>>14348282Getting into any PhD program is hard, especially in math where the programs don't have as much money as applied physics or CS. Straight rankings are less important than knowing what department is good at what. Unless it's a top 5, it's rare for a math department to have a fuckton of researchers in every or most popular subfields. But even schools that don't have as much faculty in the topics you like might still have top experts in the field.
Location matters too. For example, Rutgers NB is a very well known combinatorics school, but they have a sizeable amount of people who are well known and good at analysis. This is because DIMACS and IAS (Princeton, aka THE analysis school) interact a lot. Princeton has a lot more normie prestige, but in the world of math, both Rutgers and Princeton are prestigious. So even if you wanted to do analysis but only got into Rutgers, you could likely reap the benefits of being so close to Princeton, the least of which would be to physically drive to Nassau Street and talk to their analysis researchers in person.
So it really comes down to narrowing down the stuff you really care about studying NOW, finding researchers you like, and then filtering for location / opportunities. You need to focus on networking with other professors and grad students ASAP in grad school, otherwise it'll be really hard to pump momentum towards TT (tenure track). Collaboration is a free way to get a paper trail as well as a new contact. Do it as much as you can while focusing on your topic. Research papers + great GPA + great GRE scores means your stats are more than fine (school matters less as long as you took honors / enough grad classes). Now all you have to do is focus hard on arguing why you're a good fit for wherever you're headed.
According to your interests:
>identify 2-3 massive reach schools>identify 3-4 of the schools on this list>identify 2-3 schools you think you could absolutely get intoGood luck anon.
