cyberwulf

No, that verbal score probably won't be a big issue; a 450 isn't good, but seeing as you got a 4 in the AW nobody's going to doubt your ability to construct a sentence. Speaking ability just isn't a big factor in MS stat admissions, as evidenced by the fact that a high proportion of students in these programs are from overseas, particularly China. The bigger issue I see for you in terms of getting into a top MS program might be your solid-but-not-amazing undergraduate record at a solid-but-not-elite school. You will obviously speak and write English better than almost all Chinese/Korean/Indian applicants (though they will likely get higher GRE verbal scores through diligent preparation; another reason adcoms typically don't pay much attention to verbal scores), but a lot of them will have stronger academic credentials than you. Also, in response to Icydubloon's comment, most schools have GPA but not GRE cutoffs. And if they *do* have GRE cutoffs, I can guarantee you they will be way, way lower the OP's score (which was in the 45th percentile, roughly).

I think you will have a shot at most MS programs in biostat; there is a pretty big gap between the record required for MS and PhD admission. Michigan is probably your best bet for a funded MS spot.

Graduating with a degree in biostats from Oxbridge would give you plenty of credibility on the job market, whether in Europe or stateside. With a quick Google search you should be able to find a handful of faculty at top U.S. departments who have gone this route.

Calculus, calculus, and calculus. Oh, and did I mention calculus? In all seriousness, you need to have differential and integral calculus down cold so that you can focus on learning the statistical concepts. It also wouldn't hurt to review some basic linear algebra (mostly vectors and matrices). Fortunately, there are tons of online and offline resources for reviewing this material.

With your record, it would be perfectly reasonable to apply to a handful of biostat PhD programs ranked in the top 10, along with some ranked a bit lower. For the higher-ranked places, even if you are not admitted to the PhD you will almost certainly get into their Masters programs. Feel free to PM if you want more detailed advice.

This surprises me, and almost has to be the result of either something you're not revealing here or a poor letter of recommendation. The stat pool is deep, but it's not so deep that places like Washington and Carnegie Mellon are regularly passing on students with 3.7+ GPAs in math from elite schools.

For what it's worth, this ranking seems reasonable to me, based on personal knowledge and talking to other faculty/students at these institutions.

There are two big issues at play here: 1) In many programs, some of the MS students are those who originally applied to the PhD but were only accepted to the Masters. Even if they perform well in the MS, their overall record may still be weaker than strong external PhD applicants. For this reason, it seems like there are fewer and fewer programs where good Masters performance virtually guarantees you a PhD spot; the holdouts are programs like Michigan biostat where all students start in the Masters program, but students who are identified as "PhD material" upon admission are essentially assured of a PhD spot provided they perform satisfactorily. 2) Faculty knowing you well is a double-edged sword, as they are well-acquainted with both your strengths and weaknesses. Strong letters from faculty in your own department can overcome a lot of weaknesses on an application. On the flipside, as an external applicant you have the ability to craft your application to showcase your best attributes and internal applicants don't benefit from this to the same extent. This can lead to a "grass-is-greener" mentality among faculty comparing internal vs. external applicants.

Do the programs you're communicating with a favor and tell them where you've decided to go. Why withhold that information?

NC State is a much stronger program than Santa Cruz. It depends on what your career goals are, but if you're looking down the academic path NCSU is likely to be a better launching pad.

I think biostat_prof is trying to make the point that it's extremely hard to get into a top 10 biostat program as an (overseas) international student unless you attended one of a very small number of "elite" foreign institutions. Sure, 2 JASA papers is an exaggeration, but largely irrelevant to the point; we would of course be impressed even if had "only" a first-authored Biometrics paper, but it's basically unheard-of for applicants to have methodological publications when they apply.

I would rate them as fairly equal. Michigan stat grads have had some really good placements in both stat and biostat departments over the past few years.

I would lean towards the computer science classes. You will have to take stuff like categorical data analysis in grad school anyway, and a lot of Masters grads taking jobs that involve a fair bit of computing so knowing something about data structures could be a help.

It's not that hard to figure out who's who, true, but in my several years reading this board I have seen very few instances where people have posted comments that might negatively impact their chances of admission. These detailed profiles and admissions results lists are very helpful to future applicants (and, honestly, to faculty as well), so many thanks to those who are providing this public "service".

I have a different view on this. If you have PhD aspirations, the primary reason to attend a better Masters program is to get a foot in the door for PhD admission in that department. If the department requires a Masters thesis, that is an excellent opportunity to start working with (and impressing!) a faculty member who might be a potential future adviser, someone who will strongly support your PhD application as an internal candidate. And, while I understand the desire to stick with what you know or what you've done before, I generally encourage students not to worry too much about research fit; most good departments cover the major areas of (bio)statistics adequately, and furthermore you may be surprised to find that your skills and experience in one area are actually quite applicable in another!

It's not quite so dire; UW may be targeting an incoming class of 8-10, but they will admit ~20-25 to try to hit that number. So that actual admit rate is closer to 8% than 3%... if that makes you feel any better.

Even though Vanderbilt's the newer program, it has more established faculty and so likely provides better research opportunities. I expect that Vandy, once the graduate program is established, will settle in at about the level of places like Pittsburgh, BU, and Iowa, i.e., outside the top 10 but definitely in the top 20.

I wanted to offer a slightly different take, and respond to a few points here: 1. Scott Zeger has been an administrator (Vice Provost for Research) at Hopkins for the past 6 years, so isn't terribly active in methodological research anymore and I would imagine isn't supervising students. Going to Hopkins because you want to work with him would be a poor choice. 2. I think you're selling the non-Zeger component of the Hopkins faculty way, way short. I'm not on the faculty at Hopkins, so don't have skin in the game in a head-to-head comparison with UNC, but "young and unproven", really? Mei-Cheng Wang is one of the top (if not the top) researchers in survival analysis, Ciprian Crainiceanu is a decent bet to win the Spiegelman award in the next couple of years and along with Brian Caffo leads likely the foremost group in statistical methods for brain imaging, Constantine Frangakis and Dan Scharfstein are famous in the field of causal inference... plus Tom Louis, who is winding down an extremely successful career. And some of their more junior faculty, particularly in statistical genetics, seem to be on a very promising track: Hongkai Ji and Jeff Leek (who is one of the contributors to the widely read SimplyStatistics blog) are already very well-respected in their field and would make fine PhD advisors. Indeed, "senior" assistant and "junior" associate professors are often good choices for students seeking advisors, as they will typically have fewer students than their more senior colleagues and are often at the peak of their productivity. 1. Most of the prospective students I talk to have little to no idea what area of research they are interested in, so rankings like U.S. News are the only semi-objective source they have. 2. I don't think you're meaning to imply that students should throw out the rankings entirely, as they're obviously helpful for distinguishing between elite and non-elite departments. Sure, it's silly to choose Washington over Michigan purely on ranking, but I assume you wouldn't advise most top students to choose a program ranked outside of the top 10 over Harvard. It's probably more accurate to say that one shouldn't use exact rankings to choose between similarly-ranked schools. Again, this might be true for places which occupy the top 5-6 spots in the rankings, but you pretty much need to attend a top 10 biostat or top 20 stat department to have a realistic chance at a tenure-track faculty position at a good biostat department.

Agriculture stopped being a major driver of statistical research, and a lot of the money (and interesting problems) went to the biomedical sciences. Without the ag connection, it's not easy to attract faculty and students to a place like Ames, Iowa, so they lost quite a bit of talent.

Honestly, the rankings look fairly reasonable to me, though you could make the case for some programs to move up/down by a couple of ranks. Most of what these rankings measure is reputation, and since perceptions are slow to change they tend not to pick up on "recent" developments (i.e., things that have happened in the past 10-20 years). For example, I think that Iowa State might be a tad over-ranked relative to their current strength, likely because they were a legitimately elite program 25+ years ago.

One issue with UF Biostat is that they recently lost their most high-profile faculty member (and chair), Mike Daniels. I guess it depends on what your other options are...

I would rank them as: Wisconsin, Davis, Florida, with the gap between Wisconsin and Davis bigger than that between Davis and Florida.

I think that these schools (the "Big 4") are perceived about the same, as a group ranking well ahead of other Canadian stat programs.

1. Don't bother taking the Math GRE subject test 2. A real analysis class would probably help you. You might be able to get away with neither, but I would recommend doing it/them. 3. To some extent. You're fairly light on mathematical preparation, so you will be relying more on letters of recommendation to convince adcoms that you're a bright, motivated person who will be able to close the mathematical gap quickly. I think that UNC and UCLA are reasonable targets; you're not a shoo-in for either, but you're probably in the yard.

I don't know about the people posting on GC, but in my experience international students are usually pretty humble about their abilities. Perhaps overly so given that the average international admit at most departments typically has a better academic record than the average domestic admit.