sugarbeet

If you are not restricted by locations, you can consider applying to schools that don't require GRE. You have good GPA and two REUs, so could be competitive.

One advice I got from others is to look at the faculty's recent publications and see if you like their work. Their recent publications might be most close to what you will work on. Past reputation is certainly important, but the faculty's recent productivity is also important.

Genetics has changed substantially in the last few years. The reason that Michigan's reputation is on the decline is due to the lack of faculty working on the latest problems. >6+ years of graduation does seem to be a big concern.

>6 years is crazy! most Biostatistics students finish in less than 5 years.

Michigan definitely has the best reputation for stat genetics, which is largely based upon Mike Boehnke and Goncalo Abecasis's reputation. Their trainees have got faculty positions at places like Harvard, UPenn, and Emory etc. That is mostly when genome-wide association studies were hot. But now that the field has already moved on to newer technologies, traditional stat genetics is no longer that attractive. In fact, their recent trainees can hardly get faculty positions. Now that Goncalo Abecasis is going to industry and Mike Boehnke is close to the age of retirement, I am not sure that Michigan's other stat genetics faculty are necessarily stronger than other places.

It is true. The audience of genetics/genomics methods is different from general biostatistics. Top genetics/genomics methods papers are typically published in journals like Nature Methods, Nature Communications, Genome Biology, and Genome Research etc.

Goncalo Abecasis spends most of his time in industry now. Those high citation papers are large consortium applied papers that aren't necessarily good for PhD students who need to get methods papers for graduation. I have heard some students struggled to graduate.

Michigan’s stat genetics program is historically strong, but their faculty’s research is a little out of date in recent years. Most of the people there are still working on genome-wide association studies. For more general biostatistics, SPH is fine, but for genetics/genomics research, being in the school of medicine will make a difference as the problems that they work on are more significant.