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Possible to compare these schools?

Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2020 7:44 am
by yaskhn3
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Re: Possible to compare these schools?

Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2020 4:05 pm
by temporaryacct
I think it's difficult to do in general because so much depends on field. For example, Rutgers is extremely strong in combinatorics and graph theory and if you ranked based on just that they would be at the top. Another thing to note is that difficulty of admission is correlated with, but not totally related to ranking. Many lower ranked schools are still quite hard to get into because they have very small departments with very specific fits they're looking for. When I applied I think I did better with my match schools than my safety schools. Sorry, I know this may not be too helpful.

Re: Possible to compare these schools?

Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2020 2:29 am
by yaskhn3
Thank you for your insight. I was speculating the same and thus could not arrive at any conclusion. I am sure I will either be doing Analysis of PDEs or Number Theory, so I ruled out a couple based on that.

Now my SOLE criteria are the institute's prestige and how selective/big/small they are. (All of these do PDEs and NT both.)

1. Michigan State, 51-100, 144, 47, Group I
2. Penn State, 51-100, 93, 32, Group I
3. Purdue, 51-100, 111, 26, Group I
4. Rutgers, 51-100, 262, 22, Group I
5. Maryland, 51-100, 136, 22, Group I
6. Minnesota, 51-100, 156, 19, Group I

7. UC Davis, 101-150, 104, 34, Group II
8. UIC, 101-150, 231, 39, Group I

9. Texas A&M, 151-200, 189, 39, Group II
10. UC Irvine, 151-200, 219, 39, Group II

11. Notre Dame, 201-250, 210, 39, Group I

How would one rank these now, based on their PDES+NT group and class size?

NB, I have gotten into UIC before too (Fall 2019) and I will get in there again (unofficially told by one of their faculty). So, I don't want safeties worse than UIC.

Re: Possible to compare these schools?

Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2020 11:00 am
by temporaryacct
I wouldn't put so much emphasis on rankings at all. My advice would be to first determine whether you have any preferences in terms of location or department size. These are personally preference and neither big nor small departments are inherently better than the other.

If you have a potential research area in mind, my advice would be to go through the faculty and see how many people do work that you might find interesting. Make a rough list based on that. You can use rankings to roughly group, but it's really difficult to do anything finer.

That said, if you really want to rank I would maybe put Michigan State and Penn State lower in general. Although, I don't really know much about PDEs.

Re: Possible to compare these schools?

Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2020 12:11 pm
by MathParent
Look not at the rank but at the specific strength in the topics that you are interested in. Look at the names of the professors and their publications in the area you are inclined to study and work in.
Also, Why don't you simply apply to all of those? There are only 12 schools listed. My kid applied to 22, he was applying last year.

Re: Possible to compare these schools?

Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2020 3:41 pm
by defen
Consider the locations - you'll have to live there for several years. If the local conditions (urban vs rural, climate, outdoor stuff to do on the weekend if you care about that, etc) are not suitable for you, that's a lot more significant than a few points in the rankings.