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How to decide between these schools

Posted: Tue Dec 22, 2020 9:59 pm
by karlweierstrass
Hi all!

I'm unable to choose between Michigan State, University of Pittsburgh and University of California, Santa Barbara. All of these schools have people who work in Analysis and PDEs and are ranked closely too. I'm unable to break ties and pick one.

Does anyone have any idea which one of these are more selective?

Moreover, are these actually comparable? How would you rank them in terms of prestige?

Cheers!

Re: How to decide between these schools

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2020 3:24 pm
by applepi
karlweierstrass wrote:
Tue Dec 22, 2020 9:59 pm
Hi all!

I'm unable to choose between Michigan State, University of Pittsburgh and University of California, Santa Barbara. All of these schools have people who work in Analysis and PDEs and are ranked closely too. I'm unable to break ties and pick one.

Does anyone have any idea which one of these are more selective?

Moreover, are these actually comparable? How would you rank them in terms of prestige?

Cheers!
These are all good and prestigious schools. It is likely that UCSB and Pitt are more competitive in terms of admission due to their location. UCSB is probably the most competitive among the three since it is located outside of LA.

MSU provides their admissions data on their website (see https://opb.msu.edu/functions/instituti ... -data.html)
They only had 117 applicants in the Fall 2017 cycle, I'm fairly confident that UCSB will easily have over 200 applications due to its prime location.

I know 117 might sound like a lot, but if you look at say Minnesota's data (see https://apps.grad.umn.edu/stats/ad/1052000.shtml), they had 484 applicants last year, of which 427 are for their Ph.D program.

Re: How to decide between these schools

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2020 6:40 pm
by pkzrd
karlweierstrass wrote:
Tue Dec 22, 2020 9:59 pm
Hi all!

I'm unable to choose between Michigan State, University of Pittsburgh and University of California, Santa Barbara. All of these schools have people who work in Analysis and PDEs and are ranked closely too. I'm unable to break ties and pick one.

Does anyone have any idea which one of these are more selective?

Moreover, are these actually comparable? How would you rank them in terms of prestige?

Cheers!
Why not just apply to all 3?

Re: How to decide between these schools

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2020 9:14 pm
by Cyclicduck
UCSB is the best. The weather is amazing there, you can surf at 6 am every day, the professors are nice, and somebody from there got into Columbia last year!!!

Re: How to decide between these schools

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2020 9:27 pm
by scrubm8
Cyclicduck wrote:
Wed Dec 23, 2020 9:14 pm
UCSB is the best. The weather is amazing there, you can surf at 6 am every day, the professors are nice, and somebody from there got into Columbia last year!!!
What you should do, OP, is to forget about all of these schools you listed and go to ZooMass Slamherst and work with Andrea Nahmod. The weather is far better than in California, you do not have to worry about the cliff your house is on top of collapsing, and you get to experience wild parties. Someone from there also got into Columbia, so it's no worse than U Can Study Buzzed.

Re: How to decide between these schools

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2020 9:34 pm
by pizzakun
Cyclicduck wrote:
Wed Dec 23, 2020 9:14 pm
UCSB is the best. The weather is amazing there, you can surf at 6 am every day, the professors are nice, and somebody from there got into Columbia last year!!!
Lol the campus is right next to the ocean. Literally.