biobayesbabe

Well, I guess we might have a different source of info then. The info I got from reddit came from a person who claimed to be working in the field of admission for Ontario biostats program. From what he/she said, the most competitive biostats programs in Ontario are U of T, Western and Queens. But I guess Waterloo and McGill should also be competitive as well. As for U of T being unheard of, I doubt that is true. U of T has a huge biostats department with people like Radford Neal, although he mainly belongs to the stats department. I guess the reason U of T biostats is not as famous as its stats department is biostats in U of T is heavily applied oriented but that does not mean it is a bad program. In fact, any biostats program in Canada should be pretty good since most Canadian schools have strong orientation towards medical research.

Goodwillhunting2 As far as I know, it is not a new department. In fact, it is one of the oldest biostats department in Canada. I also got some info regarding my own questions from reddit and it seems it may not be that much of a competitive program compared to other Canadian programs such as U of T or UBC but it is certainly reputable. As for the international applicants, it may be very difficult cuz McGill is famous for not letting in international applicants.

Hi all, I did not realize before that McGill even has a biostatistics department since I just assumed it to be under the stats department, but it turns out it is under their Faculty of Medicine in the department of epidemiology. It seems that it is not that much of a well-known biostats program since you don't usually see the name popping everywhere but after looking at their website, I get a feeling that they are highly selective and competitive since McGill is famous for its medical sciences. I also got the news they only admitted 4 masters and 3 Ph.D. last year, but I can't verify that at all since they don't have a student directory on their website. Does anybody has a more detailed intel on this? How competitive it really is? What kind of a candidate do they select? Does international applicant have a chance?

Thanks statfan for your comment. While you say big difference between Toronto/Waterloo and Western, do you mean the top programs like CMU or the top 50 in general?

Hi all, I am trying to apply for top 50 programs in US but since I did my undergraduate and currently doing my Master at Canada, I don't really know what my chances are. So hope somebody can help. Undergraduate Institute: Canadian Institution (Top 200 in the world by QS subject ranking) Undergraduate Degree: Financial Statistics Master Institute: Same school Master Degree: Statistics Type of student: International Undergraduate GPA: 3.9 Math & Stats GPA: 4.0 Graduate GPA: 4.0 GRE: 168 Q, 150 V, 3 Writing (Will retake) Courses: Real Analysis I and II, Advanced Probability and statistical inference, machine learning, spatial statistics, Bayesian statistics, statistical computing, stochastic process, computational neuroscience, biostats and epidemiology. Research Experience: Undergraduate research assistant for a professor doing option pricing. Two major poster projects for Master degree. Presented at a regional conference. One Master thesis. Also worked in a neuroscience lab for computational neuroscience. One paper submitted in the field of astrostatistics, don't know whether accepted and won't know before the application. Teaching Experience: Freelance tutoring and working for a tutor company starting from undergrad, TAing an undergrad intro stats course. Coding: R, MATLAB, Python Letter of Rec: 3 letters, one from my main supervisor which I am very close to. Sort of a "big name" in time series. One from my secondary supervisor from astronomy working on astrostatistics, big name in astronomy. Last one from the supervisor in the neuroscience lab, pretty big name in neuroscience as well. List of Schools hoping for: CMU, Michigan, UNC-Chapill Hill, Penn State, Purdue, Yale, UIUC, Rice, Boston Concerns: Fearing that my main supervisor might not be keen to write a strong rec cuz I had a bad professionalism problem with him before. Also I am not quite good on the social-side of things. Also might not be able to get a good GRE verbal because English is not my native. Are the schools I listed realistic? Are the top programs like CMU and Michigan a reach for me? Thanks a lot!