jelquiades

Same with ranking schools :^)

I plan to hook an old wacom tablet up to my computer; looks like a new one of these goes for about 50 bucks. An ipad seems way too much if you just want to draw stuff with a pen. Do a search for "drawing tablet".

I highly recommend the above. A $28.5k video card will be necessary for rendering ggplot outputs.

Your profile is not extremely strong but it is good considering you are applying to only UK masters. The MASt is a good preparation for PhD and is generally well known in academia. A majority of the applicants will be admitted if I recall correctly. But I'm not sure it is a good option for industry biostatistics.  

I honestly don't know enough about masters admissions to give you any answer, and I generally think "chancing" people has a lot of information bias (you think you're learning something, but it's noise). But I do suggest you apply to schools of a wide range of prestige (that offer a thesis option, as mentioned above). Perhaps you should try to look for these programs first.

I understand as an international student you are shooting for the top schools, and perhaps there is not as much literature on schools that are less prestigious than the top 10.
Truth is the schools ranked 50 and below are also excellent programs. I hate rankings. In fact I turned down a top 20 program for one ranked in the 60s this time around. Just looking at the numbers may make you think I'm crazy, but in fact the school I chose is a much better fit for me. Unfortunately, the ranking does tend to mean something about the quality of the program, so it's useful for discussion on this forum. But everyone knows that it's an attempt to compress everything about a PhD program into one dimension.
As for masters programs, since you're shooting for a PhD eventually, look for programs that contain a research component, e.g. one with a thesis option. I know UChicago, Duke, Colorado State, UNC Chapel Hill, UC Santa Barbara have masters programs with a thesis. I know this because when I was researching schools, I created a giant spreadsheet with info like this. I suggest you click around on that US News list and do the same. Along the way you'll learn other things about the schools that can help you decide where to go.

I understand as an international student you are shooting for the top schools, and perhaps there is not as much literature on schools that are less prestigious than the top 10.
Truth is the schools ranked 50 and below are also excellent programs. I hate rankings. In fact I turned down a top 20 program for one ranked in the 60s this time around. Just looking at the numbers may make you think I'm crazy, but in fact the school I chose is a much better fit for me. Unfortunately, the ranking does tend to mean something about the quality of the program, so it's useful for discussion on this forum. But everyone knows that it's an attempt to compress everything about a PhD program into one dimension.
As for masters programs, since you're shooting for a PhD eventually, look for programs that contain a research component, e.g. one with a thesis option. I know UChicago, Duke, Colorado State, UNC Chapel Hill, UC Santa Barbara have masters programs with a thesis. I know this because when I was researching schools, I created a giant spreadsheet with info like this. I suggest you click around on that US News list and do the same. Along the way you'll learn other things about the schools that can help you decide where to go.

I recently went to a visit day for a department ranked in the 60s in us news (though I hate ratings and think this department is underrated).
There were a couple people who have never taken real analysis, so I wouldn't say you're screwed. Presumably they had something else that indicated their mathematical skills to the adcom.

I recently went to a visit day for a department ranked in the 60s in us news (though I hate ratings and think this department is underrated).
There were a couple people who have never taken real analysis, so I wouldn't say you're screwed. Presumably they had something else that indicated their mathematical skills to the adcom.

I'm not exactly sure about biostatistics jobs. But in finance, school names carry great weight for master/undergrad level jobs. This is called "target schools". If you are not from "target schools", your resume is placed into trash unless you have some connections in the firm. Even though people laugh at Columbia's master program as a "cash cow" but when I interviewed at banks in NYC, there are always severals students come from there. Some of those guys barely speak English and I suspect they are very good. But they are on equal footing with someone from Stanford, for example, when they got on-site interviews by Columbia name. On the contrary, I rarely see anyone from unknown state schools. It requires a great amount of networking to even get an interview if you go to Pittsburgh, which Columbia name will automatically grant you.