Stat vs Applied Math vs CS vs Physics vs Astro vs Atmos Sci grad school

InquisitiveOne
Wed, 08 Dec 2010 10:43:28 +0000

Okay, I’m triple majoring in astronomy, physics, and math, with a minor in applied math. I’ll have a lot of senior+grad lvl Applied Math, CS, and senior-lvl Statistics courses as well. My main interest is scientific computing.

First of all, is it uncommon for non-CS majors to get into CS grad school, if they don’t have a CS major, but have a background in applied math+math+statistics?

What about non-statistics majors and statistics grad school?

And how would you generally rank these programs in order of competitiveness? Is there an easy way to find out how competitive a non-physics/astro grad program is? (for physics/astro it’s easy since they have the rankings guidebook).

I’m expecting that astro grad programs are the least competitive since they don’t attract that many students (whereas many students go into statistics and applied math because of their tremendous usefulness+applications).

I’ve only taken the bare minimum of physics courses required for a major (since I really like computation and wanted to take as many computational courses as possible). This might hurt my chances to Astro/Phys grad programs.

Right now, I’m still planning on sending the vast majority of my applications to astrophysics grad programs. I’m expecting high PGRE scores relative to my grades, and the recommendations (and research) I get will mostly be from astrophysics professors. I’m just wondering if diversifying the pool may or may not be useful.

Of course, it’s always good to “follow your passion”, but I’m more of a generalist than a specialist right now.