My D will have good recommendations from respected professors. But they are not stars known to everyone. They are known in their circles, probably small-ish.
@wis75, thank you. 75% sounds doable.
@KSPKAKR, that is an excellent site.
It is not that easy to be among the top 25% of math students who take the math GRE- that’s what the 75%ile is (note- percentile, not percent correct answers, btw). That is not good enough for the top twenty math grad programs. She needs to discuss things with her college major advisor. This person will know which programs are most likely to accept her based on her school, grades and test scores. There are plenty of grad schools to choose from if one expands one’s choices beyond the very top schools. She will need to decide which schools offer the area(s) of math she is most interested in as well.
The importance of a top math GRE score depends on the caliber of grad program one is interested in.
How important is it for top programs for example?
@Iglooo - My answer is a combination of my own, stale, general knowledge plus some feedback from a friend who knows about math Ph.D. programs.
At a top 5-10 program, the math subject GRE score won’t be as important as grades, recommendations, or research experience. My friend said - if it’s above 850 it’ll be fine and no one will give it a second glance; 800-850 is a little below average but no one will care if the rest of the application is good; 750-790 would be seen as a negative but isn’t an automatic reject; below 700-725 is probably fatal. He also said it’s worth studying for because a lot of the test is sophomore level intro analysis that a lot of students haven’t seen since freshman year if they’ve been taking more advanced courses.
Some general comments -
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Ph.D. programs are different from undergrad. The reputation of the math department (or of the faculty in a particular subfield) is what matters, not the reputation of the school.
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There’s lots of debate on CC about how important it is to go to a prestigious undergrad. But if someone is interested in an academic career at a research institution, there’s very little debate … it’s pretty important to go to a top 25 program. And graduates from top 5 programs do noticeably better on the academic job market than those from 20th ranked programs.
If your daughter wants to teach at a top 100 research institution then I’d discourage her from going to a Ph.D. program if it wasn’t to a top 25-35 program with funding. If her goal is to be at a teaching institution or get a job in industry then it may make sense to go to a program outside the top 25-35.
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Admissions to a top 5-10 program is pretty brutal. Admissions rates vary from 3% to 15%. The best way to think about it is that they’re trying to accept classes that are drawn from the top 250 graduating math students in the world. However, since your daughter is a woman and (I assume) a US citizen, the competition won’t be quite as tough. GRE math scores are just a negative filter at these programs. They probably matter more at lower ranked programs since the applicants often won’t have any substantial research before applying.
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You’re not just competing for admissions but also for funding. That’s another reason to have as strong an application as you can. If a department doesn’t give you funding of some sort (fellowship, TA) then it’s pretty much a signal that you shouldn’t be getting a Ph.D. I believe the top 10 math programs pretty much fund all their students, but I’m not sure if this holds true for lower ranked programs. Of course, a fellowship is preferred to a TA-ship.
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If your daughter is attending a college with a strong undergrad program, then a recommendation from a well-known professor who knows her and will vouch for her can matter a lot
^Thank you for concrete info. It sounds like she would need to get 800 or certainly not much below. I don’t think it’s easy to get 800 under time constrains. I am afraid that will be the weakest part of the application.
I agree with al2simon generally, but I think that the availability of full support for Ph.D. students in mathematics is much broader than suggested in the previous post. The American Mathematical Society classification of mathematics departments can be found at this site: http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/groups
If a student is admitted to one of the 40 or so “large public” + “large private” Ph.D. programs that were previously classified as Group I, I would be shocked if the student is not also offered full support as a teaching assistant, research assistant, or fellow. I suspect that full support for Ph.D. students in mathematics extends pretty far down the line, actually. My guess is that at least the top 100 departments offer full support, and maybe even more than the top 100.
I am not sure why the AMS dropped their old classification. However, it is worthwhile to consider the total number of graduate students in the program, because this will give some indication of the vitality of the department and the number of auxiliary opportunities it can offer (quality of guest seminar speakers, sabbatical visitors . . . )
What would be an optimal number of graduate students in a department? Is the bigger the better?
Just my opinion about size, but I think a student would probably be best off in a “large public” or “large private” mathematics department. A “large public” department just needs to average 7 Ph.D. graduates per year. A “large private” department just needs to average 3.9 Ph.D. graduates per year. Those are both pretty small lower bounds.
Also, I don’t know about mathematics specifically, but in the physical sciences, the GRE %iles have been strongly influenced by large numbers of students from the PRC taking the exams. Near the top, this has meant that the same numerical score on the subject test converts to about 10 %ile points lower than it did a generation ago. Partly this happens because the students from the PRC often have master’s degrees in the subject before taking the GRE. Partly it occurs because they prepare very seriously for the GRE.
I suggest that the OP’s daughter prepare as much as is reasonably possible, take the GRE, and then apply to all of the schools in which she is interested, without being concerned that the GRE will cause her application to be rejected. My university takes American applicants with weaker “paper” qualifications than those of foreign students. Math grad programs take multiple years, and there is time to catch up.
Do they give some consideration to American students if the percetile is so greatly influenced by PRC? I am sure they are smart and also prepare for GREs hard. I also heard they collect past tests and study them repeatedly. There aren’t too many sample tests available for students here to study. Once she is in a program, I have no doubt she will do well wherever she ends up.
I cannot say in general, but in my field, at the University of Chicago, at least until recently, they would not disqualify an American applicant who had a GRE subject test score in the top 50%. To me, it makes sense for your daughter to do the best she can on the GRE, considering the other demands on her time, and then not worry about it.
I don’t know about math but DS just went through it last season for physics. Judging anecdotally from what he said and results that can be found at physicsgre.com and gradcafe.com, international applicants were not accepted into physics programs without a near perfect physics gre score. Domestic students were accepted with scores down into the 700s,
To a large extent, internationals compete in a different bucket than domestic students. It will definitely be easier for an American (and a woman) - not only from a GRE score perspective, but from a total perspective as well.
I was last involved in Ph.D. admissions when the wave of PRC applicants was just getting started, and my field wasn’t math. But here’s what I suspect -
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I think people know that candidates from the PRC are often prepped within an inch of their lives and the GRE scores probably overrepresent the natural talents of some of these students. But there are so many phenomenal international students who want to go to the top US grad schools that the schools can just raise their “cutoffs” very high when looking at international students from the usual countries.
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I think math is a bit different than the sciences since in the sciences usually 1/2 the students are doing experiment rather than theory. They’ll cut more slack for an experimental student than for a theory student on the GREs since they’re working in the lab, but that option doesn’t exist for math students so they’ll be a bit stricter when looking at GRE scores. You have to compare math students to science theory students. Even still, the math subject GRE is definitely not the most important factor. Also, I think it’s easier to hit the top of the range on the physics GRE than the math GRE.
I think QuantMech knows more about the current state of funding for Ph.D. programs than I do. I’m sure (s)he is right that almost all math Ph.D. students are funded. But there’s funding and there’s funding. Here’s how it worked 20 years ago -
- A fellowship is best; an RA with your advisor is a close 2nd; a TA is the 3rd choice. Although I think every Ph.D. student should teach for a few semesters just to get the experience, it can be a chore after a while - it’s not just the time but the interruption to your mental concentration if you’re focused on your research. The ideal is if your department offers you a fellowship for the 1st year so you can concentrate on passing qualifiers, then a combination of fellowships and RAs for the next few years.
Fellowships are often competitively awarded, so it’s worth trying to put your best foot forward on your application.
- The amount of funding and how many years it is “guaranteed” for matters too. I was on an NSF fellowship, which was considered a pretty good deal at the time. Currently, an NSF fellowship covers tuition and gives you a $32,000 year stipend, and at least in the old days your advisor could give you another 11K for the 3 summer months. With $32,000 or $43,000 /year to cover living expenses you can concentrate on your research and get done better / faster.
Some schools may give you an award where you have to teach or may not offer enough money and students have to supplement their income. Or they may not be able to support all their students past the 5th or 6th year. Or you may only be able to work with professors who have grant money to give out (the usual case). You have to check all this stuff out when you are comparing admissions offers.
Many programs will list a cutoff for GPAs and GREs. For example Cornell writes " Most successful applicants score 700 or above on their GRE subject test." So I would think looking at different PHD websites would give you information on what scores are needed on which tests. And the grad cafe results section is also helpful.
In Chemistry, schools focus on the general GRE test and definitely care about both the verbal and quantitative and essay scores. Some schools don’t require or recommend the GRE subject test.
Most math grad programs don’t list minimum required GRE scores. Many of them claim there are no min scores. And yet you’d think it must affect the adm decision.
This link doesn’t post minimum scores but spectulates the 25%-75% for GRE scores per dept by top institutions. BTW, if your daughter needs more assistance with GRE studying, this website–.magoosh–is terrific. My son used it & did very well.
http://magoosh.com/gre/2013/gre-scores-for-top-universities/
@RenaissanceMom, that is a great website. Do you know if they have similar charts for math subject test?
I looked at a few grad programs. I noticed about half of grad students in math programs have asian sounding name. Pardon me for singling out asians. Other foreigners are a bit hard to discern. Also, some asians are not foreigners. So it’s a very flawed observation at best I am making. A few programs list their PhD recipients. The composition is no longer 50/50. It’s more like 75/25 or 70/30, nonasian vs asian. If this holds true widely, grad adm committees don’t seem to be doing their job well. Of course, there could be other explanations.
No idea about the math subject test. Try searching on the magoosh website.