And for what purpose?</p>
<p>"To the OP, has he thought about what he would do with the degree afterwards. The market is not that good, and people from the best schools are fighting for low paying jobs at lower levels schools or even HS. It is a big commitment, to end up having trouble paying the rent."</p>
<p>If he is going to to a top 5 math grad school, he can always go to Wall Street afterwards...</p>
<p>I know one math PhD who ended up being in charge of the engineering side of a major interplanetary spacecraft program. He had similar non-managerial, non-academic-math type job experience along the way. </p>
<p>There really are a lot of different possibilities other than academia.</p>
<p>My son applied to PhD programs in computer science this year, and was accepted by seven of them, including one in the top ten and several in the second ten on the ranking list in his field.</p>
<p>He took the regular GRE but specifically avoided taking the computer science GRE because its topic coverage didn't closely match what was covered in his major. Nobody seemed to mind. The specific GREs seem to be more important in some fields than others, and computer science is one of the others.</p>
<p>He had two faculty advisors who were a tremendous help to him in pinpointing programs well-suited to his interests and the level of his credentials. In several instances, they were able to identify specific faculty members at various universities who would be appropriate advisors, and in other instances, they suggested that he not apply to certain schools because of things they knew personally (such as that certain faculty members were going to retire soon).</p>
<p>There were no interviews. Not even phone interviews. However, he was offered paid-for post-acceptance visits to all the schools that accepted him (except the one that's at the university he's already attending, which would have been sort of redundant). In instances where the scheduled official-prospective-graduate-student visit days conflicted with one another, he was even offered paid-for visits on alternate days. And of course, he got either a teaching or research assistantship everywhere.</p>
<p>Of course, there's an abundance of money floating around in the world of computer science. The same may not be true of math.</p>
<p>My husband has a PhD in math. He works for a government contractor. He makes good money. But when he was in grad school, he had to TA every semester. There was simply no research assistant money available, the way there might have been in a more applied field like computer science.</p>
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If he is going to to a top 5 math grad school, he can always go to Wall Street afterwards...
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<p>How many mathematicians want to work in finanical business?</p>
<p>Where can one find data on the current jobs of people with math PhD's from various top schools? Ie how many are in research universities, how many are in high schools, etc.?</p>
<p>Collegealum-- I apologize. I thought you were saying that if the NSF rejected you, you could still tell a department that you had been chosen. From your reaction, I get that you meant that if a department rejected you but you got an NSF, you could call to tell the department you had external funding. That seems perfectly valid. I believe the "they" was a dangling pronoun which left the sentence up to interpretation. You can tell I'm a word person rather than a numbers person.:) Sorry.</p>
<p>coolweather -- lots of mathematicians on Wall Street these days, and quite a few mathematicians in universities delving into financial math. My S's up and coming prof (number theorist, PhD from top school) was hired away from academia by DE Shaw.</p>
<p>Marian -- Congratulations to your son. Seven acceptances with funding! How in the world will he make a decision?</p>
<p>"There were no interviews. Not even phone interviews. However, he was offered paid-for post-acceptance visits to all the schools that accepted him."</p>
<p>That's also the way it works in economics and in physics. However, some business economics programs do pre-admissions interviews, and I know that some life sciences fields do too.</p>
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How many mathematicians want to work in finanical business?
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<p>A lot of persons who pursue mathematical studies in college and graduate school do so with financial jobs in mind. To be sure, it is very different to be a pure mathematician doing research from being a "rocket scientist" making investment decisions, but both kinds of work draw on some of the same sorts of mathematical understanding. </p>
<p>Amazon.com:</a> My Life as a Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance: Emanuel Derman: Books</p>
<p>I understand that financial industry needs mathematicians. But I wonder how long the mathematicians will keep the job. Somehow I have the perception that mathematicians don't like the job because of their personality. I know some people quitting the job after a short time.</p>
<p>My DH works in commodities regulation and is always telling DS1 that there are plenty of opportunities for rocket scientists (i.e., heavy-duty math folks) out there. DS wants to teach, though, and fancies the life of a poor grad student. (We trained him well. ;))</p>
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Marian -- Congratulations to your son. Seven acceptances with funding! How in the world will he make a decision?
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<p>He is only really seriously considering four. He has already visited one, which happens to be the lowest-ranked of the four, and he received a very positive impression during the visit. So that program is his ace in the hole. He will be visiting the other three within the next three weeks, and then he has to decide. It's not really that much more difficult from the decisions being faced by a lot of kids four years younger. </p>
<p>Knowing my son, he will listen to all the advice he receives from his faculty advisors, his family, people he knows at the various campuses, and others, but he will make his own decision based mainly on his gut feelings. He's one of those people who goes with his gut, and that approach usually serves him pretty well.</p>
<p>The more pressing problem, I think, is keeping up with his academic work despite all the time he's losing for graduate school visits.</p>
<p>I want to thank everyone who replied to this thread. I'm overwhelmed by all of the great responses - lots of helpful info.</p>
<p>To answer some questions, yes he is is planning to apply to incredibly competitive theoretical math programs. That's why he has to be on top of his game with all of the important components. He's in good shape with his coursework and grades. I got the information that Harvard students don't do well on the GRE's from the Harvard Math department website. When I told my S he said, "Yeah, I've heard the same about Princeton students." He's planning on taking the general GRE in this summer and take the math subject test in the fall. I think the reason the good math students don't do well on these tests is because the subject matter is all stuff they were studying in high school. I'm sure he can do well if he brushes up over the summer.</p>
<p>The thing I'm most concerned about is that he will be competing with applicants who will probably have more extensive research experience. He is working on two projects now, will be doing a senior thesis, and is applying for REU's for this summer. He is not one of those people who just studies and does research all the time. He's a varsity athlete in a sport with a year round training schedule. While this kind of well roundedness looks great on an undergraduate application I don't think PhD math programs are going to care about his athletic accomplishments.</p>