<p>My Background:</p>
<p>I am some what of an atypical math phd program applicant. I graduated from a top liberal arts school with a 3.8 gpa (4.0 math) and have spent the last two years working as an actuary. Those two years in the insurance industry earned me my actuarial designation as well as an understanding that insurance is not for me. I recently decided to apply to PHD programs and have been securing recommendations, reviewing my undergraduate material in preparation for the GRE (I took a practice exam before i started studying and got 75th percentile), and researching prospective programs. Oh and I also spent one summer (after my junior year) doing undergraduate econometric research. </p>
<p>My questions:</p>
<p>1) Is there anything more I can do to prepare myself for school/increase my chance of being accepted?</p>
<p>2) What tier of school should I be applying to. Obviously im not going to waste my time applying to a Harvard or MIT but do i have a chance at a top 20 school? </p>
<p>3) Will my actuarial background help or hurt my chances (note i am applying to PURE programs, not applied or stats). </p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>1) Get a general idea of what, specifically, you want to study and research. All these applications have some kind of “statement of purpose,” and it definitely counts. Most people applying for a math PhD test well and have high grades, so these small things end up making big differences. </p>
<p>2) You don’t have to be a prodigy to get into Harvard, MIT, Princeton, etc. With a 4.0 and strong recommendations, you might as well apply to some of these schools. (Assuming that you can get your GRE score higher. I’m sure that, given your undergrad math GPA, some more time studying will bring up your score significantly. If you want to get into a top program, you need a very high subject test score simply to enter the pool of consideration). </p>
<p>However, there’s no way for us to gauge your chance at any “top 20” school because we can’t read your letters, and we don’t have access to any of your work. </p>
<p>3) Since you’re applying for pure math, the econometric research might not interest the admissions committee as much as if you were applying for an applied math program. However, it’s still great to have and it would be a waste if you didn’t highlight it in your application. </p>
<p>Your actuarial background won’t help or hurt your chances at getting into a “top 20” PhD program. It’s irrelevant. The admissions committee might be concerned that you’ve “forgotten” some of your undergrad material, but as long as you do well on your subject GRE this won’t be an issue.</p>
<p>Did you do all the core SOA actuarial exams? (Probability, Financial Mathematics etc…)</p>
<p>Because if you did, then that’s a huge plus. Professional accreditation’s are IMHO one of the best things to have on your academic resume. Regarding the GRE, you will probably ace the Quantitative section (If you have a math background you will find it very easy). It’s the verbal section that is usually much harder.</p>
<p>Just curious, but did they ask you for just the GRE or the GRE + subject specific math GRE?</p>
<p>Thanks for your input!</p>
<p>Yeah i finished the SOA exams, they were quite challenging and took a few years to complete. I work with a statistician who also took the exams and he equates the SOA exams with a masters in statistics. I think all math phd programs require the GRE subject test (I think with adequate studying i can be somewhere around 80-85th percentile).</p>
<p>To clarify: In my post above I was talking about the math subject GRE (which is a lot more important than the general GRE).</p>
<p>no need to clarify, we are talking about the same test (subject, not general), its not offered until like October so I have some time to study.</p>
<p>A math subject score above the 80th percentile is enough to get your application read by any graduate program in the US, and it certainly shows that you mastered the undergraduate curriculum. (Many graduate applicants struggle with the GRE when the material is still fresh in their mind. I have lot of respect for your performance two years out of college!) </p>
<p>Now the bad news: I am by no means an expert on this subject, but I have heard from several credible sources (including a young math professor who worked as a software engineering for a few years between college and grad school) that there’s a huge bias in mathematics against students who take time off after college. Said professor got his undergraduate degree from Princeton, went to SUNY Binghampton for his PhD (ranked #89 in math), and had to work his way back up to the competitive post-doc programs from there. </p>
<p>PhD programs in pure math seem to prefer applicants who have taken graduate-level math courses as an undergraduate. Several of the top 20 programs explicitly state that on their website, and it’s also obvious when you talk to students who get admitted to these programs. (Barely any liberal arts college students at the top programs either.) I honestly don’t know how your actuarial background will factor into this - it is conceivable that learning so much statistics on your own works in your favor. Only a professor on an admissions committee can give you a reliable answer.</p>
<p>The single most important factor are your letters of recommendation, which is why I encourage you to seek advice from your references. If you have a chance to meet with a graduate chair at one of the programs you might apply to, I would highly encourage you to do that as well to get a feeling for how your unusual background might be evaluated.</p>
<p>That is interesting about the bias against a gap between undergrad and graduate school. Although when I spoke with the professors who will be writing my recs I asked if they thought that would be an issue and they said as long as I do well on the GRE it wouldn’t be held against me. Realisticaly I think my sweet spot will be in the 30-50 ranked schools but even these are quite competitive. Thanks for your response!</p>
<p>Don’t sell yourself short! Apply to a wide range of programs but keep several top 20 (maybe even top 10) programs in the mix. If you get strong letters of recommendation, there’s no reason that they should be out of your league. </p>
<p>Two random pieces of advice:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Apply for national fellowships, especially the NSF. External funding can get you off of waitlists and may even get rejections reversed. (I’m speaking from experience :)) Also - just for the NSF application - think carefully which specialty you want to compete in. Your background might make you a much stronger applicant in statistics & probability than in algebra or geometry, and you’ll have an opportunity to change your specialty before you accept the award. (Remember: the NSF research proposal is fake and you are not expected to follow up on the project you propose.)</p></li>
<li><p>I don’t know how to phrase this one as a suggestion, so I’ll just tell you my story. I had absolutely no idea where to apply to, so I asked my references for advice. They gave me a list of ~20 schools, of which I applied to 13. Turns out that most of these schools had professors on the admissions committee who were collaborators of my references. (My references had suggested schools where they had colleagues whom they thought of very highly for potential advisers.) That lucky coincidence probably helped my application at several programs that seemed completely out of my league when I applied.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>The more I learn about grad school admissions, the more it seems like that its all about who you know. I guess after the “standard” cutoffs (ie 3.5 gpa, …), the only thing numbers will really do is prevent your application from being thrown out in the first round. After that…</p>