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...

Umm...Berkeley and Caltech/UCLA are not at all close. Berkeley is about 400 miles from Los Angeles and from personal experience it takes about 6 hours to drive from Caltech to Berkeley under ideal traffic conditions (which of course never actually exist)... As for having advisors at nearby schools other than your own (like at Stanford when you're at Berkeley or at UCLA when you're at Caltech): this is generally only possible in special cases, like if your original advisor leaves and makes arrangements with one of his collaborators to work with you (this happened to someone I know here at Caltech: his advisor left for U Chicago and a very very famous prof. at UCLA agreed to become his new advisor). This sort of thing is NOT something you should count on when choosing a grad school, especially places with way too many grad students (and high attrition rates) like Berkeley and UCLA where an advisor of *any kind* in your research area can be difficult to find unless you're perceived to be one of the better people there.

*sorry double post*

When I was taking the GRE I was told that as long as its over 80% no one cares, and that by far the most important aspect of the application is the recommendation letters. I was also advised to get letters from "famous" profs rather than from postdocs. From what I heard these letters are supposed to say "happyentropy is better than A,B,C and almost as good as X,Y,Z" where A,B,C,X,Y,Z are students the prof has worked with in the past who have gone to comparable grad and/or became respected mathematicians... Most domestic applicants to top programs get letters like this either from profs at their undergrad school or ones who supervised their REU's. In particular it helps if your recommender actually personally contacts your potential advisors at the schools you're applying to (I think that and good grades were the only things going for me when I applied...). If you're an international applicant from a school/country with faculty who are not known in the US it is more difficult, and their probably have to rely more heavily on your GRE math subject scores (for example at Michigan State the admissions chair said that the minimal expected GRE is 45% for domestic and 80%(!) for international applicants).

Top Programs at Universities in US 2007 These are specialt sub-rankings from US News 2007 (copied to a different source, since to get them directly from US News you have to pay). Algebra/Number Theory/Algebraic Geometry rankings: 1 Harvard University 2 University of California Berkeley 3 Princeton University 4 University of Michigan Ann Arbor 5 The University of Chicago 6 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 7 Columbia University,The School of General Studies 8 Yale University 9 University of Wisconsin Madison 10 University of California Los Angeles University of Illinois Urbana Champaign 12 Stanford University 13 Brown University The Ohio State University,Columbus 15 Rutgers University New Brunswick 16 California Institute of Technology Northwestern University The University of Texas at Austin The University of Utah 20 University of California San Diego 21 Johns Hopkins University

Some of my friends got into Purdue way back in mid-January... But its quite likely they have several waves of offers.

Yeah, I've finally got all of my decisions and I did MUCH better than expected. Accepted: UChicago, Berkeley, NYU, Columbia, Michigan, UCLA, UCSD, Wisconsin, UPenn Rejected: Princeton, MIT Waitlisted: Stanford So considering Stanford's decision isn't likely to come out before April 15... would it be inconsiderate to agree to go somewhere before April 15 and then decline if a positive decision is reached by Stanford? (I'm sure many people have dealt with this situation...)

Math85, I got an informal offer by email from Madison on the 15th and haven't heard any details since.

The offer from NYU was with the McCracken Fellowship. The email said they only initially accepted 12 people with funding, but have a large "accepted, waitlisted for funding" list in case some decline their offers. FWIW I think I'm declining in favor of U. Chicago at this point.

I got an offer from NYU yesterday. Anyone hear anything from (or about) Stanford?