Undergrad & Grad Institution: Top 20 Public/State School (US)
Major(s): Neuroscience Minor(s): Chemistry, Stats GPA: 3.46
Grad Degree: MS, Biostatistics GPA: 3.98
Type of Student: Domestic White Male
GRE General Test: Q: 168 V: 165 W: 5.5
Programs Applying: Biostatistics PhD
Research Experience: Involved in research from undergrad (~2016) to present. Handful of publications (one first-author publication, two "co-first-author" publication), poster and oral presentations with a top submission award, work as a statistician within large/national collaboratives
Pertinent Activities or Jobs: Three years full-time work as data analyst & statistician in gap years after undergrad and masters; Graduate and post-graduate work developing statistical/data science open education resources with professors & health science/pharma industry collaborators
Awards/Honors/Recognitions:
Small/partial tuition graduate scholarship
Summer scholarship to attend UW's SISMID
Full tuition undergraduate scholarship
Two undergraduate fellowships/honors programs (mildly competitive but completely unrelated to statistics)
Letters of Recommendation: MS Thesis Advisor Professor; Stat Theory Professor; Collaborative/Applied Professor
Math/Statistics Grades:
Undergraduate: Multivariate Calculus (A), Data Science (A), Statistical Packages/Programming (A), Experimental Design (B)
Graduate: Applied Regression (A), Statistical & Probability Theory (A+), Health Data Science (A), Python for Data Analytics (A), Mathematical Methods for Statistics (A+), Machine Learning (A), Biostatistical Methods (A), Linear Models (A-), Statistical Learning (A+), Neural Data Science (A), Linear Algebra (A+)
Programming/ Software skills: R, Python, SAS, SQL, Stata
Applying to Where (all biostatistics PhD):
Harvard University - Accepted, Attending
Penn - Accepted
Vanderbilt - Accepted
VCU - Accepted
Pitt - Accepted
Emory - Accepted
Florida - Accepted
Yale - Rejected (no interview)
Columbia - Rejected (no interview)
Johns Hopkins - Rejected (no interview)
Brown - Rejected (no interview)
Thoughts
Overall very happy with this cycle and excited to be attending Harvard! I've been considering applying to PhD programs since mid-2020 but opted to take my time in consulting my professors for guidance, crafting the materials while balancing work, and attempting to let the effects of COVID "stabilize" after the last cycle. Everyone's professional path and experience is different, but I found that I benefitted greatly (personally, professionally, and financially) by taking gap years, including both one after undergrad and two after my masters program.
I was unsure of the competitiveness of my app without Real Analysis or pure math beyond Linear Algebra. Some schools (I assume) seemed more accepting of this with my masters and more extensive applied work/research background. A lot of folks on this forum have great mathematical coursework which intimidated me a bit when applying (and which I'm certain is helpful if not necessary for pure statistics programs), but contrary to what you might read it is possible (acknowledging the n=1 sample size here) to get into some great biostatistics programs without a "heavy" mathematics background but with solid stats coursework and professional/research experience.
Lastly, I also believe my success was largely possible only due to the wonderful mentorship that I received from my letter writers and some grad professors, extremely thankful for their help!