biostat_prof

I agree with most of this. However, I will say that point 3 is not true for my department. We typically don't know exactly how much funding is available when we admit students, and while we try our hardest to find funding for all admitted students, quite frequently there isn't enough funding for everyone. The admissions committee will try to make sure that funds are available to their highest-priority students, but for many students whether or not they get funding may depend on whether or not a faculty member with a research grant wants to fund them. And that is more likely to happen if you have already expressed interest in working with that faculty member.
 
So I do think it is worth the time to mention the names of a couple prospective faculty advisers, particularly if you have talked to them before you apply. That said, it probably won't make a difference whether or not you get admitted, and it won't affect funding at many schools, either. And you could potentially hurt yourself if you say something that makes it sound like you don't know what you're talking about. But in general I think it is worth the time to say a few words about the research interests of a couple faculty members in your personal statement.

I am a professor at a top-ten biostat department. For the most part, the USNWR rankings of stat/biostat programs are fairly close to reality. Having said that, they are often misused by students, since in a PhD program, the reputation of one's dissertation adviser is more important than the reputation of one's school. You would be better served to attend a lower-ranked department with several strong faculty in your area of interest than a higher-ranked department where there are no faculty for you to work with. Also, note that the rankings for schools 9-27 or so are probably within the margin of error of one another. This is another reason to consider the faculty that you might work with rather than the ranking of a school.

Of the schools that you listed, Harvard is outstanding, although admissions will probably be very competitive. My impression is that Yale has several strong younger faculty, although they have fewer superstar senior faculty. I'm not very familiar with the department at BU. As for Brown, that is a very new department, which is probably why it is unranked. I have no idea who they have hired, although attending a new department like that is always a bit of a gamble. Was there some particular reason you only applied to schools in the New England area?

One way or another, it is probably a moot point, since you have probably missed the deadlines for most (if not all) biostat PhD programs by now. If you're serious about this, you may want to apply again next year. The admissions process is brutally competitive this year, and you really should apply to more than four schools unless you have superstar credentials. (And if you're not a U.S. citizen, it's going to be even uglier. I would recommend that non-citizens to at least 15-20 schools unless your resume is absolutely flawless.)

I agree with most of this. However, I will say that point 3 is not true for my department. We typically don't know exactly how much funding is available when we admit students, and while we try our hardest to find funding for all admitted students, quite frequently there isn't enough funding for everyone. The admissions committee will try to make sure that funds are available to their highest-priority students, but for many students whether or not they get funding may depend on whether or not a faculty member with a research grant wants to fund them. And that is more likely to happen if you have already expressed interest in working with that faculty member.
 
So I do think it is worth the time to mention the names of a couple prospective faculty advisers, particularly if you have talked to them before you apply. That said, it probably won't make a difference whether or not you get admitted, and it won't affect funding at many schools, either. And you could potentially hurt yourself if you say something that makes it sound like you don't know what you're talking about. But in general I think it is worth the time to say a few words about the research interests of a couple faculty members in your personal statement.

I agree with most of this. However, I will say that point 3 is not true for my department. We typically don't know exactly how much funding is available when we admit students, and while we try our hardest to find funding for all admitted students, quite frequently there isn't enough funding for everyone. The admissions committee will try to make sure that funds are available to their highest-priority students, but for many students whether or not they get funding may depend on whether or not a faculty member with a research grant wants to fund them. And that is more likely to happen if you have already expressed interest in working with that faculty member.
 
So I do think it is worth the time to mention the names of a couple prospective faculty advisers, particularly if you have talked to them before you apply. That said, it probably won't make a difference whether or not you get admitted, and it won't affect funding at many schools, either. And you could potentially hurt yourself if you say something that makes it sound like you don't know what you're talking about. But in general I think it is worth the time to say a few words about the research interests of a couple faculty members in your personal statement.

If you are applying for a PhD program (and particularly if you are interested in academia), the reputation of your dissertation adviser is far more important than the reputation of the program where you did your PhD. Thus, I always tell students not to obsess over rankings, because you would be much better off attending a lower-ranked school and working with a star adviser than attending a higher-ranked school and working with a mediocre adviser. And you also have to consider whether or not a department is strong in the areas in which you are interested. To give a couple specific examples, Michigan's biostat program is a fantastic option if you are interested in genetics, but it's not such a great option for most other areas. Likewise Harvard's stat department is small, but it's definitely the best in the world for missing data and a couple other areas. But it would be a mistake to attend Harvard's stat department unless you are interested in one of the research areas where they are strong.
 
That said, it can be advantageous to attend a higher-ranked department, particularly if you're not sure about your research interests when you start grad school (which in my experience is true of a high percentage of students). Typically the higher-ranked departments tend to have strong faculty in a wide variety of research areas. They also tend to be better-funded, so there is less of a concern about having your funding run out after a couple years. Nevertheless it would be a mistake to choose a PhD program purely based on rankings given that there isn't a huge difference between many of the top programs. My advice would be to carefully examine the research interests of the faculty at each school. It's also worth considering funding, quality of life, and things like that. Rankings would be very low on the list of things that I would consider.
 
Having said all that, if you want my feedback on the rankings that people have proposed earlier, I would put UNC in the top tier for biostatistics. Maybe Michigan as well, although they are hard to rank due to being so heavily focused on genetics. But most people say that UW/Harvard/Hopkins/UNC represent the top tier of biostatistics and sometimes Michigan depending on who you talk to. All of the four aforementioned schools have large departments with diverse faculty research interests so practically any student should be able to find a good adviser at any of those schools. After that, I would say that the research interests of the faculty and availability of funding should be more important than rankings, because many of the remaining departments are strong in a couple areas but very weak in other areas.
 
As for statistics, I'm less familiar with the gossip about the quality of the various statistics programs. That said, even among the top-ranked schools, one should consider the research interests of the faculty and how they align with your interests. Some departments have the reputation of being more theoretial (e.g. Berkeley, Chicago) whereas others are more applied (e.g. Stanford, CMU), for instance. But I'm basing this largely on gossip that I heard years ago, so take it for what it's worth. I recommend that you carefully research the faculty research interests of each department you are considering.

I think everyone on this thread is greatly overlooking the importance of recommendation letters. Strong recommendations can cover a multitude of sins whereas lukewarm ones can sink otherwise very promising candidates. I might go so far as to say that they are the single most important part of an application. The only other thing that comes close is grades in advanced math classes, but even that is hard to evaluate at "less prestigious" schools. For applicants with an MS or non-traditional applicants, evidence of research excellence (i.e. publications in good journals) also helps a lot, but it is very rare for someone coming straight out of college to have much of a paper trail in this area.
 
For the record, I would strongly disagree with the claim that undergraduate prestige "matters a lot." Sure, it matters some. If you have a 4.0 at Harvard, you are probably going to be accepted. But I would say that the majority of the students admitted to my department in recent years have not been Ivy League grads but rather students who attended solid state schools and did very well. (And my department is usually considered to be one of the best.) And it's a sample size of 1, but I attended an extreme "no name" undergraduate school and I was still admitted to every graduate program to which I applied. The main difference is that if adcoms aren't familiar with the rigor of the courses at your school, they will rely more heavily on recommendation letters. If a recommender says, "Student X took my proof-based advanced calculus course and got the highest grade of anyone in 10 years," you will be fine. But if you get three tepid recommendations, that may not be good enough.
 
As for undergraduate GPA's, a low undergraduate GPA will not sink you, although the burden of proof will be on you to show that it is not an accurate reflection of your true ability. As I mentioned on another thread, my department recently admitted a student whose undergraduate transcript was almost entirely C's, D's and F's (mostly D's and F's their first two years). But this particular student enrolled in an MS program and got three recommenders saying that they were one of the top MS students in years. They also wrote a publishable paper while in this program. So it is definitely possible to be admitted to a top-ranked department despite a spotty undergraduate record, but you will have your work cut out for you. My advice would be to have a candid talk with your potential recommenders about how strong they are willing to recommend you. If you are in a top-10 department and you can get three recommenders who say that you are strong enough to be in their PhD program, that could carry you quite a ways. And if either of your research projects could result in publishable papers in a good methodology journal, be sure to find a recommender who will say that as well. As cyberwulf correctly noted, your MS GPA probably won't help you that much since usually the curve in these programs is very generous. (If you took some form of advanced calculus/real analysis course where the curve was not inflated in either of your MS programs, try to find a recommender who will say that.)
 
One way or another it's going to be a crap shoot. Your best advice is to apply very broadly. It's unclear to me whether you really cannot stay in your current program or if you just don't want to, but if you are serious about getting a PhD, you should try to make sure you have some kind of backup option. It's really hard to predict what will happen to you. Good luck.

I think everyone on this thread is greatly overlooking the importance of recommendation letters. Strong recommendations can cover a multitude of sins whereas lukewarm ones can sink otherwise very promising candidates. I might go so far as to say that they are the single most important part of an application. The only other thing that comes close is grades in advanced math classes, but even that is hard to evaluate at "less prestigious" schools. For applicants with an MS or non-traditional applicants, evidence of research excellence (i.e. publications in good journals) also helps a lot, but it is very rare for someone coming straight out of college to have much of a paper trail in this area.
 
For the record, I would strongly disagree with the claim that undergraduate prestige "matters a lot." Sure, it matters some. If you have a 4.0 at Harvard, you are probably going to be accepted. But I would say that the majority of the students admitted to my department in recent years have not been Ivy League grads but rather students who attended solid state schools and did very well. (And my department is usually considered to be one of the best.) And it's a sample size of 1, but I attended an extreme "no name" undergraduate school and I was still admitted to every graduate program to which I applied. The main difference is that if adcoms aren't familiar with the rigor of the courses at your school, they will rely more heavily on recommendation letters. If a recommender says, "Student X took my proof-based advanced calculus course and got the highest grade of anyone in 10 years," you will be fine. But if you get three tepid recommendations, that may not be good enough.
 
As for undergraduate GPA's, a low undergraduate GPA will not sink you, although the burden of proof will be on you to show that it is not an accurate reflection of your true ability. As I mentioned on another thread, my department recently admitted a student whose undergraduate transcript was almost entirely C's, D's and F's (mostly D's and F's their first two years). But this particular student enrolled in an MS program and got three recommenders saying that they were one of the top MS students in years. They also wrote a publishable paper while in this program. So it is definitely possible to be admitted to a top-ranked department despite a spotty undergraduate record, but you will have your work cut out for you. My advice would be to have a candid talk with your potential recommenders about how strong they are willing to recommend you. If you are in a top-10 department and you can get three recommenders who say that you are strong enough to be in their PhD program, that could carry you quite a ways. And if either of your research projects could result in publishable papers in a good methodology journal, be sure to find a recommender who will say that as well. As cyberwulf correctly noted, your MS GPA probably won't help you that much since usually the curve in these programs is very generous. (If you took some form of advanced calculus/real analysis course where the curve was not inflated in either of your MS programs, try to find a recommender who will say that.)
 
One way or another it's going to be a crap shoot. Your best advice is to apply very broadly. It's unclear to me whether you really cannot stay in your current program or if you just don't want to, but if you are serious about getting a PhD, you should try to make sure you have some kind of backup option. It's really hard to predict what will happen to you. Good luck.

I think everyone on this thread is greatly overlooking the importance of recommendation letters. Strong recommendations can cover a multitude of sins whereas lukewarm ones can sink otherwise very promising candidates. I might go so far as to say that they are the single most important part of an application. The only other thing that comes close is grades in advanced math classes, but even that is hard to evaluate at "less prestigious" schools. For applicants with an MS or non-traditional applicants, evidence of research excellence (i.e. publications in good journals) also helps a lot, but it is very rare for someone coming straight out of college to have much of a paper trail in this area.
 
For the record, I would strongly disagree with the claim that undergraduate prestige "matters a lot." Sure, it matters some. If you have a 4.0 at Harvard, you are probably going to be accepted. But I would say that the majority of the students admitted to my department in recent years have not been Ivy League grads but rather students who attended solid state schools and did very well. (And my department is usually considered to be one of the best.) And it's a sample size of 1, but I attended an extreme "no name" undergraduate school and I was still admitted to every graduate program to which I applied. The main difference is that if adcoms aren't familiar with the rigor of the courses at your school, they will rely more heavily on recommendation letters. If a recommender says, "Student X took my proof-based advanced calculus course and got the highest grade of anyone in 10 years," you will be fine. But if you get three tepid recommendations, that may not be good enough.
 
As for undergraduate GPA's, a low undergraduate GPA will not sink you, although the burden of proof will be on you to show that it is not an accurate reflection of your true ability. As I mentioned on another thread, my department recently admitted a student whose undergraduate transcript was almost entirely C's, D's and F's (mostly D's and F's their first two years). But this particular student enrolled in an MS program and got three recommenders saying that they were one of the top MS students in years. They also wrote a publishable paper while in this program. So it is definitely possible to be admitted to a top-ranked department despite a spotty undergraduate record, but you will have your work cut out for you. My advice would be to have a candid talk with your potential recommenders about how strong they are willing to recommend you. If you are in a top-10 department and you can get three recommenders who say that you are strong enough to be in their PhD program, that could carry you quite a ways. And if either of your research projects could result in publishable papers in a good methodology journal, be sure to find a recommender who will say that as well. As cyberwulf correctly noted, your MS GPA probably won't help you that much since usually the curve in these programs is very generous. (If you took some form of advanced calculus/real analysis course where the curve was not inflated in either of your MS programs, try to find a recommender who will say that.)
 
One way or another it's going to be a crap shoot. Your best advice is to apply very broadly. It's unclear to me whether you really cannot stay in your current program or if you just don't want to, but if you are serious about getting a PhD, you should try to make sure you have some kind of backup option. It's really hard to predict what will happen to you. Good luck.

Repeat after me: "There is no 'top 3.' Your ability to find a good job in academia depends on your publications and your adviser's recommendations, not the name of the school you attended." Sorry that I keep saying that over and over again, but I don't know where this idea that UW/Harvard/Hopkins are somehow orders of magnitude better than any other biostat departments got started on this board, because it's simply false. As I have noted elsewhere, as near as I can tell Michigan is placing more students in the best jobs than any of these three schools right now.
 
Now that I have vented my spleen about that, I'll try to answer the OP's question. The short answer is that it depends heavily on whether you are getting an MS or a PhD and where you attend school. (I know that seems to contradict me previous paragraph. Bear with me for a minute and I'll explain.) Right now I would recommend the MS program in my department to anyone. All of our graduates seem to find jobs without too much trouble and they usually seem to be able to find them in the area they want to live (assuming that it's not rural Nebraska or something like that). And the starting salaries are good; around $65k-$75k seems to be the market rate, with salaries using increasing pretty rapidly for the first few years. I would say that's an excellent investment for most people even if the MS program is unfunded. However, do bear in mind that my department is traditionally one of the top-ranked departments and it also has close ties to industry. I'm not sure things are this rosy everywhere. I would still guess that most stat/biostat MS graduates will be able to find jobs somewhere assuming that there are no huge red flags on their resume.
 
A PhD is another story. My usual advice to students is to ask the following three questions: Do you love research? Do you really love research? Do you love research so much you can't see yourself doing anything else? If you can answer "yes" to all three questions, considering getting a PhD. Otherwise an MS is probably a better choice. The salaries for PhD-level biostatisticians tend to be higher than that for MS-level people (and the upside is certainly higher) but for most people the salary difference between the MS and PhD levels isn't enough to justify the lost earnings resulting from another 2-4 years in school. And the job market is much tighter for PhD's than for MS graduates. (I know that sounds strange, but there are far more job openings for MS statisticians, and they typically don't want to hire PhD graduates because they assume that you'll get bored with the position and leave after a year or two.) Generally speaking, a PhD is a bad choice unless you are willing to live pretty much anywhere in the country. (And that's not always a realistic option if you have a significant other. I know of plenty of PhD graduates from the very top schools who were either badly underemployed or stuck in commuter marriages due to the difficulty of finding a job in the same geographic locale as one's significant other.)
 
To be more specific, at my department, pretty much everyone who wants a job in academia seems to find one, and our placement record in industry is also solid. But my department is ranked fairly highly, and even at my department the vast majority of our graduates find jobs in lower-ranked research universities. These days a paper or two in the top journals (JASA, Annals, Biometrika, JRSS- seems to be almost a requirement to land a job at even mid-tier universities. I would imagine that it's even tougher at lower-ranked schools where frequently there is little or no methodological work being performed. I also don't know what it's like finding a job in industry coming from a lower-ranked school. My guess is that it's doable but they may want to see evidence of experience (usually obtained during summer internships in grad school) and they may also want to see evidence of specific skills on your resume. The main advantage of attending a higher-ranked school for industry jobs is that many larger employers only recruit from certain schools (usually the higher-ranked schools). For academia, the advantage of a higher-ranked school is that typically there are more well-known faculty who are publishing in the best journals. If you attend a lower-ranked school and publish in JASA three times, you're golden, but it will harder to do, because most of the faculty who publish in JASA regularly are at the top-ranked schools. (Indeed, my limited research suggests that in the biostatistics world outside of the top 5-6 departments quite frequently there are only a handful of faculty doing methodological work or sometimes none at all. That will make it very tough to find an academic job at a strong stat/biostat department, since many of them don't care about non-methodological publications unless it's in Science or Nature or something like that.)
 
And yes; it is definitely possible to find jobs in non-biostatistics departments with a biostat degree. In fact it happens all the time. I have a PhD student on the market right now who had several job offers from math departments and statistics departments. And these days it is fairly common for statistical genetics people to find jobs in genetics departments.

At my department (which is traditionally one of the top-ranked biostat departments in the country) every student that I have known who has wanted an academic position has gotten one. That's the good news. The bad news is that with a few exceptions, most of these jobs have been at lower-ranked research universities. And based on limited anecdotal evidence, the competition for jobs at even mid-tier research universities is absolutely brutal these days. At least one paper in JASA/Annals/Biometrika/JRSS-B (or perhaps AJHG for statistical geneticists) seems to be a de facto requirement to land a tenure-track job at most good departments these days, and I have heard of applicants in recent years with multiple publications in these top journals who still ended up taking jobs at mid-tier programs. I would not want to be on the academic job market these days with a thin publication record and a degree from a second-tier PhD program.
 
In any event, assuming that the market doesn't take a drastic turn for the worse in the next couple years, my guess is that most graduates of the top departments will find academic jobs, although they may have to work at lower-ranked schools than they wanted. If you can't get admitted to a top-ranked program, make sure you find a good adviser and get some good methodological publications on your CV before you go on the market. And even at the top-ranked programs, the school's brand name will only carry you so far. Probably 80-90% of academic hiring boils down to publications and recommendations, so even graduates of the best programs would be wise to find a productive adviser and try to get at least 1-2 publications in the top journals if they want to be competitive for the more desirable jobs.

I am a professor at a top-ten biostat department. For the most part, the USNWR rankings of stat/biostat programs are fairly close to reality. Having said that, they are often misused by students, since in a PhD program, the reputation of one's dissertation adviser is more important than the reputation of one's school. You would be better served to attend a lower-ranked department with several strong faculty in your area of interest than a higher-ranked department where there are no faculty for you to work with. Also, note that the rankings for schools 9-27 or so are probably within the margin of error of one another. This is another reason to consider the faculty that you might work with rather than the ranking of a school.

Of the schools that you listed, Harvard is outstanding, although admissions will probably be very competitive. My impression is that Yale has several strong younger faculty, although they have fewer superstar senior faculty. I'm not very familiar with the department at BU. As for Brown, that is a very new department, which is probably why it is unranked. I have no idea who they have hired, although attending a new department like that is always a bit of a gamble. Was there some particular reason you only applied to schools in the New England area?

One way or another, it is probably a moot point, since you have probably missed the deadlines for most (if not all) biostat PhD programs by now. If you're serious about this, you may want to apply again next year. The admissions process is brutally competitive this year, and you really should apply to more than four schools unless you have superstar credentials. (And if you're not a U.S. citizen, it's going to be even uglier. I would recommend that non-citizens to at least 15-20 schools unless your resume is absolutely flawless.)

Repeat after me: "There is no 'top 3.' Your ability to find a good job in academia depends on your publications and your adviser's recommendations, not the name of the school you attended." Sorry that I keep saying that over and over again, but I don't know where this idea that UW/Harvard/Hopkins are somehow orders of magnitude better than any other biostat departments got started on this board, because it's simply false. As I have noted elsewhere, as near as I can tell Michigan is placing more students in the best jobs than any of these three schools right now.
 
Now that I have vented my spleen about that, I'll try to answer the OP's question. The short answer is that it depends heavily on whether you are getting an MS or a PhD and where you attend school. (I know that seems to contradict me previous paragraph. Bear with me for a minute and I'll explain.) Right now I would recommend the MS program in my department to anyone. All of our graduates seem to find jobs without too much trouble and they usually seem to be able to find them in the area they want to live (assuming that it's not rural Nebraska or something like that). And the starting salaries are good; around $65k-$75k seems to be the market rate, with salaries using increasing pretty rapidly for the first few years. I would say that's an excellent investment for most people even if the MS program is unfunded. However, do bear in mind that my department is traditionally one of the top-ranked departments and it also has close ties to industry. I'm not sure things are this rosy everywhere. I would still guess that most stat/biostat MS graduates will be able to find jobs somewhere assuming that there are no huge red flags on their resume.
 
A PhD is another story. My usual advice to students is to ask the following three questions: Do you love research? Do you really love research? Do you love research so much you can't see yourself doing anything else? If you can answer "yes" to all three questions, considering getting a PhD. Otherwise an MS is probably a better choice. The salaries for PhD-level biostatisticians tend to be higher than that for MS-level people (and the upside is certainly higher) but for most people the salary difference between the MS and PhD levels isn't enough to justify the lost earnings resulting from another 2-4 years in school. And the job market is much tighter for PhD's than for MS graduates. (I know that sounds strange, but there are far more job openings for MS statisticians, and they typically don't want to hire PhD graduates because they assume that you'll get bored with the position and leave after a year or two.) Generally speaking, a PhD is a bad choice unless you are willing to live pretty much anywhere in the country. (And that's not always a realistic option if you have a significant other. I know of plenty of PhD graduates from the very top schools who were either badly underemployed or stuck in commuter marriages due to the difficulty of finding a job in the same geographic locale as one's significant other.)
 
To be more specific, at my department, pretty much everyone who wants a job in academia seems to find one, and our placement record in industry is also solid. But my department is ranked fairly highly, and even at my department the vast majority of our graduates find jobs in lower-ranked research universities. These days a paper or two in the top journals (JASA, Annals, Biometrika, JRSS- seems to be almost a requirement to land a job at even mid-tier universities. I would imagine that it's even tougher at lower-ranked schools where frequently there is little or no methodological work being performed. I also don't know what it's like finding a job in industry coming from a lower-ranked school. My guess is that it's doable but they may want to see evidence of experience (usually obtained during summer internships in grad school) and they may also want to see evidence of specific skills on your resume. The main advantage of attending a higher-ranked school for industry jobs is that many larger employers only recruit from certain schools (usually the higher-ranked schools). For academia, the advantage of a higher-ranked school is that typically there are more well-known faculty who are publishing in the best journals. If you attend a lower-ranked school and publish in JASA three times, you're golden, but it will harder to do, because most of the faculty who publish in JASA regularly are at the top-ranked schools. (Indeed, my limited research suggests that in the biostatistics world outside of the top 5-6 departments quite frequently there are only a handful of faculty doing methodological work or sometimes none at all. That will make it very tough to find an academic job at a strong stat/biostat department, since many of them don't care about non-methodological publications unless it's in Science or Nature or something like that.)
 
And yes; it is definitely possible to find jobs in non-biostatistics departments with a biostat degree. In fact it happens all the time. I have a PhD student on the market right now who had several job offers from math departments and statistics departments. And these days it is fairly common for statistical genetics people to find jobs in genetics departments.

If you are applying for a PhD program (and particularly if you are interested in academia), the reputation of your dissertation adviser is far more important than the reputation of the program where you did your PhD. Thus, I always tell students not to obsess over rankings, because you would be much better off attending a lower-ranked school and working with a star adviser than attending a higher-ranked school and working with a mediocre adviser. And you also have to consider whether or not a department is strong in the areas in which you are interested. To give a couple specific examples, Michigan's biostat program is a fantastic option if you are interested in genetics, but it's not such a great option for most other areas. Likewise Harvard's stat department is small, but it's definitely the best in the world for missing data and a couple other areas. But it would be a mistake to attend Harvard's stat department unless you are interested in one of the research areas where they are strong.
 
That said, it can be advantageous to attend a higher-ranked department, particularly if you're not sure about your research interests when you start grad school (which in my experience is true of a high percentage of students). Typically the higher-ranked departments tend to have strong faculty in a wide variety of research areas. They also tend to be better-funded, so there is less of a concern about having your funding run out after a couple years. Nevertheless it would be a mistake to choose a PhD program purely based on rankings given that there isn't a huge difference between many of the top programs. My advice would be to carefully examine the research interests of the faculty at each school. It's also worth considering funding, quality of life, and things like that. Rankings would be very low on the list of things that I would consider.
 
Having said all that, if you want my feedback on the rankings that people have proposed earlier, I would put UNC in the top tier for biostatistics. Maybe Michigan as well, although they are hard to rank due to being so heavily focused on genetics. But most people say that UW/Harvard/Hopkins/UNC represent the top tier of biostatistics and sometimes Michigan depending on who you talk to. All of the four aforementioned schools have large departments with diverse faculty research interests so practically any student should be able to find a good adviser at any of those schools. After that, I would say that the research interests of the faculty and availability of funding should be more important than rankings, because many of the remaining departments are strong in a couple areas but very weak in other areas.
 
As for statistics, I'm less familiar with the gossip about the quality of the various statistics programs. That said, even among the top-ranked schools, one should consider the research interests of the faculty and how they align with your interests. Some departments have the reputation of being more theoretial (e.g. Berkeley, Chicago) whereas others are more applied (e.g. Stanford, CMU), for instance. But I'm basing this largely on gossip that I heard years ago, so take it for what it's worth. I recommend that you carefully research the faculty research interests of each department you are considering.

If you are applying for a PhD program (and particularly if you are interested in academia), the reputation of your dissertation adviser is far more important than the reputation of the program where you did your PhD. Thus, I always tell students not to obsess over rankings, because you would be much better off attending a lower-ranked school and working with a star adviser than attending a higher-ranked school and working with a mediocre adviser. And you also have to consider whether or not a department is strong in the areas in which you are interested. To give a couple specific examples, Michigan's biostat program is a fantastic option if you are interested in genetics, but it's not such a great option for most other areas. Likewise Harvard's stat department is small, but it's definitely the best in the world for missing data and a couple other areas. But it would be a mistake to attend Harvard's stat department unless you are interested in one of the research areas where they are strong.
 
That said, it can be advantageous to attend a higher-ranked department, particularly if you're not sure about your research interests when you start grad school (which in my experience is true of a high percentage of students). Typically the higher-ranked departments tend to have strong faculty in a wide variety of research areas. They also tend to be better-funded, so there is less of a concern about having your funding run out after a couple years. Nevertheless it would be a mistake to choose a PhD program purely based on rankings given that there isn't a huge difference between many of the top programs. My advice would be to carefully examine the research interests of the faculty at each school. It's also worth considering funding, quality of life, and things like that. Rankings would be very low on the list of things that I would consider.
 
Having said all that, if you want my feedback on the rankings that people have proposed earlier, I would put UNC in the top tier for biostatistics. Maybe Michigan as well, although they are hard to rank due to being so heavily focused on genetics. But most people say that UW/Harvard/Hopkins/UNC represent the top tier of biostatistics and sometimes Michigan depending on who you talk to. All of the four aforementioned schools have large departments with diverse faculty research interests so practically any student should be able to find a good adviser at any of those schools. After that, I would say that the research interests of the faculty and availability of funding should be more important than rankings, because many of the remaining departments are strong in a couple areas but very weak in other areas.
 
As for statistics, I'm less familiar with the gossip about the quality of the various statistics programs. That said, even among the top-ranked schools, one should consider the research interests of the faculty and how they align with your interests. Some departments have the reputation of being more theoretial (e.g. Berkeley, Chicago) whereas others are more applied (e.g. Stanford, CMU), for instance. But I'm basing this largely on gossip that I heard years ago, so take it for what it's worth. I recommend that you carefully research the faculty research interests of each department you are considering.

If you are applying for a PhD program (and particularly if you are interested in academia), the reputation of your dissertation adviser is far more important than the reputation of the program where you did your PhD. Thus, I always tell students not to obsess over rankings, because you would be much better off attending a lower-ranked school and working with a star adviser than attending a higher-ranked school and working with a mediocre adviser. And you also have to consider whether or not a department is strong in the areas in which you are interested. To give a couple specific examples, Michigan's biostat program is a fantastic option if you are interested in genetics, but it's not such a great option for most other areas. Likewise Harvard's stat department is small, but it's definitely the best in the world for missing data and a couple other areas. But it would be a mistake to attend Harvard's stat department unless you are interested in one of the research areas where they are strong.
 
That said, it can be advantageous to attend a higher-ranked department, particularly if you're not sure about your research interests when you start grad school (which in my experience is true of a high percentage of students). Typically the higher-ranked departments tend to have strong faculty in a wide variety of research areas. They also tend to be better-funded, so there is less of a concern about having your funding run out after a couple years. Nevertheless it would be a mistake to choose a PhD program purely based on rankings given that there isn't a huge difference between many of the top programs. My advice would be to carefully examine the research interests of the faculty at each school. It's also worth considering funding, quality of life, and things like that. Rankings would be very low on the list of things that I would consider.
 
Having said all that, if you want my feedback on the rankings that people have proposed earlier, I would put UNC in the top tier for biostatistics. Maybe Michigan as well, although they are hard to rank due to being so heavily focused on genetics. But most people say that UW/Harvard/Hopkins/UNC represent the top tier of biostatistics and sometimes Michigan depending on who you talk to. All of the four aforementioned schools have large departments with diverse faculty research interests so practically any student should be able to find a good adviser at any of those schools. After that, I would say that the research interests of the faculty and availability of funding should be more important than rankings, because many of the remaining departments are strong in a couple areas but very weak in other areas.
 
As for statistics, I'm less familiar with the gossip about the quality of the various statistics programs. That said, even among the top-ranked schools, one should consider the research interests of the faculty and how they align with your interests. Some departments have the reputation of being more theoretial (e.g. Berkeley, Chicago) whereas others are more applied (e.g. Stanford, CMU), for instance. But I'm basing this largely on gossip that I heard years ago, so take it for what it's worth. I recommend that you carefully research the faculty research interests of each department you are considering.