profile evaluation, please!

[undecided]

Hi all,

Udergad Institution:Oxford
Major: Mathematics.
GPA: 90% (top 3 in the year, i.e. 200 maths students)
Type of student: EU national

GRE: haven't taken yet (90+ percentile should not be a problem in quant and subject test)
TOEFL: haven't taken yet

Program Applying: Pure Maths (possibly also some financial maths ones)

Research Experience: one supper project in regularity theory for elliptic PDE.

Others: 2 brozes italian maths olympiads, one of my rec letters will be from a prof that is quite well known in the analysis research world, who said that he would be happy to take me as phd student in his centre, the other references are from not very famous people.

Should I even bother trying to apply to top 5/10 US programs?

Thank you very much!

[longtm1989]

Lolz, you have a very good profile. What answers do you want to hear from people? Everyone would say you have a chance, but it's still hard, because it's top 5-10!! Do whatever you want... I just happened to see this quote on Terrence Tao's blog, it's so true: "Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t". (Erica Jong)

[undecided]

I guess you are right,
I'm having quite a hard time deciding what to do (I have an offer from a bank, the fact that I'm still undecided makes me think I probably don't have the right motivation to do a maths phd at all...)

On another note, I am worried about my lack of research experience... but I guess admission committees will know that there aren't many REU-like things in Europe...