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Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 5:43 am
by sankha012
Undergrad Institution: Chennai Mathematical Institute, arguably the best place for undergrad math in India. Known for its strength in Algebraic Geometry.
Major(s): Mathematics
Minor(s): Physics
GPA: 9.00/10
Type of Student: International Asian Male

GRE General Test:
Q: 168 (95%)
V: 158 (79%)
W: 3.5 (38%)
GRE Subject Test in Mathematics:
M: 810 (82%)

TOEFL Score: 108 = R30/L26/S24/W28

Programs Applying: Math PhD

Research Experience: Summer internship at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai, India on fractals with an emphasis on computational methods.
Awards/Honors/Recognitions: Selected twice for the Indian IMO selection camp.
Letters of Recommendation: Two in Math and two in Physics. One of the Math profs is particularly famous in the country for his research on Measure Theory and his long career in teaching. Another was both a graduate student and a prof at SUNY SB.
Any Miscellaneous Points that Might Help: My institute awards a dual degree on Mathematics and Physics so I have taken a significant number of Physics courses too. My interest is in Dynamical Systems which has a physical flavor in it.


Applying to :
School - SUNY Stony Brook - Math - Dynamical Systems - Pending
School - UMD College Park - Math - Dynamical Systems - Pending
School - Pennsylvania State University - Math - Dynamical Systems - Pending
School - Tufts University - Math - Dynamical Systems - Rejected

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 3:04 pm
by ghjk
sankha012 wrote:Undergrad Institution: Chennai Mathematical Institute, arguably the best place for undergrad math in India. Known for its strength in Algebraic Geometry.
Major(s): Mathematics
Minor(s): Physics
GPA: 9.00/10
Type of Student: International Asian Male

GRE General Test:
Q: 168 (95%)
V: 158 (79%)
W: 3.5 (38%)
GRE Subject Test in Mathematics:
M: 810 (82%)

TOEFL Score: 108 = R30/L26/S24/W28

Programs Applying: Math PhD

Research Experience: Summer internship at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai, India on fractals with an emphasis on computational methods.
Awards/Honors/Recognitions: Selected twice for the Indian IMO selection camp.
Letters of Recommendation: Two in Math and two in Physics. One of the Math profs is particularly famous in the country for his research on Measure Theory and his long career in teaching. Another was both a graduate student and a prof at SUNY SB.
Any Miscellaneous Points that Might Help: My institute awards a dual degree on Mathematics and Physics so I have taken a significant number of Physics courses too. My interest is in Dynamical Systems which has a physical flavor in it.


Applying to :
School - SUNY Stony Brook - Math - Dynamical Systems - Pending
School - UMD College Park - Math - Dynamical Systems - Pending
School - Pennsylvania State University - Math - Dynamical Systems - Pending
School - Tufts University - Math - Dynamical Systems - Pending
Let me give it a try. For SUNY, PSU and Tufts, 90% would be admitted, with TA package. Now, for UMD, things get a little bit trickier, as the pool of applicants, especially in their AMSC programs, are pretty strong with very few people admitted (they are constrained on funding I believe). But the fact that you're good enough to be on the Indian IMO Selection Camp (made sure you highlighted how amazing this fact is) could help you overcome an otherwise standard application that might be on the fence (your Math GRE is good, but not outstanding, so not enough to help you standout at competitive programs). Unfortunately, India IMO teams are not doing very well traditionally, so it's a little LESS impressive when they take that into account, compared to Chinese or Vietnamese applicants.

Therefore, it all comes down to FIT from the LOR + SOP. If one or two of your LORs is FREAKING awesome (saying something like "he's the next Ramanujan... Or I would take him as my graduate student without hesitant") and their reputations are internationally recognized in the fields, you're probably in. Otherwise, SOP + Indian IMO camp twice will make or break your application. I'm not sure how many faculties at UMD specialized in Dynamical Systems, and how close the fit is. I would say your chance is 50% - 60% of admitted. I might be deadly wrong, but I hope I'm not:)

Best of luck to you man! Welcome to the States:)

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 10:56 pm
by sankha012
Thank you very much for the welcome :)
The Dynamics group at the UMD is pretty strong, actually. (https://www-math.umd.edu/research/resea ... amics.html)
They have some very famous people like Giovanni Forni and Michael Brin.

Also, are you sure about that 90% rate for Stony Brook? An excellent candidate from my institute got rejected last year.

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 11:58 pm
by pat2211
Actually your chance of admission for PSU is not that high. They weight the GRE subject test heavily. It is unlikely that they will accept an international student with subject test below 90%. As far as I know, most of the offers were sent out

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 12:25 am
by ghjk
pat2211 wrote:Actually your chance of admission for PSU is not that high. They weight the GRE subject test heavily. It is unlikely that they will accept an international student with subject test below 90%. As far as I know, most of the offers were sent out
Really?? 90% for a state school? That's quite insane:P I saw an American applicant who got in with no subject test score. So far, 3 offers have been sent out (http://thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php ... ics&t=a&o=).

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 12:27 am
by ghjk
sankha012 wrote:Thank you very much for the welcome :)
The Dynamics group at the UMD is pretty strong, actually. (https://www-math.umd.edu/research/resea ... amics.html)
They have some very famous people like Giovanni Forni and Michael Brin.

Also, are you sure about that 90% rate for Stony Brook? An excellent candidate from my institute got rejected last year.
I got in Stony Brook's Applied Math program 2 years ago with weaker profile than yours:) Sound scarily competitive this year then.

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 12:39 am
by pat2211
This standard is only for international students. My friend got into that school last year. At that time, he was working with a Prof at that school. That Prof even told him to forget everything else and try to break 90%. Your chance would be much higher if they used to accept students from your school and these students performed well

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 12:43 am
by ghjk
pat2211 wrote:This standard is only for international students. My friend got into that school last year. At that time, he was working with a Prof at that school. That Prof even told him to forget everything else and try to break 90%. Your chance would be much higher if they used to accept students from your school and these students performed well
Such a disdain discrimination. Too bad, that department's research in Math does not live up its high-standard recruiting bar:(

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 12:53 am
by pat2211
ghjk wrote:
pat2211 wrote:This standard is only for international students. My friend got into that school last year. At that time, he was working with a Prof at that school. That Prof even told him to forget everything else and try to break 90%. Your chance would be much higher if they used to accept students from your school and these students performed well
Such a disdain discrimination. Too bad, that department's research in Math does not live up its high-standard recruiting bar:(
You can see that 80% of the students they accepted are Chinese. The average subject test score on their web page is the average of both international and domestic students.

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 1:38 am
by arima
pat2211 wrote:
ghjk wrote:
pat2211 wrote:This standard is only for international students. My friend got into that school last year. At that time, he was working with a Prof at that school. That Prof even told him to forget everything else and try to break 90%. Your chance would be much higher if they used to accept students from your school and these students performed well
Such a disdain discrimination. Too bad, that department's research in Math does not live up its high-standard recruiting bar:(
You can see that 80% of the students they accepted are Chinese. The average subject test score on their web page is the average of both international and domestic students.
The numbers quoted here don't make sense. Go to the PSU site and see that the average test score for the last 5 years is around 800. There about 100 grad students in the program which translates to about 20 new students per year. Now if we take that 80% are Chinese and the minimal score for them is 90% (which is about 860), then this means that the 4 non-Chinese (presumably, domestic) students would be averaging around a 560 (or 26 percentile). That is just silly. So, I don't buy the 90% minimum for internationals at PSU to get accepted. The data show a very different story.

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 1:46 am
by pat2211
I mean 80% of the accepted international students are Chinese. Last year, there are 5 or 6 international Chinese students. Half of them come from Fudan University. Fudan is well known at PSU

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 2:18 am
by ghjk
pat2211 wrote:I mean 80% of the accepted international students are Chinese. Last year, there are 5 or 6 international Chinese students. Half of them come from Fudan University. Fudan is well known at PSU
Do you know anything regards to other factors that come into play at PSU's admission? I meant, there gotta be a bunch of applicants meeting the 90%. Do they even care about the grades and number of grad courses taken + how well you did on them? How about research experience factor?

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 2:51 am
by KatrinaElizabeth
ghjk wrote:
pat2211 wrote:Actually your chance of admission for PSU is not that high. They weight the GRE subject test heavily. It is unlikely that they will accept an international student with subject test below 90%. As far as I know, most of the offers were sent out
Really?? 90% for a state school? That's quite insane:P I saw an American applicant who got in with no subject test score. So far, 3 offers have been sent out (http://thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php ... ics&t=a&o=).
Just wanted to point out that there have been 9 offers on GradCafe, not 3. If you search for mathematics and math separately, and then sort by institution name, it adds up to 9.

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 3:04 am
by ghjk
KatrinaElizabeth wrote:
ghjk wrote:
pat2211 wrote:Actually your chance of admission for PSU is not that high. They weight the GRE subject test heavily. It is unlikely that they will accept an international student with subject test below 90%. As far as I know, most of the offers were sent out
Really?? 90% for a state school? That's quite insane:P I saw an American applicant who got in with no subject test score. So far, 3 offers have been sent out (http://thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php ... ics&t=a&o=).
Just wanted to point out that there have been 9 offers on GradCafe, not 3. If you search for mathematics and math separately, and then sort by institution name, it adds up to 9.
I tried that, but same result. Don't know where you got 9? Minds showing the link to 9?

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 4:01 am
by KatrinaElizabeth
ghjk wrote:
KatrinaElizabeth wrote:
ghjk wrote:
Really?? 90% for a state school? That's quite insane:P I saw an American applicant who got in with no subject test score. So far, 3 offers have been sent out (http://thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php ... ics&t=a&o=).
Just wanted to point out that there have been 9 offers on GradCafe, not 3. If you search for mathematics and math separately, and then sort by institution name, it adds up to 9.
I tried that, but same result. Don't know where you got 9? Minds showing the link to 9?
I'm not sure if this will work.
http://thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php ... =m&o=i&p=8
Bottom of page 7 and top of page 8. Seven results are there. Two more when you replace mathematics with math.

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 5:09 am
by india_kid4
KatrinaElizabeth wrote:
ghjk wrote:
KatrinaElizabeth wrote:
Just wanted to point out that there have been 9 offers on GradCafe, not 3. If you search for mathematics and math separately, and then sort by institution name, it adds up to 9.
I tried that, but same result. Don't know where you got 9? Minds showing the link to 9?
I'm not sure if this will work.
http://thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php ... =m&o=i&p=8
Bottom of page 7 and top of page 8. Seven results are there. Two more when you replace mathematics with math.
Here is a combined list of Penn State acceptances to math programs: http://thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php ... te&t=m&o=i

There are 9 acceptances in total.

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 5:10 am
by pat2211
Actually, there are not too many students who can break 900 ( I mean 900, not 90 percentile ). Only around 10-20 applicants per year ( and not all of them will attend psu ). If they used to accept students from your school then the transcripts are helpful. They may look at it and see how much advance mathematics you've learned. In this case, you don't need a high subject test score, around 800 is enough. But if you are from an unknown school ( in the sense that they've never accept students from your school ) and your recommenders are not well known then they will only look at the subject test score. They want to make sure that you can pass the qualify exam in your 1st year ( the qual exams of psu are extremely easy, they want their students to start to research as soon as possible ).

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 5:20 am
by KatrinaElizabeth
india_kid4 wrote:
KatrinaElizabeth wrote:
ghjk wrote:
I tried that, but same result. Don't know where you got 9? Minds showing the link to 9?
I'm not sure if this will work.
http://thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php ... =m&o=i&p=8
Bottom of page 7 and top of page 8. Seven results are there. Two more when you replace mathematics with math.
Here is a combined list of Penn State acceptances to math programs: http://thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php ... te&t=m&o=i

There are 9 acceptances in total.
Just learned a new trick! Thanks!

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 8:35 am
by mathTaughtMeHumility
pat2211 wrote:Actually, there are not too many students who can break 900 ( I mean 900, not 90 percentile ). Only around 10-20 applicants per year ( and not all of them will attend psu ). If they used to accept students from your school then the transcripts are helpful. They may look at it and see how much advance mathematics you've learned. In this case, you don't need a high subject test score, around 800 is enough. But if you are from an unknown school ( in the sense that they've never accept students from your school ) and your recommenders are not well known then they will only look at the subject test score. They want to make sure that you can pass the qualify exam in your 1st year ( the qual exams of psu are extremely easy, they want their students to start to research as soon as possible ).
10-20 seems too few. 900 is about 97 percentile I think. That would mean only 350-700 take the math GRE in an year, which is definitely not true.

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 8:44 am
by india_kid4
KatrinaElizabeth wrote:
india_kid4 wrote:
KatrinaElizabeth wrote:
I'm not sure if this will work.
http://thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php ... =m&o=i&p=8
Bottom of page 7 and top of page 8. Seven results are there. Two more when you replace mathematics with math.
Here is a combined list of Penn State acceptances to math programs: http://thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php ... te&t=m&o=i

There are 9 acceptances in total.
Just learned a new trick! Thanks!
No problem! The gradcafe search is actually really versatile - it allows you to do OR operators too, so I've got a search query that shows me only pure math PhD acceptances from the places that I've applied too.

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 10:45 am
by pat2211
mathTaughtMeHumility wrote:
pat2211 wrote:Actually, there are not too many students who can break 900 ( I mean 900, not 90 percentile ). Only around 10-20 applicants per year ( and not all of them will attend psu ). If they used to accept students from your school then the transcripts are helpful. They may look at it and see how much advance mathematics you've learned. In this case, you don't need a high subject test score, around 800 is enough. But if you are from an unknown school ( in the sense that they've never accept students from your school ) and your recommenders are not well known then they will only look at the subject test score. They want to make sure that you can pass the qualify exam in your 1st year ( the qual exams of psu are extremely easy, they want their students to start to research as soon as possible ).
10-20 seems too few. 900 is about 97 percentile I think. That would mean only 350-700 take the math GRE in an year, which is definitely not true.
I mean 10-20 applicants who apply to PSU got this score every year.

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sat Feb 13, 2016 1:57 am
by sankha012
@ghjk Just got rejection letter from Tufts :\

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sat Feb 13, 2016 2:56 am
by pat2211
That's really strange. Tufts rarely declines an applicant with solid profile like you. Btw, have you heard anything new from PSU ?

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sat Feb 13, 2016 4:33 am
by sankha012
No. :cry: I am really tensed..I considered Tufts as safety.

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sat Feb 13, 2016 6:31 am
by pat2211
sankha012 wrote:No. :cry: I am really tensed..I considered Tufts as safety.
Your undergrad institution is famous. I think your chance for Stony Brook is pretty high. I am waiting for TAMU, haven't heard anything from them :(

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Sat Feb 13, 2016 12:46 pm
by ghjk
sankha012 wrote:@ghjk Just got rejection letter from Tufts :\
I'm very sorry to hear:( such a random result...wait for other schools to see what happens...Best of luck!!

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 12:28 am
by sankha012
Update : Got rejected by all four :cry:

Re: Request for profile evaluation

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 12:51 pm
by joga
sankha012 wrote:Update : Got rejected by all four :cry:
Sorry man. Try TIFR i am sure you will be happy there