Some Questions Re: MS Statistics Programs

Graduate School
1

<p>Here is a summary of my profile:</p>

<p>Strengths: DWF with a high GPA, good GRE scores, strong extracurricular involvement, relevant work experience, solid programming skills, senior thesis. math major with an economics minor.</p>

<p>Weaknesses: small unknown college, poor math department</p>

<p>I'm thinking of applying to the following schools for an MS in Statistics:</p>

<p>Reach
Harvard
Yale
Columbia
John Hopkins</p>

<p>Match</p>

<p>Rutgers</p>

<p>Safety</p>

<p>Stony Brook
Baruch
Hunter</p>

<p>I'll also be applying to NYU's program in data science (and possibly Columbia's program as well).</p>

<p>Here are my questions:</p>

<p>1-Is this an appropriate list?</p>

<p>2-Do I have a shot at getting into Harvard, Yale, Columbia, NYU, and John Hopkins? Or are they beyond my reach and I should be aiming lower? I feel pretty confident about Columbia and NYU, as my school has sent students there in the past, but don't know enough about Harvard, Yale, and John Hopkins admissions to judge one way or another.</p>

<p>3-I think Rutgers is a good match school, am I correct? I'd prefer to have more than one match school on my list, however, so do you think any of the reach/safety schools actually belong on the match list?</p>

<p>4-Of the three safety schools I listed, which program is the most rigorous?</p>

<p>5-I'm concentrating on MS programs because I'd like to go into industry, but out of curiosity, do you think I have a shot at a PhD program at any of these schools? Baruch and Hunter don't offer a PhD in Statistics so I would apply to the New Jersey Institute of Technology as another safety. </p>

<p>6-I think the data science programs will be less competitive because they are relatively new; is this assumption correct?</p>

<p>Thank you for all of your help!</p>

2

<p>You don’t really do reach/match/safety for grad programs like you do for undergrad. You want to apply to programs that offer what you want and will give you the opportunities you want in your field. But since overall graduate programs are more competitive than undergrad, I wouldn’t immediately write the colleges in your safety patch off as safeties - especially Hunter’s and Stony Brook’s!</p>

<p>Hunter has a great math department and their applied math MS is pretty inexpensive. I’m not sure about Stony Brook’s, but I know that Baruch’s program doesn’t require as many math pre-requisites so I would imagine that would be the least rigorous. It really focuses more on business applications of statistics.</p>

<p>And no, the data science programs are not necessarily less competitive. Although they are newer, Columbia is still Columbia, and data science is a booming field right now.</p>

<p>It’s not really possible to say whether you have a shot of getting into the top schools with the little information you provided, nor is it possibly to speculate on the likelihood of admission to a PhD program. Do you have any research experience?</p>