cyprusprior

I just got a voice mail from a Professor at U Minnesota biostats department, asking to set up a time to talk. Not sure if that means acceptance, but it seems like a favorable sign.

Another email just came in from UNC Biostats, for those interested. Strangely, while the letter does seem to be congratulatory, it never explicitly says "you have been admitted". But they did provide an invitation to the open house day in February.

I just heard back from NC State (Stats) and University of Washington (Biostats), and I hope it's not immodest to share the news. Thank you to everyone on this forum who answered my questions when I was trying to figure out where to apply. I really appreciate everyone's encouragement and help with the process. I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has heard from other schools.

The only place I've heard back from about interviews so far is Johns Hopkins. I suspect that University of Washington does not have on-site interviews, since they only mention having an "accepted students day" on their web site.

If you're only applying to masters programs, I don't think you will have anything to worry about.

I suggest University of Maryland, Georgia Tech, and University of Texas- Austin as good public universities for applied math to consider.

I'm currently in a stats masters program in the DC area. My experience is that most of the graduates stay in the DC area. So this suggests to me that the geographic location of where you do your masters will influence where you are able to find jobs.

All of my recommenders have submitted their letters. My status is marked as "submitted". I think the advantage for WA residents is more in terms of financial aid than admission. It might matter more for masters than for PhD.

I think SOPHAS will send the application on to the programs as soon as they have verified all of your transcripts, and received 2 out of 3 recommendation letters. Then they just update it later with the programs when they get the third recommendation letter. You might want to check in the fine print of the instructions because my memory may be fuzzy.

I was a Biology undergrad, and am currently finishing up my MS in stats. I am applying to Biostats PhD programs and have asked two stats Professors and one Biology Professor to write letters for me. I think it's good to have one recommendation from a Professor who knows you very well, even if they are not "famous" or in stats. Of course, I don't have any proof that my strategy will be successful, yet!

Hey everyone, thanks again for the advice and encouragement. I just took the GRE yesterday and got a 166V, 170Q. Needless to say, I'm very pleased with the scores and am looking forward to starting applications soon!

Carnegie-Mellon comes to mind. I actually was lucky enough to meet one of their PhD students who was from Italy, so you wouldn't be the only one! http://www.stat.cmu.edu/

Everyone, thanks so much for this excellent feedback. I didn't mean to give the impression that I was truly "ruling out" any program. Rather, I just had a gut feeling that I would not like living in certain places (and thus be not as productive) based on vague childhood memories of visiting them. Also, I love hiking and the outdoors, and am pretty frugal. I have noticed in myself that I am much more mentally focused in sunny climates rather than dark ones (temperature is less important). That's why I was discounting places like Seattle and Minnesota and considering Texas/Florida places (the data I used is here: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/online/ccd/avgsun.html ). I was hoping that if there really was something special about a particular program I was overlooking, that folks with a better perspective than me would be able to convince me to change my mind. Clearly based on everyone's feedback, I should not have ignored UW, and I'll have to think harder about Minnesota. Honestly, I just wish that there were more good universities in sunny parts of the country! (and to answer "wine in coffee cups"- yes, I did take Linear Algebra)

I'm planning to apply to biostats and some bioinformatics PhD programs this Fall (2013, ie, the program would start Fall 2014). I appreciate any advice or comments you can offer! My goal is to find a "middle ground" between my interests in Biology (originally ecology, shifting recently towards genomics), Statistics, and programming. It seems like bioinformatics might be a good way to go. I'm open to a career path in academia, government, industry, and including international (I want to keep options open a while longer if possible). I am a big fan of the Bayesian approach, and I would rather lean in the computational direction than the theoretical direction. I don't think I'm interested in clinical trials, but not totally sure. - Demographic: late 20s male domestic - Undergrad: BS Biology, 3.75 GPA, top 20 liberal arts college East Coast. (essentially, premed curriculum) - Fulbright Scholar in Southeast Asia. Resulted in one publication of field ecology research. - Currently working full time as a software tester (for the past 5 years). Have learned a ton about SQL, python programming, basic Java, etc. - almost complete: MS Stats and Applied Math, 4.0 GPA. The program is not proof-based, but heavy in calculus/linear algebra (we used Casella & Berger for Math Stats) and programming skills (R, Matlab) - MS courses: Probability Theory, Math Stats, Numerical Methods, Stochastic Simulation, Bayesian Stats, Linear Models - other coursework: Real Analysis I (rigorous proof based summer class, covered basically up to differentiation, but did not cover integration or sequences of functions), Ordinary Differential Equations (at undergrad). I have also completed Machine Learning, Algorithms I, and Optimization courses on Coursera. - Letters of Recommendation: MS Bayesian Stats Professor (PhD at top 3 Biostats Dept), MS Regression Professor (PhD in Stats from second tier Stats Dept) BS Biology ecology/botany research advisor (very close relationship with this professor) - GRE: old scores expired, need to retake this summer. Am doing a prep class and anticipate good, but maybe not perfect, scores. Have not taken subject GRE and don't plan to. Here's where I'm thinking of applying: Biostats: Johns Hopkins, Michigan, Harvard, UNC, UCLA, Emory Bioinformatics/ Computational Biology: UC-San Diego, Duke Statistics: Carnegie-Mellon (or maybe Stats and Machine Learning? Can I apply to both?) Places I am not sure about: Berkeley Biostats- seems too small UCLA stats/ bioinformatics/ biomath- I am totally confused about how to differentiate between these departments. NCSU Bioinformatics- not sure about the quality of the program. Colorado State- Professor recommends it, but seems to be low ranked and not much bio-related research? UMaryland Scientific Computing- interesting program, but alumni don't seem to be finding good jobs Penn State, Florida, UC Davis, Texas A&M, U Texas Health (Houston Cancer Inst.)- don't know anything about these really. Places I'm sort of ruling out mainly due to the climate or other "quality of life" factors Upenn Biostats, Yale Bioinformatics, Minnesota Biostatistics, UWashington Biostats, Columbia Biostats Places I'm sort of ruling out mainly because I think I'm not qualified: Stanford Biomedical Informatics (such a cool program!), NCSU Statistics, Duke Statistics Thanks again for your feedback!