cyberwulf

Yes, ISI is excellent, and sends many students to top U.S. universities. But gaining admission there is tough!

This is fine. Letter writers should have the ability to put your performance into a relevant context and the credibility to vouch for your ability to succeed in a good graduate program. Since it sounds like your workplace letter writers can do both, you don't need to worry.

Acceptance rate is almost irrelevant; as examples on this thread show, it isn't highly correlated with program quality. What matters is where the "bar" is, i.e. how good is the weakest student accepted? This, of course, is much harder to glean from admission summary statistics.

Northwestern is a bizarre case; a very small, relatively low-ranked program at a big-name school which likely attracts far more applicants than it ought to. If I were to guess, I would say that the average PhD admit rate for top 10 biostat programs is 10-15%. And that's over all students; the admit rate for U.S. citizens/permanent residents is substantially higher, probably around 20-25%. It's true that the field is attracting more PhD applicants (many departments are up by 30-50% over the past five years), but there is still room in top-level departments for very good students who aren't absolute rockstars.

OK, well, if your target for PhD study is a top-shelf school like Stanford/Chicago/Harvard, then doing really well in a top Masters program is probably your best bet, since you might be a tad "math-light" for direct entry to the PhD program at those places. But I like your chances of direct admission to most PhD programs outside the Top 5-7 departments.

With a 3.8+ from an Ivy league school, you are in good shape for admission to all the top M.A. programs. Have you taken any math beyond the pre-reqs? That seems to be your only potential weakness. Even without much math beyond the pre-reqs, you'd likely be competitive for a lot of good PhD programs -- if your eventual goal is a PhD, why aren't you applying right now?

It's so hard to say; admissions results get very strange as you go down the list and the programs get smaller and more prone to making decisions based on "recruitability" rather than on pure talent. When I say "reach", I mean places where I would gauge your chances of admission as being relatively low. But I could be selling you short; a lot will depend on how UofMumbai is viewed as compared to ISI, and the quality of your letters of recommendation.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I think your list is way too top heavy. In addition to the already high bar for international students, you are facing the problem that you are not attending what is regarded as the premier institution for statistics in India (i.e., the Indian Statistical Institute). I suspect that places like Purdue, Cornell and UNC are your "reaches", and departments like Rice, Iowa, and UC-Davis are where you have more reasonable chances of admission.

Given your record/background, and as an international student, I think you face long odds of admission to a top biostat PhD program like UNC or UW. However, you may be able to get into some lower-ranked programs. I don't think that getting a Masters in Stat (if a place will take you; some departments may refuse on the logic that a Biostat MS is too similar to what they offer) is a good plan.

A 158V is just fine, and a 161Q isn't a big deal if you've done well in advanced math courses. A lower GRE Q is more of a problem for students without a lot of quantitative background.

It's not so much a matter of your school's name being recognized, but of the quality of the institution. Faculty are entirely capable of using the web to get an idea of a school's overall quality (say, using US News rankings or admissions data on about.com) even if they're unfamiliar with it. The "meaning" of a 3.8 depends on your school's academic standards and student body strength, not so much on its name. I am sometimes surprised to discover in the process of reviewing applications that smaller colleges I have never heard of are just as or more competitive at the undergraduate level than universally-recognized large state schools.

If you haven't taken multivariable calc or linear algebra, you're a long, long way from having the preparation necessary to be a credible candidate for a PhD in mathematics anywhere. You're probably looking at a good 2-3 years of coursework to get there.

Unless your school is completely unknown, a 3.8+ with adequate mathematical preparation gives you a very good chance of admission at many good Biostat Masters programs.

Uh, no, that is ridiculous overkill for someone wanting to enter a biostatistics Masters program. Neither real analysis nor anything more than introductory linear algebra is necessary. OP, I think you're in a tough spot because your grades are relatively weak; there may be concern about your ability to handle the required math. If you can get really strong letters and nail the GRE, you might have a shot at a mid-tier program.

The key determinants of your success will mainly be: - the reputation of your school - the strength of your letters of recommendation It's hard to "chance" you accurately without knowing more specific details; feel free to PM if you want. One thing to consider is that funding can be awfully tight at Canadian universities, so you might want to broaden your list to include a couple of larger U.S. stat departments such as North Carolina State and Purdue. And if you're interested in ML then Washington wouldn't be a bad option either.

Let's not get carried away here. The OP has a very good profile, but competition is extremely stiff at the top stat departments so I suspect results may be a bit more mixed. I think the list is reasonable; Alberta and Toronto are probably pretty safe bets, with CMU/Wharton being less certain (though I think OP's chances of admission to at least one of these are decent). Cost is rarely considered when admitting international students--often because graduate students receive in-state tuition rates through an agreement with the university--so that shouldn't be a barrier to admission.

With a 3.8 in math from a good school, a 163Q is fine.

You should probably apply to a few larger departments to increase your chances: Iowa State and NC State come to mind.

"...applicants should have taken at least 12 quarter courses (or eight semester courses) in substantial upper division quantitative work, including, but not limited to, courses in statistics, mathematics, computer science, and electrical engineering." Seems pretty clear they just want you to have taken enough "hard" courses that have some quantitative content. I doubt they'll be counting credits as long as you're in the ballpark; the "requirement" is probably meant to send the message that a psych major whose only quantitative course is intro psych stat should look elsewhere.

Don't include it. It will almost surely be ignored, if it even makes it into the application material sent to programs by SOPHAS.

I can't give you too much insight on the impact of the Fulbright, unfortunately. It's certainly a positive, and should help your chances of admission. And yes, the bar for international students is higher than for U.S. citizens and permanent residents. In biostat, spots funded via NIH training grants are only available to domestic students; in stat, there are fewer restricted spots, but there still seems to be a preference for domestic students. That being said, the main factor in preferring U.S. over international students is language skills. It seems like that won't be an issue for you, so you will be at less of a disadvantage than, say, a student coming from China.

Assessing chances for international students is always tough. With your record, I *think* you'll be in decent shape, though your list of schools is short and includes two programs which are quite small (Harvard and Yale). Does the Fulbright mean that your tuition/expenses will be paid for? This could be an important factor, since if you come "free" to a school they may be more willing to give you a shot.

If you're pretty set on biostat, you definitely don't need to take the math GRE.

- You don't need to retake the GRE; those scores are fine. - That list seems reasonable, although if I was to make one suggestion it would be to add a couple more biostat programs with similar admissions standards to Emory (e.g., Penn, Columbia, Berkeley, UCLA, Pittsburgh, Brown, Boston U, etc.) As a group, I would treat these as your "safeties"; you're not guaranteed admission to any of them, but between them you're extremely likely to get one or more offers. And on a side note, I wouldn't write off UW Biostat entirely; because the program's so big, their "lower bar" for PhD admission isn't that much different than schools like Michigan, Minnesota, and UNC. - The importance of real analysis varies by department; stat programs are likely to be more discerning about an RA grade than biostat programs. Also, if you're taking RA now, then programs with December deadlines won't even see your grade unless they ask for an updated transcript in the spring.

I think that list of schools is reasonable; you've pretty much covered the major programs on the West Coast other than Stanford. Are you sure that you can't apply to both stat and biostat at Berkeley and UCLA? That seems hard to believe. USC biostat may also be worth checking out.