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

>>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.