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Is this forum representative enough?

Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2017 7:35 am
by mishania1996
So, I am checking the threads with applicants profiles and trying to understand how well it represents the group of all applicants which might not be active in that thread or maybe even might not be aware about this website. To be more specific, I counted the percentage of applicants having >3.9gpa and >800 mGRE. Can we say that we will have the same percentage overall? Are there any reasons for students with very good profiles to be active in the thread or maybe to be inactive? Can the representativeness of the thread be trusted?

Re: Is this forum representative enough?

Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2017 9:17 am
by lambert
I'm gonna go with 'no' because there are too many variables at play here. How can you accurately measure the percentage of 'good' profiles? Most of the posters here do not have similar goals; you got pure math people and people going for applied / statistics, then there are those who aim for the top while others just apply to low-tier schools etc.

Even gpa is not an accurate metric; a 3.9/4 at a liberal arts college nobody's heard of and with a tiny math department will probably mean jack shit compared to, say, a 4.9/5 at MIT which really speaks for itself.

Re: Is this forum representative enough?

Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2017 10:51 am
by Bigsrw
I personally think that most posters here have really high GPAs and tend to have higher GRE scores. I posted my application profile and I think I have the lowest GPA on there. I think I'm also the only one not aiming for IVY leagues on there. I think other students like me probably post in other areas of the forum or hide in the background where people with 'better' profiles mostly stick to showing off their application?

I haven't checked to see if this is true but that's what it seems like to me.

Re: Is this forum representative enough?

Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2017 12:46 pm
by mishania1996
lambert wrote:I'm gonna go with 'no' because there are too many variables at play here. How can you accurately measure the percentage of 'good' profiles? Most of the posters here do not have similar goals; you got pure math people and people going for applied / statistics, then there are those who aim for the top while others just apply to low-tier schools etc.

Even gpa is not an accurate metric; a 3.9/4 at a liberal arts college nobody's heard of and with a tiny math department will probably mean jack shit compared to, say, a 4.9/5 at MIT which really speaks for itself.
Sorry for not being transparent. Firstly, I check only people applying to pure math. Secondly, I agree that gpa is not accurate but I am interested in a statistical data. I assume that a good profile, which is likely to be accepted by top, must have high gpa and mgre. After that I check those "good profiles" in terms of what percentage of them got admitted, what are their research experience, their schools and so on. After all I know for some schools how many students apply and how many of them get admitted. And my question in this thread is "Can I tell that comparing my own profile with the existing data of others would be sufficient to determine my chances to be admitted to a particular school? Or the sample of profiles in the thread is not representative? If not, in which way it is not representative, and what are the reasons?"

Re: Is this forum representative enough?

Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2017 3:21 pm
by Tianma799
mishania1996 wrote:
lambert wrote:I'm gonna go with 'no' because there are too many variables at play here. How can you accurately measure the percentage of 'good' profiles? Most of the posters here do not have similar goals; you got pure math people and people going for applied / statistics, then there are those who aim for the top while others just apply to low-tier schools etc.

Even gpa is not an accurate metric; a 3.9/4 at a liberal arts college nobody's heard of and with a tiny math department will probably mean jack shit compared to, say, a 4.9/5 at MIT which really speaks for itself.
Sorry for not being transparent. Firstly, I check only people applying to pure math. Secondly, I agree that gpa is not accurate but I am interested in a statistical data. I assume that a good profile, which is likely to be accepted by top, must have high gpa and mgre. After that I check those "good profiles" in terms of what percentage of them got admitted, what are their research experience, their schools and so on. After all I know for some schools how many students apply and how many of them get admitted. And my question in this thread is "Can I tell that comparing my own profile with the existing data of others would be sufficient to determine my chances to be admitted to a particular school? Or the sample of profiles in the thread is not representative? If not, in which way it is not representative, and what are the reasons?"
One of the reasons being, most people don't have access to their LORs, so it is hard to say anything just by looking at their status.

Re: Is this forum representative enough?

Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2017 5:13 pm
by djysyed
Often enough, a graduate course at a non-top 100 school is the same level as an undergraduate course at a top 30 school.

Re: Is this forum representative enough?

Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2017 7:11 am
by mishania1996
djysyed wrote:Often enough, a graduate course at a non-top 100 school is the same level as an undergraduate course at a top 30 school.
I get it. That's not what I meant. Let me be more specific:
If x% of the thread apply from top30, does it mean that there are close to x% of applicants from top30 overall from the world?
If y% of the thread applying to top50 have gpa >=3.8, does it mean that close to y% of all applicants applying to top50 have gpa>=3.8?
And so on.
Which properties are represented close enough, and what could be the reasons for a property not to be representative?