Disclaimer: I posted this in another discussion forum and copy-pasted it here. Not sure if its against the rules.
I am senior at a US News top 30 school right now, and the majors that I’m considering in graduate school are Data Science/ Statistics/ Computer Science, which are all related.
I will be applying to the CS programs in Chicago, Columbia, USC, UCSD, UCSB, UCD, UCI, UCR, and Statistics programs in Yale, Duke, Cornell, UCLA, JHU, and UFlorida.
My stats are:
Major: B.S. in Mathematics (Pure) + Specialization in Computing
CGPA: 3.49, Major GPA: 3.55, Math requirement GPA: 3.71
GRE (General): 163 (VR), 170 (QR), 5.0 (AW)
Research Experience: 2010/06 - 2011/06, 2014/06-2014/09 at a research institute. The former was done as part of my high school requirement.
Research Accomplishment: first author in two journal papers and a conference paper in Material Physics.
Note: Research involved a fair bit of programming in C++.
For ECs, I have
- Table Tennis: I’m a member of the Varsity team and we qualified for nationals last season. Been in it for my entire college career.
- Circle K international: Been in it during my sophomore and junior year.
- A business related club. Joined in Sept 2015.
Acads wise, I have taken 17 upper division Mathematics courses, including a Stats/CS/Data Science related seminar that required us to do a final project. Other classes I took include Calculus, Linear Algebra (Honors), Real Analysis (Honors), Complex Analysis, Numerical Analysis, ODE, PDE, Probability, Hyperbolic Geometry, Differential Geometry, Topology, Optimization.
I plan to take Abstract Algebra, Stochastic Process, a CS class on Algorithms, and Mathematical Statistics next quarter.
More about me:
I had a freshman GPA of ~3.2 because I knew most of the content being taught but weren’t exactly well-versed in them and wasn’t motivated to study… I know my GPA is pretty bad, considering that the people around me have ~3.7 overall… Also, I haven’t done any Stats and CS courses yet and that hurts my chances of admission too. On the plus side, I have a Specialization in Computing (which hopefully makes up abit for my lack of relevant experience in CS), and will be taking CS/Stats classes in my remaining two quarters.
Which of the programs do I really have a shot in? I personally am lacking confidence that I can get into any of them. Also, what are some other programs (in CS/ Stats/ Data Sci) that perhaps I should consider?