2fluffydogs

@Blain Waan Sorry, no idea who the chair is.

Adding on because this is a thread about places people are waiting on, and because our lists overlap a bit. I'm going elsewhere, but I've not heard back from: NCSU Stats, UConn Stats, U Florida Stats, Colorado State Stats.

Thanks for your thoughts! It's definitely a hard choice to make. I think that I'm definitely interested in biostatistics or at least statistics for biological applications. Harvard has more and better data, more faculty, and more options, but the program has more requirements and is less flexible overall. The first year coursework is much easier than Berkeley stats', but there's quals. Looking closely at placements of people who worked with my advisors of interest (while they were at Harvard at least), they seem to be various research scientist positions at big centers or industry. The students at Harvard tend to come from broader backgrounds, while those at Berkeley stats tend to have math undergrads. Berkeley has fewer faculty and less data, but it also has some well known people working in the area--Dudoit, Bin Yu, Purdom, Huang, van der Laan. The first year coursework sounds difficult. A lot of placements of phd grads from Berkeley stats working in biostats are in industry, with a few postdocs here and there (and, there's been a few Berkeley stat/biostats phd grads who end up postdoc-ing at Harvard biostats). There's a lot of good methodological work, as well as more of the high dimensional stats flavor to the work at Berkeley; however, a lot of people there are primarily looking at single cell data. Almost everyone I know says Harvard (which makes me wonder if I'm overthinking this or if it's obvious), though my SO's easy job transfer makes Berkeley a nice option.

I'm deciding between Berkeley statistics and Harvard biostatistics for a PhD. I've been working as a biostatistician for three years, and want to focus on the more methodological areas of biostatistics. I'm not sure what I want to do after graduating, but want to stay in research. Berkeley statistics offers a more theoretical program, but has relatively few faculty (~5) working on biostatistics. Moreover, those in biostatistics seem to be focusing on single cell data recently. But, the work is more methodological, and there is still some applied work being done. On the upside, Berkeley has no quals and the students seem nice. It seems like recent graduates are split between good positions in academia and tech companies. Harvard biostatistics is big, and there are a lot of faculty working on a ton of different things. The department isn't all applied, and seems to have a bit of methodological work (including some Bayesian stuff). There're also many hospitals in the area and the department has a ton of high quality data. It seems like recent graduates end up post-doc-ing a bit, or going to biostatistical research institutes, but that post-docs from Harvard tend to get good positions in academia. My SO might be able to transfer his job to the Bay area, which is an advantage, as is the better weather. Cost of living isn't that different between both places. Harvard is ranked #1 for biostatistics, and Berkeley #2 for statistics (though note that Berkeley biostatistics is #6, and the biostatistics and statistics faculty overlap). Is anyone familiar with the programs, or with the more intangible factors from both departments (e.g., culture)? I welcome any thoughts that anyone has!