Pure Mathematics PhD admission results

[fuwing2007]

I guess besides your GRE, another reason why you cannot go to graduate school is your recommendation letter. If you are going to do geometry and mathematical physics, you should not find an applied math prof unless he/she is extremely famous or he/she was graduated from the school you applied. This is my experience. And also you should not find a young prof with the same reason.

Well, it's good that you can find some big time profs for the recommendation letters for your next application. But I must tell you something, which you may regard as counterexample. I know there is a student, whose recommenders are huge prof in geometry. (You can see this name on some advanced textbooks in Riemannian geometry or research papers. Well, that prof was doing research and got a lot of famous results of Laplaican of Riemannian manifolds). He applied to the schools which are similar to yours. But he was rejected by MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, etc. He is now at Stanford.

I am not discouraging you. As the several posts before, I said selecting people into graduate schools is not an exact science, perhaps not even a science. Most of us have the experience that got rejected by worse schools. On the other hand, if you can do what you said, I think there is no doubt that you can go to best graduate school in US. But, if I were you, I would not let myself to have a very high expectation. Because I know there is nothing for sure in this world, especially something not entirely within your control.

Study mathematics is not only for going to graduate schools. Nothing is to be sacrificed.

Anyway, good luck for your mathematical career.

[zw849]

April 15th it's almost here!

[buckyball]

If it already passed April 15th and we still didn't received any notifications, would it be automatically assumed as a rejection? Or they still offer after April 15th? Just wondering.

[mathgrad]

Buckyball:Yes,almost always but not always.

There are some universities(like Northwestern) which have the policy of not officially notifying rejected students until April 15 as they offer admission on a rolling basis and keep admitting students until their class is filled.
There can be some students who clear the waiting list after April15 in some universities.But there is a law which says that you can't change your decision to join some university after April 15.So if you accept some university and then clear the waiting list of a superior university after April 15,it is of no use.But if you are not accepted into any university by April15 and then clear the waiting list at some university,then you can accept that university's offer after April15.

[buckyball]

Thank you, mathgrad. So I have to wait again with a little hope. Sigh...
Anyway, good luck to everyone for your PhD.

[Ginku]

Buckyball,

I didn't get in anywhere as well, mostly because I bombed the subject test and majored in Econ in my undergrad. But don't lose heart man. We can beat the test and get into a good school. In the end, no one will care whether we graduate in 2012 or 2014.

Keep the faith!!

[buckyball]

Well, it turned out that I didn't get any offer.
I think, from international applicant's point of view, what hurts me is my poor english. I got too low verbal/writing GRE. My TOEFL is not really good. As for Subject Test, it is not that good but not too bad. I'm wondering if I have to try Subject Test again as well. My prof. told me they just want to be sure that I'll be able to serve as a TA.

Anyway, keep our fingers crossed!!

[za232]

I'm not sure if anyone is still using this thread since the 15th is passed, but I wanted to ask a question of all these math people.

In the fall I will be attending CU-Boulder applied math and I am expecting (read: hoping) that this programs ranking will improve when the 2008 NRC ranking is released in September. I have heard that the new ranking may be based on more objective qualities such as faculty publications and citations rather than subjective qualities such as reputation.

I decided to investigate by using mathscinet to compare citations from my program with citations from a higher ranked program, UWash. What I found is that the average citations per full professor at UW is less than 100 while the average citations per full professor at CU is greater than 300 with only one professor below the 200 mark...

In light of this, I am wondering exactly what has lead to the higher ranking at UW in the first place. Does anybody have any thoughts on this?

[zw849]

Well, traditionally the program's reputation has been a huge factor in rankings, and I believe still is. Maybe that'll change with the new NRC rankings, but no one knows for sure until they release it.