What does it take to get a job at a top 50 math program in the U.S.?

Question

I'm a senior undergrad right at a small liberal arts college right now who is applying to math PhD programs in the U.S. I would like to eventually become a professor at a relatively good university that has a good environment for doing mathematics. But I'm concerned that since the schools I'm applying to are not at the very top, I am basically preventing myself from having that opportunity. For example, some professors at my college suggested that I apply to Univ. of Oregon and Univ. of Georgia, because they have strong faculty in algebra. But I looked at where past doctorate recipients from Oregon went, and they usually end up in small colleges that are pretty unknown. That is making me hesitant about applying to Oregon. I consider myself a strong student (and so do my letter writers, and I guess that's what really matters) but I have poor math GRE scores that my professors think will severely limit my chances of getting into a program at the top 40 schools (e.g. they said I had a shot at, say, Univ. of Washington, UCLA, Chicago, and Michigan, before I got my GRE scores). Some of my professors don't think the prestige of the grad school matters that much (i.e. as long as I write an interesting thesis and make my results known, I should be fine). But I have a feeling that my professors may be a bit out of touch, since I go to a liberal arts college, not a research university. And when I look at where past PhD students from good programs (e.g. in the Group I list in the AMS rankings but not top thirty) go to, I get a bit concerned. Maybe I should take a year off and try again next year. I was wondering if anyone had any advice.

Answer 1

I had a very similar experience as you: went to small unknown liberal arts college, GRE scores were not great, limited research opportunities. Every PhD program I applied to denied me and eventually I got accepted into a relatively bigger school, but for a Masters in Math program.

Now, after I finished that program, retook the GRE (scored around 95th percentile in the quant section this time), did some actual research, I applied to 13 PhD programs some of them being top 50 schools and extremely well known and I was accepted into 12/13 of those schools. Every school offered me a TA and the school I ended up choosing gave me a 30,000 research fellowship.

So, my advice is maybe consider going into a Masters program first and seeing how that goes. The undergrad experience is nothing like PhD level math and it may behoove you to get some exposure to "real math" before stepping into a PhD program and realizing that it is either too difficult because your mathematical maturity is not where it needs to be (primarily because you went to a small liberal arts college and has nothing to do with your actual capacity for high level math) or not what you want to do.

Best of luck!