Pure Mathematics PhD admission results

[RiverMyst]

Hi guys, I'm hoping you can give me some advice on my situation.

I got rejected from all my schools (PhD in pure math) but I got accepted into NYU Masters of Mathematics program.

So I have a choice between the following two options:

1) Stay a 5th year at my current undergrad institution.

I want to study geometry and mathematical physics at grad school. So if I come back for a 5th year, I have an independent study with a big time physics professor at my school (a top 30 school according to rankings) and I'm in the process of securing an independent study with a big time geometry professor at my school along with taking a math grad course and if not I have an independent study lined up with a younger professor that I already studied with.

If I do really well in all these independent studies (probably no chance for publications), do well in the grad course and retake my GRE's (i got a really bad GRE Math subject score) this would be my graduate profile:

Overall GPA: ~ 3.8 from a top 30 math/physics institution
Major GPA: ~ 3.9
Letters:
- one letter of recommendation from a professor i've worked with for 2 years and will have a publication with by January (which is when applications are due) and is very well known in his field
- one letter of recommendation from a really really well known physics professor
- one letter of recommendation from a really well known geometry professor or the professor that i previously worked with
GRE: hopefully an 85+% score
Along with have taken and done well in a grad course.

2) Go to NYU Masters
- Either try to get into the PhD program and get funding and stay at NYU
- Get my Masters and try to go elsewhere.
- I WILL retake the GRE Math even if I decide to go to the NYU Masters program
- An important note, it is not the easiest thing to get funded at NYU, as most of you know!

Now my question is, barring expenses because the NYU Masters is CLEARLY more expensive, which is the best option to get into one of these schools:

(These are the grad schools I plan on applying to)

3 dream schools:
- MIT
- Columbia
- Princeton

4 Reaches:
- Northwestern
- UPENN
- Brown/UCLA
- Rutgers

2 Safety Schools
- UCSB
- CUNY/CMU

I think 2 independent studies and 2 grad courses would be a lot (especially since I'll be commuting). So I think 2 really good independent studies and a grad course is ideal.

[rebeca123]

I am very sorry that you got rejected, but is there any good chance NYU will accept you as a PhD student? US news ranking places NYU at 1st in Applied Math this year, second (1st MIT) the last year, and 1st the year before that.

[zw849]

Hi. This is just my opinion.
Don't go to NYU. They really didn't want you in the first place. They just do that to many applicants they don't reject, just to have money. Look, unless you don't care about money, I consider an offer of any math dept that doesn't give you support as a rejection, be it PhD or masters. For your own good don't go. Your profile sounds great, just stick to your first plan, stay working this year, improve your GRE subject (to be honest, anything below a 90% doesn't look good, specially for people applying to MIT and Princeton), have your publication and for sure you'll get great LORs. That will work excellent.

[RiverMyst]

I am very sorry that you got rejected, but is there any good chance NYU will accept you as a PhD student? US news ranking places NYU at 1st in Applied Math this year, second (1st MIT) the last year, and 1st the year before that.

The bottom line with NYU is hat if you do well in your course work and pass the preliminary examination with an A, you will be favorably considered for PhD admission. However, that says nothing about funding. I called NYU and it does not seem like the easiest thing in the world to get funding. I spoke with a professor for almost an hour about getting funding and it is not totally merit based and also consider that you will be in competition with the undergraduates applying to NYU.

Also NYU does have some really good geometers, but they have none of the mathematical physics I want. I don't want to do fluid dynamics or that kind of applied math. The only thing tempting me to go to NYU is that I can probably just take a bunch of their math finance courses and get a great job after my Masters.

[fuwing2007]

Rivermust, can you list all the schools you applied and your profile (I mean before doing the fifth year)?

I think if you can give details about yourself, we can give you more comments.

[happyentropy]

I agree with zw849- don't go to NYU. If they accepted you without funding- they don't want you, even if they accepted you as a Ph.D student. They never reject applicants as long as they are even minimally qualified- admission to the masters program without support is the most common result. If you go there as a masters student all you'd be able to do is take classes-essentially a 5th year of undergrad-and classes at NYU aren't really any better than those at another top 30 school. You wouldn't interact with professors much and your performance in classes wouldn't help your LOR's- almost everyone in graduate classes at NYU gets A's, by design. No prof at Courant will "waste time" working on a research project with a masters student, and even if you are a non-funded Ph.D student, the Profs will know your status and will always prefer to take students who are on the McCracken fellowship (FWIW, from my visit at NYU I got the message that even funded Ph.D students there get screwed at a disturbing rate- one person I talked to lost his funding in his dissertation year...it was one of the reasons I decided to decline their McCracken fellowship).
If you stay at your current institution, take more classes, continue research projects with the profs you've been working with, maybe publish a paper, your chances of getting into places like Columbia would be much better than if you spend the next year just taking classes at Courant.

For that matter I would even advise someone admitted to Courant as a Ph.D student without funding-even if you have outside support from your country-to decline their offer unless there is a professor there who has already agreed to be your adviser (as long as you have some funded offers from other decent places). Both from my admission letter and from talking to current grad students there I got the message that students on the "McCracken fellowship" and treated differently by faculty than students without it- regardless of their actual abilities...

[fuwing2007]

From what happyentropy said, NYU is really not a good place to do a PhD, unless - as happyentropy said - you've already got a supervisor who is willing to work with you.

The above message reminds me something. I remembered around 5 years ago, a TV program in my country interviewed a mathematician. (He is from Hong Kong and doing differential geometry. He is, perhaps the most famous in Hong Kong and also famous around the word in his field, so you can guess who is he.) He said the reseach atmosphere of NYU is not good.

At that time I thought he was ignorant. But from the above message, and thegradcafe.com that many applicants were accepted without funding, I am thinking why they do this. Perhaps they want some money from some students that they don't want.

Well, I am not attacking NYU. I didn't consider and apply to NYU, since their researches don't match mine. I am just saying the way they accept student is not very good.

For the situation that final year students do not have funding, this is not unusual. There is one (may be more) university in my country "sometimes" do not offer funding to final year students, to save money in order to accept more new students. And some final year students are even poor. Their supervisors left them and they are forced to change supervisors. Everybody here can think of the possible consequences.

I hope this situation does not always happen in US. If anyone of you have experience and have heard something similar to this, please share with us.

[zw849]

Yes, that's so true. That's the reason I didn't apply there in first place. The atmosphere is just terrible. BTW, good schools will support you through your dissertation year if you are making good progress and you are whithin the time limit (usually five, in some places four years).
And it's not good to give advice to go to such a place, even when one is international and has support from a foreign country. I'm international myself, but I know there is more than rankings, so that NYU is first in applied mathematics doesn't say anything unless you have established connections with people and their research interests match yours.

[mathgrad]

Dear Rivermist,

I think that continuing for another year at your undergrad institution is a much better and even safer idea.Your profile would look quite impressive after one year if you indeed do what you expect to do.
Try to make sure that you get a good Math GRE score,I suspect that applications are not given much importance otherwise.
Also,I think it would be a better idea to lengthen your list of "reaches",as it might happen that people who get selected into "dream schools" might choose these very schools as their "safety schools".To maximize your chances at decent(but not top 10) schools,you should apply to more places.
I have been (properly)accepted by a decent school(top 20,but not top 10) which thought that my application was "very strong" and I have been (properly)rejected by comparatively worse-ranked schools(also in top 20,but not in the top 10).This was NOT because of mismatch of interests.So I can attribute this irony only to the fact that there were too many good applicants at these worse-ranked schools and/or these schools paid more weightage to the not-so-perfect components of my application.
Another thing I would like to say(which is quite obvious anyway) that it is not just the name of the recommender that matters,it is also the substance of the recommendation letter that matters.To get an excellent letter from an average prof is better than an average letter from an excellent prof.Try to get letters from people who are both well-known in their field and who are likely to give you very good letters.

[RiverMyst]

Rivermust, can you list all the schools you applied and your profile (I mean before doing the fifth year)?

I think if you can give details about yourself, we can give you more comments.

Here is my profile:

GPA: 3.8, Major GPA: 3.9 from a top 30 math/physics institution
GRE Math: 570 (35%)
Letters:
- One letter from a professor that I worked with for 3 semesters and was currently working an on unsolved problem with in his field. This professor is extremely well known in his field.
- One letter from a very young professor that I did a semester long independent study with on general relativity.
- One letter from a well known applied math professor that I took 3 courses with and got 3 A's.

I applied to only top schools because all my professors thought I was a shoe in to one of the top schools.

MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, Chicago, Columbia, NYU, Cornell, UCSD, Rutgers, UPENN, Texas and I applied to CUNY grad but I do not plan on going there.

Here is my analysis of my profile:

The fact that I was waitlisted at UCSD and Rutgers even with a complete crap GRE score gives me some hope. I feel like if I can get a competitive GRE score and do 2 really good semester long independent studies in the fall, I can get into Columbia. Am I a raving lunatic? This is going to be my last try to get into grad school. After this, I have no idea what I will be doing and that's 3 years of sacrifice, isolating myself down the drain.

I'm hoping to have this profile by January 2009:
GPA - is going to be the same
GRE - 90+%
Letters:
- letter from the same professor that I was working on the problem with; but by this time I will have a preprint/submission for publication
- letter from a big time geometry professor
- letter from a big time physics professor

I think if I come back for another semester, I'm going to do 2 or 3 research projects and not take any graduate courses, I simply cannot afford to, for various reasons. Believe me, I've looked into every possibility. I think doing 2-3 research projects is the best situation, it would be nice to take graduate courses, but this is how it is.