Grad School Update #1: Stanford, Wisconsin, Duke
After playing the waiting game for 1-2 months, the results of my PhD applications are beginning to roll in. A quick recap: I submitted applications to the Statistics PhD programs at Stanford, Berkeley, UWisconsin Madison, UMichigan Ann Arbor, Harvard, UNC Chapel Hill, and Duke.
During the past week, I received two definite responses: rejected from Stanford, a decision I completely respect, and accepted to UWisconsin Madison! (Technically, the Madison Statistics department recommended my admission to the Madison Graduate School, but I’ll make the bold assumption that this is equivalent to being accepted.) I’m hoping to visit Madison during March.
And speaking of visits, I had the opportunity to check out a third department last week: Duke. After flying into Raleigh-Durham International on Thursday afternoon, I had a busy day of information sessions, interviews, a seminar, and meals with current graduate students on Friday. I loved it. The professors are working on a wide variety of interesting topics, I got along really well with the current students, and the department seems to have great attitudes towards promoting student success and tailoring the experience to the individual. Furthermore, I think that I did a good job of connecting with the people there and selling myself as someone who could flourish in such an environment. I haven’t heard the final verdict from them yet, but I have my fingers crossed.
Though I brought my camera with me to North Carolina, there weren’t many opportunities for pictures. Duke’s campus is gorgeous (especially West Campus, where the statistics department is located), but it was 33 degrees and raining for the duration of my visit. And I still had a great time!
(Sorry for the short post this week. Most of my computer time has been consumed by switching my POP Gmail accounts over to IMAP and getting everything configured across multiple devices, including getting Thunderbird up and running on my laptop. Thankfully, everything is up and running. Not doing that again any time soon.)