Summer 2013 Math and Science REU Thread

Rampant Lion

I think that these next 10 days responses for Physics REU's will be coming in so good luck to everyone and please post as you hear news so the rest of us know when offers are made!

mathskier

Anyone hear from Maryland, Lehigh, Alabama, Columbia, or CalTech yet?

MechE2015

Of those, I applied to Alabama only and have not heard back. Good luck to you on all of those!

Mmm_Pasta

Lehigh's deadline is on 7 March, so I wouldn't expect anything until maybe after then. As for Maryland, they told me they would be making decisions by 1 March. This is for the TREND program. I don't know if that is the one you applied to.

mathskier

Lehigh's website says decisions start coming in late February is why I asked.

PhysicsGente

I have my fingers crossed!

mathskier

Anyone know how to predict chances? For instance, I come from a mid-sized school, have one semester of research experience, and very high grades, but I'm a sophomore and not a girl/ minority.

Stengah

What I have heard from talking to REU directors and other people is that your personal statement and letters of recommendation carry a majority of the weight. Of course this will vary from program to program, but there are just too many applicants with good grades. So hopefully your semester of research transferred to a good recommendation letter. If you read the rest of this thread, you should have seen some acceptance statistics. The acceptance rates for these is incredibly low. Some put a ton of weight on minority status and the type of university you attend, and other programs seem to care more just about merit. So it's pretty difficult to predict chances.

Null_

I applied to several programs this year. One program said they will notify students by March 1st. I'm going backpacking on March 1st and will be away from email and phone for 11 days. Should I send them an email tomorrow explaining this? I'm worried that they might only give a week or so to make a decision. That is if I get in... Or should I set up an auto-response email? I'm hesitant to do this though because I get many emails that are sent to large groups of people, and the sender doesn't need to get a reply from me for every email..

Stengah

That's a terrible situation and I would definitely send them an email explaining it.

mege

Auto-response emails are generally sent only once per-person (presuming you have a 'normal' email provider/client). You could also ask someone to check your email for you.

Think about it this way: if you get an acceptance, and can't respond in 5 days, you're delaying the possible acceptance of someone else. So, why would you even want to delay the entire process because you're unavailable?

notphysicsguy

Does anyone have any experience at the William and Mary Matrix Analysis REU? Also, the SMALL program at Williams is done with applications. I was shortlisted for Ergodic theory but apparently most people took the offer =/

ofb

FYI I applied to [math REUs at Emory, Duluth, SMALL, SUNY Potsdam, Cornell, Iowa State, LSU, Mt. Holyoke, Penn State, Texas A&M], and [Vic Reiner's REU at Minnesota], and got responses from four: rejections from Emory, Duluth, and SMALL, acceptance from LSU. I accepted the offer from LSU since out of the REUs I hadn't been rejected from, the topics at the LSU REU interested me most (I want to do something related to Galois theory). Remaining applications have been retracted. I am a sophomore at a mid-sized research university.

Also, with regards to giving gifts to letter writers, after poking around some more I have come to the conclusion that gifts are frowned upon as a sort of bribe but a handwritten letter is much appreciated.

Good luck to everyone.

mathskier

If they say they will notify by March 1st I take that to mean you will hear today (the 28th) so I say just wait until this evening and email them asking if you hear nothing.

dustbin

Declined by U Minnesota this morning.

usnavi13

Rejected from SMALL (probability/number theory project) yesterday.

mathstudent99

Freshmen at a top 5 university. I'm majoring in math and had taken a bunch of math classes (2 semesters of analysis and algebra and 1 semester of differential geometry) in high school at a large research university.
Rejected from Emory 2/4.
Rejected (shortlisted) from Duluth 2/9.
Accepted at Berkeley Geometry, Topology, and Operator Algebras RTG Summer Research Program for the Symplectic Embeddings group 2/26.
Rejected (shortlisted) from SMALL Ergodic theory group 2/27.
Rejected from Minnesota Twin Cities 2/28.
Still waiting on Cornell, Cal State San Bernadino, U Michigan, and U Washington, and RIPS Hong Kong (not actually an REU but close enough).