Graduate Student News: Graduate Program in Review
The qualifying exam system was substantially revised, with changes to take effect with the August 1999 exams (for details, read Steve Bell's account at right). The changes are intended to make advancement to candidacy less stressful, more flexible, and more efficient while maintaining the emphasis on the mastery of the broad areas of mathematics all Ph.D. students need. This should shorten the time to degree for students in our program and make us more competitive in recruiting new students.
Again this year, the Graduate Committee organized a recruiting weekend in March for applicants who had been accepted for admission in fall 1999. This has been an important and useful part of our efforts to attract domestic graduate students.
In 1999, U.S. News and World Report announced rankings of the top Mathematics graduate programs. Purdue's Mathematics graduate program was ranked 25th overall, consistent with the NRC ranking (24th) from 1993. Purdue's program in Mathematical Statistics was ranked 7th; while mostly a reflection of the Statistics Department's excellence, this partly reflects the very strong faculty in probability in the School. (Professors Bañuelos, Davis, Lalley, Ma, Protter, and Samuels are all or partly in Mathematics.)
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