Stat Assistant Professor

Possibly. You could probably inquire with the vice chair to see if you can find out your relative position on the waitlist, and thus, likelihood of admittance... I recall in another thread you said that you have several LOR writers who are connected to UCLA. Have you been in touch with any of these professors too, so they know you are waitlisted? Sometimes people can move up the waitlist by visiting the campus, getting profs to vouch for them, etc.

Take the advanced Calculus/real analysis class if you intend to go onto the PhD. Even if your area of research ends up being something very applied with few proofs, you will need to go through a bunch of theoretical, proof-based classes beyond the Casella & Berger-based year-long sequence (i.e. 1-2 semesters of measure theoretic probability, 1-2 semesters of linear models, at least 1 semester of theoretical stats/inference). You will most likely need to pass an additional qualifying exam in these topics as well. So you need to become good at proofs.

Got an informal acceptance from Rice U. last Thursday (professor e-mailed me asking if I was still interested in joining the department). I found out from the vice graduate chair of UCLA that I am waitlisted and that they will not make any decisions until April 15. I guess they really want to wait until they see who drops from the waitlist, in addition to who declines their acceptance offers, lol. Not sure I want to wait that long, as I do not prefer UCLA *that* much over Rice or Florida, so I will probably remove myself from this waitlist this week.

qinqin11, I'm not sure if you have already made your decision as to where to go, but to address the UFL issue... Florida recently split up their statistics department into stats and biostats, so I don't think it is that a lot of the faculty have left UF, it's just that they are part of the recently formed biostatistics dept instead.

To any future applicants reading this: this thread is helpful, but it may be most helpful to talk with your advisers and professors to see what range of schools you should apply to. Looking back, I definitely aimed too high with some of my schools, as my overall undergrad GPA was a bit too low, without any other mitigating factors (e.g. famous LOR writers or LOR writers who collaborate with faculty at the departments I applied to, very high math subject GRE score, substantive research experience with publications, etc.). I don't regret that I tried though, as I managed a waitlist at Berkeley, but my list should not have been as top-heavy as it was (I did, however, have good success with a cluster of schools ranked similarly and ranked somewhere below those top tier schools). The professors you consult with should be able to give you an idea of the strength of your profile, what appropriate schools to apply to, and what types of things can mitigate potential weaknesses in your application (and to what extent these other facors can compensate for those weaknesses).

You look like you're already in really good shape to get into any biostatistics MS program based on the math and stat sclasses you have already taken. However, getting a second major in statistics could look really good to future employers. Data structures is a very useful class if you want to become a software engineer or programmer (many of the interviews for these jobs grill you on data structure questions). But if you're aiming for a stats-related job that mainly involves programming in SAS, R, or using Excel and SQL, it probably isn't as useful.

NCSU has one of the best stats PhD programs in the country.

Thanks for the info. I knew that most programs over-admitted to achieve a target size for incoming class, but I didn't know it was by quite that much. It seems common for most stats PhD programs to have acceptance rates around 10% or lower though.

I think real analysis and probability would look better for the PhD than ODE and real analysis.

One other thing to consider is that working with a mentor to get a few publications in high-quality journals before graduation and/or landing a prestigious post-doc can sometimes help to overcome a school's reputation (or lack thereof). It won't guarantee you a faculty job at a very elite program, but it could land you at a well-respected flagship or private university, rather than just regional schools and small liberal arts colleges (nothing wrong with those but those tend to be teaching colleges, and some people prefer to be at institutions where greater emphasis is on research). So in that respect, I'd say that the mentor you work with is a little bit more important than the reputation of the program. So the choices for mentors and opportunities to publish are some things to think about when you are picking a program to attend.

To assess quality of the faculty, you could look at faculty awards, publications, and citations. This site gives good advice on how to do that: http://www.math.poly.edu/reference/advice.phtml Some other measures that may be of personal interest to you are: average time to completion, job placement, percent who enroll in a PhD that actually finish, and overall "feel" and fit in the department. The DGS should be able to give you data on the first few, and the last of these would be very subjective, so it is a good idea to arrange visits the departments if possible (on that note, it might be worthwhile to visit schools you're waitlisted at too).

For anyone who is anxiously waiting on a waitlist: this post gives some anecdotal evidence that arranging to visit the department in person and conveying that, if you are accepted, you will definitely attend, could actually help push you up near the top of the waitlist. So if it's feasible, you might consider trying that (it might not work everywhere, but at this stage, it could be worth the risk). Just throwing this out there.

PhD applications are certainly much more competitive now though. University of Washington had 280 PhD applications for 8-10 spots. Florida had around 300 for that many spots too. It must be similar at most other places too.

Yeah, there are still a bunch of statistics Masters programs that do "conditional acceptance" (that is, if you haven't completed some of the prerequisite math classes, you can take them while in the Masters program but not receive credit for them). These programs are typically unranked or not highly ranked, but this doesn't matter as much for Masters-level jobs. The fact that such programs exist suggests to me that there are still a lot of Masters programs that aren't *that* competitive.

Congrats on CMU! Excellent choice. UF is looking very appealing now, but I think I'll wait till the end of the month for the remaining three schools to see if I get any other bites (always good to have a few options to choose from).

Yeah, I think it is 200+ at a lot of schools. Stanford had 124 applications for its PhD program last year, even with the math subject GRE requirement. I can only imagine that the number was double or more at a lot of schools that don't have this requirement.

Statistics is a very in-demand skill right now and a lot of "sexy" jobs are requiring advanced degrees in statistics (data scientist, biostatistician, etc.). That, plus the stagnant economy for entry-level positions, is probably why the number of applications has gone up a lot (the brutal economy for entry-level workers also explains why graduate applications are up all across the board in all disciplines, except probably law school). It used to be the case (and probably still is, to a degree, at many universities) that as long as the adcom thought you could handle the coursework and saw that you had completed at least the bare minimum of Calc I-III and linear algebra, you would get admitted to a stats Master's program. So with that in mind, perhaps a lot more people decided to apply to stats programs. But now Masters admissions are more competitive too at a lot of places.

The Berkeley rejection finally arrived. That's okay. Congrats to all who got in!

University of Washington probably had around that many too. According to their Graduate school, they had 532 applications last year. https://www.grad.washington.edu/about/statistics/admissions/admissions13.pdf

Yes, there are more applying. Some schools are indeed getting around 600 applications (I know for a fact that NCSU, UNC, and Florida got this many), though this figure is probably number of Master's and PhD applicants combined.

Sure, going to a more brand-name school might be helpful in getting your foot in the door, but not having a degree from a prestigious school won't completely preclude you from careers in those fields either. Outside of some very selective investment banks and management consulting firms, prestige isn't as important as having connections and the right skillset. Again, this is completely anecdotal, but I know several folks with PhDs from low-ranked schools in math/stat who work in algorithmic trading and quantitative finance. I can't speak outside of my own connections though, so that is why it's important for the OP to find job placement data (if unavailable, maybe searching on LinkedIn or Google for people have PhDs in statistics from those schools) -- that could give them a better sense of their job prospects after graduating.

Knowing "the right" software will also give you a leg up. For instance, if you are proficient-to-expert with Hadoop, you should be in good shape to get a data science job.

I would look at the job placement data (or if it's unavailable online, ask the DGS for it). It doesn't give a complete picture, but that should at least give you some sense of what job prospects are like after graduation. Looking at the Pittsburgh site of "Recent graduates," for example, it seems like they have done decently in the past (even for academic placements), though there isn't any listing for alumni after 2008, so you would want to get that information from the DGS. For industry and government, pedigree and adviser seem to matter far less. I would think that summer internships, software/computing knowledge and experience, and a dissertation topic that is somewhat relevant to the jobs would be of much greater interest to employers. Of course connections and internal referrals also help a lot as far as getting your resume noticed.

Well, UNC won't reject anyone until they have filled their incoming class, so everyone who has not heard from them is on their long waiting list for now, heh. Anyone who hasn't heard from UCLA at this point is on waiting list too, I think. I last checked w/ Berkeley in late February and found out I was on an informal waiting list of sorts, but I probably shouldn't get my hopes too high. I imagine their yield is pretty high and that they only accept one or two from the waiting list. One other member of this forum was already contacted by the DGS that they were highly ranked on it, so they are probably ranked higher than me. I just would like to be put out of my misery!

Has anyone heard from Berkeley since they last released results? I'm still waiting to hear from them.