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Has anyone heard back from math REU Programs for 2015 yet?
Have offers from Kent, UCSB and WADE reu. Any opinions on those?Greg Bernhardt said:Has anyone heard back from math REU Programs for 2015 yet?
The program director emailed me today, and said I would be working on her project specifically.IDERIVE said:When did UCSB offer you admission? They only started reviewing 6 days ago. Also UCSB is a 3.3 on the AMS scale for their graduate program, so if you are interested in going there (3.3 is rather good) you should definitely go to that REU. Very few REUs have a graduate program in mathematics at their schools.
Alexi B. G. said:The program director emailed me today, and said I would be working on her project specifically.
The application deadline is Wednesday, February 18, 2015 at midnight. Review of applications will begin immediately. We will identify a shortlist of approximately 15 applicants and attempt to talk with them over the phone or Skype in late February and make offers shortly thereafter. We intend for the first round of offers to be made during the first week of March.
Well, WADE I emailed after I got my first offer telling them I had an offer I needed to accept or decline by Feb. 18th. They gave me an offer during an interview shortly thereafter. UCSB was totally out of the blue, though.Math said:Do you know why you were accepted so early? It is my understanding that acceptances are generally given end of February or beginning of March. WADE's applications are not due until tomorrow and they even say on their apply page:
Alexi B. G. said:Well, WADE I emailed after I got my first offer telling them I had an offer I needed to accept or decline by Feb. 18th. They gave me an offer during an interview shortly thereafter. UCSB was totally out of the blue, though.
Does anyone know anything about peoples' opinions of those REUs?
Alexi B. G. said:Well, WADE I emailed after I got my first offer telling them I had an offer I needed to accept or decline by Feb. 18th. They gave me an offer during an interview shortly thereafter. UCSB was totally out of the blue, though.
Does anyone know anything about peoples' opinions of those REUs?
REU2015Hopeful said:Congrats! What did you end up deciding on?
Also, does anyone else have any updates? Especially from SMALL, when will they start contacting people? I haven't gotten word from any yet.
leviethai said:Has anyone got anything from SMALL yet? I literally check my email every 10 minute this week. I don't want to contact the director until next Monday.
We had over 500 applications for fewer than 30 positoins.
If you haven't heard from a group it means you didn't make the short list, and thus it is extremely unlikely we'll be able to make you an offer.
Has anyone heard back from any of these? especially California State CI, their deadline was 2/1 and that was a while ago?
IDERIVE said:I though funding from the government was supposed to go to REUs to support students from small schools without research opportunities. Correct me if I'm wrong though.
The participants will be chosen from a nationwide search. At least half will be chosen from underrepresented groups, and at least half will be chosen from institutions which do not offer many similar STEM research activities for undergraduates. The REU program will enable undergraduate students to enjoy an enhanced learning experience, including research projects and seminars. The overall goal of the Emory REU in Number Theory is to attract talented undergraduate students to careers in the mathematical sciences.
Math said:I attended the Kent State REU last summer and have nothing negative to report. So far as I know, everybody had positive experiences.
There are two projects run this year, one by Jenya Soprunova on lattice point geometry and one by Misha Chebotar in algebra. Jenya directed the REU last year but I didn't interact with her too much. Chebotar's group was in the office next to my group's -- I was in the now defunct analytic number theory group. Chebotar can be a bit goofy and likes to joke around, but at the end of the day he means business and his group is going to make some serious progress in their research. His group last year had submitted their paper with more than a week left in the program and the group from two years ago had their paper published before the start of the Fall semester.
Kent state is located in a midsize college town, 20 minutes away from Akron, which you may choose to fly to with the travel budget if you are more than an hour or two away, and about an hour away from Cleveland. The town itself is quite nice. There is a lovely Mexican restaurant and Five Guys which were favorites last year, but there are maybe a dozen other decent food options as well in addition to cooking in the dorms. No meal plan or allowance is included, but this was never an issue with the available options.
There were plenty things to do provided by the REU: There are weekly activities which included going to the zoo, laser tag, canoeing, etc. Though some of these may sound boring, they were quite enjoyable with the group. There was also a weekly sports activity, which most often was volleyball or Frisbee. Each research group gives a 15-30min talks each week in addition to the usually quite interesting weekly colloquiums.
Regarding the living situation: We had incredibly nice dorms -- they house the REU students in the best dorms on campus. Specifically, we had air-conditioned doubles with private bathroom shared with next-door room. There was a janitor who came weekly to clean our bathrooms and the full kitchen which was shared across the floor.
Overall, I had a great experience and would strongly recommend Kent's REU. That being said, the most weighty consideration in making your decision should probably be your interest/ability in the research topic.
Math said:*screeching chalk*
DMathmagician said:I know it's a bit late to help Alexi now, but I wanted to add my two cents on the REU:
I also participated in the Kent REU last year (in Chebotar's group) and wholeheartedly agree with everything Math said. Chebotar is funny, but also a serious researcher who knows good problems and will push you. His groups consistently get good papers for a reason. As for Jenya, I didn't have very much interaction with her last summer either; however, I am familiar with her work and the work of her REU groups. Her groups get good papers (a couple in Discrete and Computational Geometry; a quite nice journal), especially along the vein of this year's research topic (lattice geometry, codes, and algebraic geometry).
Besides that there's really not much to add to what Math said, though I might emphasize that the area is absolutely amazing in terms of restaurants and things to do. The local drive-in movie theater and a grilled cheese restaurant downtown are especially nice. Oh, and who can forget Taco Tontos. Overall, I too would very highly recommend Kent's REU.
Math said:Yes yes, I totally neglected to mention the screeching chalk in the afternoons! That was a ton of of fun. Anyway, I'm heading to Texas this summer to work on strongly regular Cayley graphs at Sam Houston's REU.
I applied to Missouri, but haven't heard from them. Can't be sure about individual review processes, but from my experience programs due ~3/1 will be getting offers out next week some time.LambdaStyle said:Has anyone heard from Nebraska-Lincoln Applied Math or Missouri State?