Chances are...

I'm back from Maryland. The good news is that I am now more sure than ever that I want to go there, even if that means going for a Masters degree beforehand.

Fortunately, the Director of the Math Graduate program (or some fancy title) was on a panel about how to make your application to Maryland the best application you can. I was very surprised at what one other professor (from Counseling Psychology) had to say about applications to their department, but the math professor held my ear and I was very attentive to what he had to say.

He tried to sneak out to go to class and on his way out I tried to give him a copy of my CV and tried to ask what kind of math subject GRE scores they were looking for. His answer: 80-90th percentile scores. I talked to a student after who said she knew lots of students in the program that did not get scores like that, so not to worry.

They, the graduate students, gave me a list of recommended books (we talked about math books most of the time I was in the department) to prepare for my first year of study there and give me the background knowledge required of the first-year courses. I have not had an analysis course, mostly because we do not offer real analysis. It is on the books (undergraduate bulletin), but is hardly ever offered (I doubt they have taught it in the last 10 years) and I have been begging for it for over a year now. They are not going to teach it, there is the chance that if I do well in this Topology course (which is a long stretch) then I could coerce the professor I have Topology with to teach it to me next semester, but that will be after all the schools receive my application materials.

While it would be personally fulfilling to take Real Analysis before I graduate, I do not know if I can handle it with all my wedding and graduation plans. I did borrow a book from one of my favorite profs on Real Analysis and the students at Maryland did recommend a book on RA that might help me. I do not know how much review and "learning" I can do before the math subject test, but I certainly do not want to do badly on it.

I am a good test taker, but alas I did not take my SATs, I took the ACTs because they are geared more towards science-minded people and the verbal/english section is not as intense as the SAT verbal. So I have no way to gauge my score, in that respect. I did score in the 91st or so percentile in the math section when I took the ACT though, so that is very promising. But, I also had had all of those math courses and it was much easier math. The subject math GRE is said to be very difficult. When I was talking to some of the graduate students I picked up the idea that it was not that it was difficult, but that there were a lot of definitions you had to know very well.

What do you know, the professors that I have had always recommend that we know our definitions in order to do well in their courses. So I have a fourth of a leg up, I think. I will be going through my books and making glossaries of the definitions and theorems, just like my current mentor has said throughout his courses. I am also going to ask him if I can sit in the Modern Algebra class so I can get good review about that. I loved that class, but my grade was not representative of a person who did extremely well in the course, to someone from outside of the university that is. Around the math department, I did excellent (among the majors that is) and most of them, the math majors, get discouraged when they find out that I got a "C" in that course.

I tell them that I should have checked my grade more often and worked harder in the course. It was not that I was not able to get a better grade, but just that I did not know where I stood and it is hard to know where you stand when you do not get any work back and think that you are doing well. Grades do not matter, at least among our department, but outside graduate programs may look at my grades as an indicator that I am less able to do mathematics than I really am. I hope everything works out and I really hope that I get accepted into a few programs.

But who knows, only time will tell. If I go into a masters program and beef up my application, I will probably continue many of the things I have been doing and, hopefully, get recognition for those things. I cannot predict the future (I wish!) so I do not know what will happen. My research experiences, letters of recommendation and personal statement should put me above the crowd, but I do not know if the schools I am applying to will take those things into account more or less than others. I wish I knew national averages, in terms of GPA (math only and otherwise), among admitted graduate students. It would give me a better way to match myself among others. If statistics like that were available, I would also want to know what it was among state schools and private schools, then more particularly, among pure and applied math programs. But useful information like that is not available and programs do not tell students what the average GRE score for this and that are, at least not publicly on a website or anything.

If you know of anything like that, please tell me so I can stop worrying and either apply to all Masters programs because my application might not be good enough or just Ph.D. programs like I originally thought I would a long time ago. I know I'll mix it up, because I do not want to take any chances of not having things together after graduation, but that does not necessarily fix the problem of: admission.

Who knows, I might be worrying more than I should be. I do have a wealth of research experiences and present papers at conferences and am actively engaging myself in the mathematical community with involvement at the Joint Meetings. Let us hope that I am.