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To owlpride

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 8:23 am
by ebb
So, I just read you profile, and one line in particular caught my eye:
owlpride wrote:UT Austin - rejected 2/23, waitlisted 3/9, accepted 4/5 ::headscratch::
Just to satisfy my curiosity, could you perhaps tell us more about what on earth happened there? Did they finally budge to you relentless bribing efforts? (sorry, j/k.) If you don't mind me asking, of course.

Re: To owlpride

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 8:18 pm
by owlpride
An entire thread in my honor? I feel flattered!

All I know about Austin is that the initial rejection was a mistake of some sort. When they caught it, they had to waitlist me because they had already made their first-round offers. While I am glad that I did eventually get accepted, I am disappointed by the actual offer I got. 16K w/o health insurance is not very enticing given my other options. I am about to decline this offer, and I hope that it will go to another member of this board!

Re: To owlpride

Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2011 2:13 am
by fireandgladstone
I'm hoping you get into Princeton and Stanford at this point just so you'll have a clean sweep. Have you narrowed down your list yet? I'm interested in seeing where you're going considering the number and quality of your options.

Re: To owlpride

Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 8:43 pm
by owlpride
I'm hoping you get into Princeton and Stanford at this point just so you'll have a clean sweep.
I like your way of thinking! And I am happy to report that I did get into Stanford and Princeton. :mrgreen:

I am seriously considering Stanford, Columbia, Michigan and Austin at this point, though I have yet to visit Stanford and Austin. There are so many great things about each of the schools that I decided to proceed by exclusion:

MIT and Princeton's graduate curriculum is not ideal for a liberal arts college student like me. (They assume that incoming graduate students have already had all of the core math courses and are ready to start doing research, which I am not.) Their graduate students seem to be under an intense amount of pressure and many have a hard time coping.

Cornell has the opposite problem - too little pressure. The graduate students described their graduate years as a "5-year-long vacation." I had the impression that many grad students weren't all that serious about their academics, and the department lets them get away with it. I think it'd prefer a more committed atmosphere.

Berkeley has atmosphere, location and an amazing funding offer going for it, but their geometry-topology group is not as strong as it used to be. And I didn't mesh with a good percentage of the faculty who are left.

===

To be honest, I hope that I will fall into love with Stanford when I visit next week. It would be incredibly painful to decline the big name schools to attend a "lower-ranked" one.

Re: To owlpride

Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 10:16 pm
by fireandgladstone
I thought you were underwhelmed by Austin's offer. I'm not sure what you want to do in geometry/topology, but I can't see Austin having an advantage over Berkeley (this on top of the fact that you said Berkeley made you a great offer financially). Have your recommenders given you any advice/suggestions?

Rankings should obviously be taken with a grain of salt, but if you're interested:

Geometry
Topology

If you already have a very specific interest in mind though these rankings might not be relevant. For what it's worth, I don't think you can really go wrong with a top ranked school like Berkeley or Stanford.

Re: To owlpride

Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 10:47 pm
by owlpride
Austin came around and made me a real offer. :)
For what it's worth, I don't think you can really go wrong with a top ranked school like Berkeley or Stanford.
That's what I thought and then I radically changed my mind after I visited. Berkeley used to have a very strong topology group, but several faculty have recently retired, moved away or are about to move away. The most promising advisers (in my opinion) only recently moved there and it's not clear whether or not they'll stay. I am puzzled by Berkeley's #2 geometry ranking because they only have a single "real" geometer.

Austin's geometry group is way bigger and way more active than Berkeley's.

Re: To owlpride

Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 11:31 pm
by MattW
I'm not a big believer in US New's rankings. The general rankings are too general, and I consider the specialty rankings to be very unreliable. I found that talking to faculty who work in your field of interest is the best way to find out what the real deal is.

Good luck with your decision. I guess that you will be deciding quickly.

Re: To owlpride

Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 5:55 am
by DirtyFeet
owlpride wrote:...Cornell has the opposite problem - too little pressure. The graduate students described their graduate years as a "5-year-long vacation." I had the impression that many grad students weren't all that serious about their academics, and the department lets them get away with it. I think it'd prefer a more committed atmosphere.
I am seriously considering Cornell but this thing you said makes me worry a little bit. Where did you get that info?

P.S. If I were you I would definitively go to Stanford.

Re: To owlpride

Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 8:21 pm
by cbreeden
OWLPRIDE!

Where are you going?! I must know! :shock:

Re: To owlpride

Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 9:50 pm
by owlpride
Stanford! (That is, provided that they manage to get me an official admissions letter by Friday, because I need a code in that letter to accept the offer. Stupid last-minute waitlist issues...)

Re: To owlpride

Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 9:59 pm
by cbreeden
CONGRATULATIONS! :D

I'm sure you are very deserving to go to such a nice school, owlpride. I wish you the best of luck.

Re: To owlpride

Posted: Sat May 14, 2011 6:38 am
by johnrichard
Have a nice journey through... :)