JZappa

Out of curiosity what job statistics are you using? There was a study by the American Statistical Association that shows salaries are quite a bit higher. Also why don't you ask if your PhD program gives an embedded masters. If it does you could just drop out after you get the masters and you'll have been funded the whole time if you decide that's what you want to do.

I'd say the biggest thing is that the lack of analysis for the very top PhD programs is going to be a big turn off. I would say that an MA from Berkeley should help considerably though. Just make sure that you talk with professors to get a good idea of which classes to take to make you more competitive for PhD programs.

If you have a lower division linear algebra course you really need to take Analysis. Question though is this graduate analysis or undergraduate? I know a lot of top schools want you to have 2 semesters of undergrad analysis before applying.

If you are applying for a PhD program (and particularly if you are interested in academia), the reputation of your dissertation adviser is far more important than the reputation of the program where you did your PhD. Thus, I always tell students not to obsess over rankings, because you would be much better off attending a lower-ranked school and working with a star adviser than attending a higher-ranked school and working with a mediocre adviser. And you also have to consider whether or not a department is strong in the areas in which you are interested. To give a couple specific examples, Michigan's biostat program is a fantastic option if you are interested in genetics, but it's not such a great option for most other areas. Likewise Harvard's stat department is small, but it's definitely the best in the world for missing data and a couple other areas. But it would be a mistake to attend Harvard's stat department unless you are interested in one of the research areas where they are strong.
 
That said, it can be advantageous to attend a higher-ranked department, particularly if you're not sure about your research interests when you start grad school (which in my experience is true of a high percentage of students). Typically the higher-ranked departments tend to have strong faculty in a wide variety of research areas. They also tend to be better-funded, so there is less of a concern about having your funding run out after a couple years. Nevertheless it would be a mistake to choose a PhD program purely based on rankings given that there isn't a huge difference between many of the top programs. My advice would be to carefully examine the research interests of the faculty at each school. It's also worth considering funding, quality of life, and things like that. Rankings would be very low on the list of things that I would consider.
 
Having said all that, if you want my feedback on the rankings that people have proposed earlier, I would put UNC in the top tier for biostatistics. Maybe Michigan as well, although they are hard to rank due to being so heavily focused on genetics. But most people say that UW/Harvard/Hopkins/UNC represent the top tier of biostatistics and sometimes Michigan depending on who you talk to. All of the four aforementioned schools have large departments with diverse faculty research interests so practically any student should be able to find a good adviser at any of those schools. After that, I would say that the research interests of the faculty and availability of funding should be more important than rankings, because many of the remaining departments are strong in a couple areas but very weak in other areas.
 
As for statistics, I'm less familiar with the gossip about the quality of the various statistics programs. That said, even among the top-ranked schools, one should consider the research interests of the faculty and how they align with your interests. Some departments have the reputation of being more theoretial (e.g. Berkeley, Chicago) whereas others are more applied (e.g. Stanford, CMU), for instance. But I'm basing this largely on gossip that I heard years ago, so take it for what it's worth. I recommend that you carefully research the faculty research interests of each department you are considering.

If you haven't applied to PhD programs at this point your out of luck for Fall 13 for the most part. If you have it doesn't matter so take whichever one you'd rather take. That  being said I've heard that real analysis is very useful so I'd go with that one.