chances??

Graduate School
1

<p>I'm an undergrad for math right now, and I'm looking at applying for PhD in pure math. Here's a brief description of my stats, I was wondering if I had any chances to harvard, stanford, princeton or mit.</p>

<p>GPA - 3.7
GRE - not yet written, but probably 800Q and ~650V
2 4-month research terms
Teaching Assistent for 4 4-month terms
Probably good recommendations (I took 2nd and 3rd year courses in 1st year and knew my profs reasonably well)
A few grad courses</p>

<p>what do you think? ANd also, should I include all these in my application? (something like teaching assistant, is that something that everyone does?)</p>

2

<p>Why do you want to go to an Ivy so much? Definitely put your teaching assistant position in your application.</p>

3

<p>As a pure math major, it seems like a good strategy to get the best education i can get, as there are virtually no jobs other than academia.</p>

<p>I didn't care for ivies back when i was applying for undergrad, but for PhD, it'll be a nice challenge and a good opportunity to learn more things. That is, if I can make it.</p>

<p>With that said, i must add that I have nothing against other grad schools, and that I'm from a second-tier school, but I had an amazing experience in my university.</p>

4

<p>For undergraduate admissions, people often apply to the Ivies just for a sense of prestige, or because of a sense of societal pressure. You can get a great undergrad education at either Harvard, of course, or something like, say, the Unviersity of Utah. In the case of math grad school admissions, it's simply true that Princeton or Harvard leads to the possibility of a much, much better education than Utah would. By the way, hopefullyIvy, have you seen that on the Princeton math page, lots and lots of grads have written down what questions they were asked during their oral qualifying exams? I've found it to be very interesting and useful.</p>

5

<p>I thought Google was all over Math PhDs.</p>

6

<p>If your specialty isn't number theory, or possibly control theory, I don't know why you'd want to work at Google! If you're in those fields, though, certainly you'd make more money at Google than in academia --- but is this really a deciding motivation for those with a math PhD?</p>

7

<p>I agree with you drbott. I'm actually very interested in algebraic number theory and ring theory. For me, Princeton or Harvard sounds really attractive, because of the amazing mathematicians who work there.</p>

<p>By the way, what's the address of the Princeton webpage? I've been browsing around for a bit now, but I can't seem to find it.</p>

<p>So, now that my motive for wanting to go to an Ivy league school is clarified, I'm wondering if anyone can tell me anything about my chances... I couldn't find many stats by browsing this forum, so I'd like to know how much of a chance I have for these schools. If the chances aren't good, how can I improve my chances?</p>

8

<p>The Princeton math webpage is math.princeton.edu (most webpages are math.[university name or state].edu).</p>

<p>Boy, it's really hard to talk about the possibility of getting into math grad school, especially when it's Princeton or Harvard you're aiming for. I remember, last year, at Berkeley, one pretty-good-but-not-outstanding applicant got in, while two IMO medalists were denied. I think that you definitely have a good shot. Your research experience is very good --- do you have anything to show for it? It's always very nice to have a paper come out of something like that, or even a presentation at a conference or seminar. Your general GRE is fine, but have you taken the math GRE? The teaching experience and grad classes are also very nice. The GPA is pretty good, but do you know your GPA in higher-level math classes? If it's 3.7 in those, it might be a little worrying. Of course, it's a good idea to put 2-3 safeties on, as Princeton and such are reaches for nearly everyone --- maybe UCLA, or Waterloo, or the University of Washington, or Berkeley (though this isn't really a safety, heh)? Feel free to PM me; our interests have a lot in common.</p>

9

<p>drbott,</p>

<p>UCLA is a safety? I wouldn't be so sure. Especially not now, with Tao being so popular.</p>

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<p>Good point. You're right. I should have said, say, Rice, or Rutgers.</p>

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<p>Now, I was also a medallist in international competitions back in high school, but I found math competitions and pure math to be extremely different. Many IMOers end up in applied math or Computer Science because they find pure math to be too abstract and also it lacks the recognition and glory that IMO can bring. It can be a frustrating experience for those with a big ego (probably made from the IMO etc). For me, I also find competitions a lot more exciting, but pure math also has its advantages.</p>

<p>And I forgot to mention, I'm graduating in 3 years. Would that be a plus or a minus? My rationale is that I can have an extra year should I get a rejection from all the reaches, studying more grad courses and such, but I'm not sure if that's a good idea just yet :)</p>

12

<p>With the data you provided, it's going to be impossible for anyone to give you any chances of admissions for Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, and MIT. To get into any of those programs, it's going to take either some phenomenal letters of recommendation or an extraordinary research experience (one of the more famous REUs, the NSA internships, or a published paper) because there are going to be many qualified candidates who have both of these.</p>

<p>So saying you had 2 4-month research terms doesn't tell us whether you were someone's lab rat or if you made some seriously accomplishments yourself. This makes a difference with your chances of admission.</p>

<p>And saying you'll have "probably good recommendations" doesn't tell us whether they're just good letters, or if they're good letters from well-known people. That will make a significant difference with the schools you mentioned.</p>

<p>But as others have said, there are some great programs at 50 or so other schools that you haven't mentioned, and I'm sure you'll get into many of those. So don't worry too much about it.</p>

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<p>yes, i see what you mean. It also made me worry, as i said, my school's a second tier university, and I doubt that any of the profs are well-known. (I did my research at my school, and the program's supposed to be relatively good - Although I have no idea what the other schools' research program is like.. I worked on a few problems that were given to me by my supervisor, basically. I also got to talk in a few informal conferences in my school and in another Ugrad conference. ) So.. does that mean it'll seriously hurt my chances of getting into one of the better programs because no matter how good my recs are, the profs who're going to be writing them aren't as well known?</p>

<p>Seeing as how I still can stay at my univ for another year, I'm willing to make improvements to my stats and stay an extra year if it means getting into a better program, I'm just not sure how. (sure, i can pull up my GPA and GRE scores, but other than that, I mean :) )</p>

14

<p>Just because you go to a second tier school doesn't mean your professors are unknown to the professors at the schools you mentioned. I did a research project with a professor at a liberal arts college, and he did his post-doc at Brown, so I'm sure that although he isn't famous per se, his letter certainly helped my application there. So your letters might actually be very well-received with the admissions committees. I just wanted to let you know that your saying "probably good recommendations" wasn't enough to really give us a good idea about your chances.</p>

<p>Similarly, more information about your research experience helps evaluate your chances. Were the few problems you were given unsolved? And if so, did you solve any of them (or even special cases of them)? Because that could be significant. Or it could not be. It all depends on exactly what you did, and even if you told us, I'm sure we couldn't evaluate it as well as admissions committees. However, since you have spoken at a conference, that's always a good thing.</p>

<p>Here's my advice, as bluntly as I can give it to you. I cannot tell you how much graduating a year early might hurt you.. I graduated a year early and ended up getting into Brown, Rutgers, Stony Brook, and UCLA (rejected from Columbia, Harvard, and MIT - withdrawn from CUNY Graduate Center, Lehigh, and UCSD), and I was very happy with that.</p>

<p>I do not think that you should stay another year specifically to try and get into a better program. I'm assuming you're going to apply this year anyway, and that's mentally taxing enough. You probably won't do significantly better in the second round of applications to where it's worth the additional stress of going through the application process twice. So unless you really don't get in anywhere you'd be happy...or you want to stay around for another year for other reasons...don't stay around for another year solely to try and get into a better school. </p>

<p>I'm not saying it's better to graduate early or it's better to not do so. Simply that if you have already decided to graduate early, you probably have good reasons to do so. And the sole reason of trying to get into a better school is probably not worth staying for another year for if you're going to be applying to schools this year too.</p>

<p>Hopefully that made some sense.</p>

15

<p>That was definitely a very helpful post. Since you've graduated a year early (and I'm assuming you're also in pure math), it definitely helped me there. I haven't decided whether I'm going to graduate this year yet, I only know that I have enough credits to graduate with a double major (in pure math and combinatorics). However, I feel that I've rushed through too many things (especially because i took no AP credits from school and took all 1st year courses required), and I think staying another year might be fun too, since I can basically take whatever courses I want and do more research.</p>

<p>So you're completely happy with the fact that you've graduated early? (no courses you'd like to study in more depth etc?) And can I ask what kind of research you did? (free to ignore my question though, i don't want to ask too much of your own private stats and I completely respect that)</p>

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<p>Graduating a year early is a very big decision, and there were many factors that went into it for me: I went to a very expensive school (NYU), so a fourth year would have cost me more money; I was already taking graduate courses, so why not go to grad school immediately where I would get <em>paid</em> to study, instead of paying to continue in undergrad; I had already decided a long time ago to graduate in three years, so the vast majority of my friends were graduating with me, and thus I wouldn't have as many friends at NYU had I stayed an extra year; etc. It was a big decision, and there were a lot of other factors I had to consider. Thus, with all of those reasons to leave, I'm very happy with graduating early.</p>

<p>As far as the research I did, I attended the Lafayette College REU in the summer of 2005 and was in a group studying isoperimetric surfaces in specific four-dimensional metric spaces that have relevance to physicists. We ended up making some progress in two of the spaces, which led to giving a talk at the Joint Math Meetings, and we have submitted our paper to a journal (for which it is currently being refereed).</p>

<p>So whereas my research experience is nontrivial (thus giving me an edge with some of the top 50 schools), it wasn't one of the famous REUs (like Duluth), it wasn't one of the NSA programs, and we didn't have a published paper by the time I had applied to graduate schools. So that's something that certainly didn't help me with Harvard and MIT (and Columbia, which had a particularly difficult admissions season this year, admitting only 11 out of over 350). There are enough students who have those edges applying to the top schools that they can exclusively admit from that pool if they wish, so I really never had a shot at them.</p>

<p>Honestly, I don't know if staying an extra year is going to help you out that much with Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and Princeton. If those schools do, as I suspect, admit students primarily from the applicant pool I mentioned above, then an extra year will likely only make a difference if you come out of it with a phenomenal research experience and a phenomenal letter of recommendation. And even then, there's no telling if that's going to help you break the barrier and get into the aforementioned schools.</p>

<p>So really, I wouldn't put any weight about getting into these schools into your decision to graduate early or stay an extra year. Figure out if you're ready to graduate or not, and base your decision on that. Your undergraduate career should be more than just a stepping stone to graduate school.</p>