Undergraduates FAQ

Program Expectations

What should I expect?

As an undergraduate, you should expect to

  • Commit around 4 hours per week to independent reading related to your project
  • Meet with your graduate mentor once a week for an hour
  • Submit short (1-3 sentences) weekly reflections
  • Deliver a 10 minute final presentation
  • Submit a writeup about your project and experience

You may register for 1 credit (CR/NC) of STAT 499 for this work. Your presentation and writeup will be shared on this website.

Can I choose to not register for STAT 499?

We strongly encourage students to register for STAT 499. Sometimes students have a very good reason for not wanting to do so, and that is fine. However, we expect the same level of participation and commitment regardless of whether you register for credit.

Admissions

Who should apply?

Any undergraduate student at UW Seattle with a budding interest in statistics should apply! You do not need to be a statistics major. Those without previous research experience and those from underrepresented backgrounds are especially encouraged to participate.

When should I apply?

Information about projects and applications for each quarter will be posted approximately three weeks before the start of the quarter. Applications will typically be live during the last week of classes and finals week of the preceding quarter, with decisions made during the break between quarters. We do not run the DRP during the summer quarter.

How competitive are applications? What can I do to increase my odds of being selected?

The probability of getting selected to be matched with a graduate student mentor vary substantially by quarter, depending on how many graduate students are willing to volunteer as mentors, and how many undergraduates apply. If it were possible to make the DRP not competitive at all and make sure everyone gets matched every quarter, we would. Unfortunately, significantly more undergraduates tend to apply to the program than we have available mentors.

To increase your odds of being selected, keep the following in mind:

  • There tend to be 1-3 projects each quarter that receive a disproportionate amount of applications relative to the others, and so it is much harder to match with those projects. Usually, those competitive projects are related to machine learning and AI. Applying to projects with topics that are more “obscure” or “off the beaten path” tends to increase your likelihood of matching with a mentor. Of course, only apply to projects that you’d be genuinely excited to work on!
  • The free-response essay questions are by far the most important part of your application. Putting thought into these and writing an essay that feels like it was written by a real human (and not generic AI slop) with a real interest in statistics does wonders for a mentor getting excited about working with you!
  • When picking mentees, we are not necessarily optimizing for people with the most impressive resumes, GPAs, research experience, etc. The number one thing by far we are looking for are people who seem genuinely curious about digging deeper into statistics than what you would do in a class.

How does the admissions cycle work?

Once the application closes (typically during the finals week of the previous quarter), the admissions committee will review your applications. The admissions committee is made up of the graduate student coordinators. Applicants will be matched with projects based on interests. Selected applicants will receive an email asking them to confirm their acceptance. Since some applicants may decline joining Statistics DRP (because they are doing a different DRP or research experience), acceptances will be sent out in multiple waves before the quarter starts. Once all projects have been assigned a student, we will notify remaining applicants encouraging them to apply next quarter. Strong applicants who apply repeatedely will have a higher chance of being selected in the future.