Where can I get in? (math grad school)

i finished my undergrad this last june, i had applied to grad schools in december of my senior year like you're supposed to, but didn't get in anywhere (which i'm partially blaming on the economy).

i've been trying to find a job as an actuary, passed an actuary exam, looking to take another one, but finding a job is still hard as shit.

anyway, this doesn't matter, i dont want to be an actuary, i wanna be a grad student. help me figure out where i have a reasonable shot of getting accepted in the current situation with school budgets (not as bad a last year since they got hit at admission selection time).

school: low-mid level UC school (University of California)
GPA: 3.0
major GPA: 3.3
major: math (pure concentration)
GRE: 500 verb, 800 quant
math GRE: 620

we're on the quarter system, i took 20 undergrad math classes (100 credits) and 5 graduate classes (25 credits), graduated in 4 years. did well in the grad classes, B/B+'s with one A-. also wrote a thesis.

i know i'm not going to princeton or harvard, but i want to find the place where i can write the best phd thesis i can possibly do under the circumstances.

any personal experiences or lesser known places with great faculty are appreciated

did well in the grad classes, B/B+'s with one A-
No, you did not do that well.  I've heard that grades in grad classes are greatly inflated (at least at UCB and UCSB), and given what I've seen, it seems at least partly true.  I don't think anybody was given a C+ or lower...

To be more positive, you did take the initiative to try 5 graduate classes (mention that in one of the essays), and did ok in them.  Thesis is also a definite plus.

I don't know if the math/physics GREs are on the same relative scale, but it seems like a medium low score.  I think it's too late to register for the Nov GRE, but I think you can still try for the Apr GRE.  With some additional practice, I think you have a very good chance to increase you score > 700, though you should try to aim for 800.

You should probably try applying to the other UCs again, and possibly CSUs if you're not so confident.  Don't forget to find good recommendation letters.

Can anyone school a Britfag on what these terms mean?

UC / CSU

And what GPA corresponds to First, 2:1, 2:2, or Third Class degree in the UK?

>>3
American Bachelor's degrees correspond to barely more than A levels, pretty much. So not comparable.

>>4
I thought the US and the UK had the best universities.

>>5
If that were the case for the US undergrad system, they wouldn't have stuff like electives and irrelevant mandatory courses. They'd just study their chosen subject from the first year.

I can't imagine as to why medicine is a graduate course there either. Unless the high school system is that deficient. Which I'm guessing it is.

>>6
Another britfag here would like clarification.

What would an american have done after say an undergraduate course in mathematics?

>>7

You could just do what I did and go work in a factory.

>>2
According to the practice book I have, 620 is 46th percentile.

I'm in a few second-year grad classes at my university (which is *not* a "top" school by any means) and everything is extremely laid back.  Homework is almost optional, and due just "whenever", and grading is pretty lenient.  The idea, I guess, is that once you're at that level grades are basically irrelevant and everyone's just there to learn.  It's probably all very dependent on which school you're in and who your instructor is.

>>5
They do.  OTOH the undergrad programs in america suck balls, which is why half the people on this page are from asia:

http://math.harvard.edu/people/graduate.html

>>6
Yeah, for some dumbass reason, american schools think mathematicians need training in things like art history or feminism.

>>7
At a good school, maybe up through the math stuff on Part IB on the Cambridge tripos, with a bit of the stuff from Part II possibly (but absolutely none of the physics/mechanics stuff).

its called being a well rounded person. an undergrad should be taking gen ed classes like cultural anthropology or some bullshit history class so he can interact with others and not be stuck in his own little math world

>>10
It's called being a well rounded person does not help you win the field's medal or otherwise increase your productivity as a researcher.  Wikipedia exists for a reason; gen ed belongs in high school.

>>11

Fields medals, and even the phrase "productivity as a researcher", are Law and Order-level monomaniacal poison.  Everybody ought to (and by right, by way of undergraduate trends, be forced to) try a few different flavors on during the four year career.  Such flavors even inform creativity-yes-even in the hard sciences.  Try harder and grow up about five years.

An overtly coarse analogy would be that of the fat kid who resents being made to take two years of P.E. in high school.  The overall effect is good for him in the grand scheme of his education (especially since he's doing it all now), though he, and several people around him, may not quite be aware of it.

You'd like that "gen ed" be relegated to the high schools, wouldn't you?  It's called the 21st century; things are going to get worse before they get better.  It won't happen too soon.

>>12
I disagree.

If you are paying for your education at $150 per credit, you should not be forced to study unrelated disciplines.

>>12
Is there a reason gen ed can't be postponed until later in life?  For the fat kid, postponing PE might mean the difference between postponing potential for cardiac disease and him dying of cardiac failure.  We don't really need that much gen ed at this stage of our lives.  Time is limited, and there is insufficient time to learn all of math and physics (or whatever subject amuses you most) even without gen ed.  As it is, I am crippled by my deficiencies, and the hamster wheel that is grad school won't slow down for me, and does not care that I have a broad education.

I do not claim that gen ed is useless; I do claim that it should be optional, or at least there should exist an option to postpone it well into the future, when one has the luxury of studying irrelevant subjects for fun.

You'd like that "gen ed" be relegated to the high schools, wouldn't you?  It's called the 21st century; things are going to get worse before they get better.  It won't happen too soon.
Why won't it happen too soon?  People are too stupid to learn the causes of the French Revolution until after they enter college (I learned that in high school...)?  Insufficient funds?

>>10
You went to school till you're 18. If you're not generally educated by then, then lol.

To other countries the concept of general education in colleges makes it seem that Americans go to school till they're in their early 20s. Which seems quite odd.

Lolling at the Amerifags defending their shitty gen ed at university level. That crap stops at 16 in the UK.

>>10
While there is definitely something to be said for getting away from math people (tbh I can't stand 90% of the other math majors in my school) the idea of a "well-rounded" education is utter bs. 

I took a required sociology/women's studies course last semester, passed it, and now five months later all I remember about it is that feminists are lying, angry cunts who'll twist and distort statistics or historical facts far beyond all logic and credibility in order to make them support their agenda.  I was never the "gb2 kitchen" type before that class, but I have been ever since.  Is *that* what being a "well-rounded person" means?

</rant>

>>9
the grading was pretty lenient, but 25% of the class still ends up dropping the class before the quarter finishes. homework wasn't optional and the problem sets were pretty difficult (big rudin & atiyah mcdonald), but the grade was largely based on the homework.

only the 1st analysis class was easy, prof was lazy with assigning homework (only a few problems each week). taught out of munkres, ended up being just like retaking topology.

on that note, what school do you go to?

and can anyone recommend any schools outside of california

Here in Scotland a Bachelor's degree is 4 years (as opposed to 3 years in England), with a general curriculum in the first 2 years. Is it the same in the US?

We get pretty much a 100% choice on what courses to take though... I'd hate to have to sit through a "Gender Studies" course, or other PC bullshit like that. I took some random physics, computer science, and economics courses, and had fun with them. Then again, university is free here so one hasn't to worry much about wasting money for an extra year.

>>9
http://math.harvard.edu/people/graduate.html

Wow, that's an ugly bunch of people. Also, there should be a cap on the amount of Asians, seriously.

>>21
You think those ppl are ugly, check out their winning Putnam team: http://math.harvard.edu/putnam/2009/winners1.jpg

>>22
They look entirely average to me. They're not morbidly obese or balding or anything. What were you expecting, three Johnny Depp clones?

>>23
Well, at least all the grad students have their face on the right part of their head.

I'm in a similar situation to OP, I spent my first three years dicking around and now I'm doing a fifth year just to get my gpa as high as I can.  I'm going to wait until my final semester is on my transcript to apply, so that will be a long while from now, but I would still like to know if its possible to get into a grad school if my final 4 semesters are 3.5-3.8 but I'm still ~3.0 overall.  I don't have any research experience but I'm doing some independent study sessions that are relatively advanced for undergraduate level.  Would it be wise to apply to master's programs and work my way up from there?  Take the math GRE in November so I can't tell you my scores yet, but I only got a 780 on the GRE quantitative (560 verbal, ugh, that shouldn't matter though).  I think I can get some very strong recommendations, one professor even requested that I be his grader for his 400-level mathematical logic course.

I am nerdy enough to read a lot of math in my free time nowadays, my favorite subjects are logic, category theory, theoretical computer science (although I'm only a cmsc minor and want to go for pure math), and anywhere those overlap.

I'm at University of Maryland, Baltimore County now btw.  I honestly believe I'm on good enough terms with so much of the staff here that I would get back in here, but I would greatly prefer to go somewhere else (for a variety of reasons).

Sorry for the wall of text, I'm optimistic that someone will bother reading it.

tl;dr I totally suck, recommend some grad schools that are lame enough to accept me and ideally match up with my interests.

>>25
There's a chart somewhere on the GRE website that says 26% of all students going to grad school for math get an 800 on the math half of the general GRE.

uc davis

i had similar stats at berkeley undergrad and got in davis for grad school

>>27
Thank you!

>>27
Is there a pro palestinian rally every where you look?