wind up bird

Not only do I think UCSD is the stronger department, my understanding is that UCSD is much better in terms of environment. Overall it seems like the better place to be.

As a current student there, I agree thesparky about Caltech. The faculty are extremely open and responsive and the attitude among students is collegial and non-competitive. After visiting, I had very positive impressions of, and continue to hear good things about, the departments at Boston College and UCSD.

They have paid internships for both PhDs and undergrads (deadline is April 1st) as well as some unpaid internships throughout the year.

Just adding, many months later, that I was wrong in this post. Ultimately, a few people were admitted from the waitlist!

10-15 hours per problem set was pretty standard for my first year. Having a problem set that took less than 4 hours was fairly unusual.

I'd hate to be in your study group for comps. I'll just say this. Focus on your own work and your own achievements. You'll meet a lot of bright folks in this field, and it will become pretty tiring to regard them all as competition.

Usually just Lay-tek. And I pronounce SAS "sass".

A good number of people I meet think Caltech is one of the Cal State schools, heh.

Re. the GRE, there are common types of problems that are very likely to show up every time. For me the key was to learn how to do those problems not just easily but extremely quickly. This mostly just takes lots and lots of practice. Then when you encounter a problem that's a little more tricky, you have needed time to think about it carefully.

Ditto asquare re: Caltech. One of our admits this past cycle had a PhD in physics, so it's certainly possible to get in.

I wouldn't retake if I were you. What percentile was your 660? It should be reasonably high.

I transferred to a UC, but satisfied this requirement by taking it online through Santa Barbara City College in my last year of undergrad. It was pretty convenient.

I don't think real analysis is strictly necessary if you are not going to do a PhD in economics or finance. The value of that course has to do with learning how to do proofs which I am not sure is a big part of masters programs in finance (though feel free to correct me if I am wrong).

I have always wondered who wrote Larry Summers' LORS.

I had a B- in Calc II and B+'s in Calc III, probability, and basic linear algebra and I got into decent schools.

I've heard that Caltech's core sequence is a little more heavy on analysis than most programs, so not surprisingly I have found my background in analysis helpful many times this year. That said, I really had no idea what was going on when I was an undergrad in my analysis courses, even when it comes to the basic stuff. I just didn't have much of a feel for it at the time. After analysis was over, I forgot about it for a year, and somehow by the time I got to math camp and it was presented to me a second time, it made sense. So I don't think it's necessary to be completely comfortable with real analysis even for fairly technical core sequences, as long as you're somewhat familiar with the notation and concepts.

I think you are overstating the difference in career options you'll have at a top 5 vs a top 10, unless you don't think it's worth being a professor unless you can be one at a top 5 program. I also don't think the signaling value of a top 5 degree is more important outside of academia. I mean, all else equal, students from the top 5 do have an advantage, but it's not as though people with PhDs from Northwestern are sitting around unemployed because academia and industry are blocked off to them as non-top5-ers. They can and regularly do get very good jobs. You may be right about the glass ceiling (although I'm not convinced that someone with a good enough job market paper would still be blocked from the top 5), but it's a pretty high ceiling. On the other hand, This is probably something you should think about.

I agree with this. If you really think your current program will hold you back from doing good research, then it makes sense to wait and apply again. But I really doubt that is the case for any top 10 program.

Putting aside placement considerations for a moment, how do you feel about the program you've committed to? Is it a good fit? Do you like the faculty doing work in your fields of interest? Do you feel like you would be able to do good research there?

There is some kind of online score report but I don't remember how to get to it. It gives you a lot of information actually. It tells you which questions you missed as well as the difficulty level of all the questions in that section. So, I know that all of the questions I missed were of the hardest difficulty (5). After the first couple of wrong answers, I was given a level 4 question or two. After getting them right, I was given another level 5 question. Towards the end of the test, when I missed a level 5 question, I just got another level 5 question. It's interesting to see how the CAT works.

Yes, it's possible to get an 800 with mistakes. I missed four questions and still got an 800. But it really depends on which questions you get wrong and how far along in the test they are.

That is really strange. I have never heard of such a requirement. It's also not under the program requirements or the FAQ, so it might not actually be enforced, or it might be a mistake. I'm sure someone on the board is at NYU and can weigh in on this. (And sorry for being snarky earlier!)

Where does it say this? You do need to speak English, but speaking another language is not required.

You're just messing with us now.

Heh, I was also going to say cryptography. Very fun class. That along with Introduction to Abstract Math and my second term of Real Analysis. Not even because I particularly liked the material, but because I had great professors and I learned a lot about how to think and write proofs. I did not really enjoy the more basic calculus and linear algebra classes. Sooooo tedious.