sisyphus1

Thanks for the kind words but my profile is far far from immaculate--no research experience, recommendations are mostly "did-well-in-class" type letters, international student etc.

indeed. misery loves company

biostat vs stat (e.g. harvard has biostat and stat departments, they are ranked separately). you can find out by clicking on the link to the school website--it will either link to the biostat or a stat department

Just saw that you were applying to Master's programs. In that case, I believe brand would be even more important. FYI, I work at a bank and a good % of people I work with have just an MS in stats. Most of them have their degrees from Cornell/Columbia/Stanford. (might be different for other industries though)

If you want to go into industry brand name will be highly relevant. Even if you want to stay in academia, I can't see how applying to some other schools can hurt you.

why don't you shoot each of the departments an email and ask for their admit % rate over the past few years (and also the # of apps they get). i've found that most departments are quite willing with such information.

stat <- CMU, Berkeley, Upenn, Duke, Yale biostat <- UW Seattle, Brown, Johns Hopkins, Harvard According to the results page it seems like quite a few people have heard back from Brown already. best of luck to both of us!

UW was the second least competitive school I applied to ("lowest" school I applied to was Brown biostats). So I am quite nervous.

im right there with you. i really think there's a good chance i won't get accepted anywhere this year.

are you domestic? if so i can't see you not getting in at least one of Washington, Rutgers,Michigan,Wisconsin. seems like this year will be brutal though. we are overlapping a lot in our schools (but I'm international) and our profiles are similar.

yep i am international, though i did my undergrad/grad here. i should be getting a green card within the next year or two through my employer so i may give it another shot then!

just got waitlisted from UWashington

did you hear back? more Uwashington acceptances...

That's (somewhat) reassuring. Looked at your profile--not surprised that you got in . What do they mean though by "first round people"?

applied to biostat: brown, jhu, wash, harvard stat: cmu, upenn, duke, yale international applicant. havent heard from any. getting nervous

i've also applied but didn't get an email regarding an interview. guess it's a no... oh well. stay positive!

Looking for advice/ideas on what to self-study before starting a stat/biostat PhD program (with the hope that I will get into at least one program in the coming weeks!). Some potential ideas: - Get a better biology background--I have practically 0 exposure to biology, and am thinking of reading up on genetics/neuroscience textbooks. I have an interest in applying machine learning techinques to biostatical problems, and I'm guessing that it can't hurt to know more about biology in a biostats program. - Learn (like really learn) a programming language and/or a statistical package. I've had decent exposure to MATLAB, SAS, R etc., but I wouldn't say I am good at any. I am thinking of getting a really good foundation in R/Python so I can be of immediate use in (say) a research setting. - Learn some graduate-level math--specifically PDEs and Fourier transforms. I think I have the basic prerequisites for a stat/biostat program (analysis, linear algebra etc.--I was a math major), but I've seen some really cool papers where people were able to marry mathematical concepts from different domains (e.g. there was a guy from CMU who expressed distributions over a combinatorically large solution set in terms of Fourier transforms. I didn't fully understand it but thought it was pretty neat). Can't hurt to know more math. Obviously this may depend on the type of program I (knock on wood) get into (theory vs applied, stat vs biostat). But any thoughts/suggestions are welcome.

R is the way to go. Free, elegant, flexible. SAS is still popular (able to handle larger data sets more easily).

We are applying to similar schools with similar profiles and scores (I think yours is a little stronger with the REU experience). Being international will hurt you (as it will me). I think the real long-shot in your list of schools would be Berkeley, unless you are applying to it for Biostats. CMU also has an insanely low admit rate--around 5~6%. With SoP, I would mention something that might be a potential research interest but qualify it with the fact that given your lack of formal statistical research experience, you are open to studying other areas of statistics. That was the strategy I took. Deadlines for most of the schools have passed, so I hope you've applied already! Best of luck to both of us.

wait, so someone with - decent undergrad (depending on school), with 3.6/4.0 - MS in biostatistics (!) at a top 20, with 3.9/4.0 - good GRE scores (at least quant portion) - relevant research projects in biostats (!) is not going to be competitive for a top 10 biostats program? The possible red flags might be competitiveness of the undergrad institution and the fact that the applicant is international, but I was under the impression that biostats applicant pool was not that deep... For example just going through the UWashington biostats phd student profiles, I find a lot of students with less impressive profiles than the OP. Sorry I just feel a little insecure since my profile is not that different from the OP and I most applied to top 10 programs....

Not true. But international students will have a harder time getting jobs than US citizens. One thing to consider with your CS degree--it will be harder for you to get jobs at small start-ups if that's your goal. But Microsoft/Cisco/Google etc. are all quite open to internationals. Best of luck

will you be applying for fall 2013 admission? if so, i suggest you get going quickly - deadlines are rapidly approaching. at the risk of guessing, it seems like you are putting down every "brand" name school out there (e.g. princeton doesnt even have a phd in stats). i suggest you narrow your list down to ~10 schools (3 reach, 4 match, 3 safety) based on competitiveness and research interests. not that you have to have a specific research interest yet, but it will definietely help in your school selection and statement of purpose. with your GPA, research experience, GRE scores, i think you will be a competitive candidate at most (if not all) schools. best of luck

i think you have a decent shot at those schools. but it seems like you are an international applicant? i've heard from several admissions offices that fuding for international students in biostatistics is extremely limited, given that a lot of the funding comes from organizaitons like the NIH. given this, it may behoove you to apply to a bunch of stat phd programs as well. best of luck (fyi im an international applicant applying to biostats too!)

For my master's degree, I went to Columbia, where they have an A+ (it counts as a 4.3) system. If I count A+ as a 4.3, my GPA is 3.97 If I count A+ as a 4.0, my GPA is 3.92 If I count A+ as a 4.3, and convert back to 4.0 scale (i.e. 3.97/4.3 * 4.0), my GPA is 3.69. What do I list as my GPA in PhD applications? I've heard it doesn't really matter because they will look at my transcript anyway (but on my transcript, it says my GPA is 3.97), and also because Columbia is a fairly well know school so adcoms are familiar with the grading system. But I don't want to be seen as potentially misleading them. Also, A+'s are extremely hard to come by (e.g. top 1~2 students get them) so if I put down 3.69 I feel like it's not a true reflection of my performance.... Advice?

you are a perfect candidate for biostat phd programs -- i think you will be more than competitive at even the very top programs.