cyberwulf

With strong letters you should be able to crack a program ranked in the 15-25 range for biostat programs (think Iowa, Vanderbilt, Florida, etc.) If you can shoulder the cost (or get a scholarship/fellowship), you could definitely get into a top-10 Masters program, where good performance could put you in a position for much better admissions results.

Yeah, don't agonize over it, just politely say that you've chosen to attend a different program.

University of Michigan also (checks notes) has a medical school, and I'm sure plenty of Biostat faculty collaborate with them. And while UM Med (#15 tie on USNews) isn't Penn (#9), it's still very, very good, so there isn't going to be a discernible gap in the quality and availability of medical collaborators. Penn Biostat being under the med school may have a few modest advantages, but it also has some drawbacks. Biostat is a massive academic outlier in the context of the medical school, so there won't be nearly the same kind of cohort experience that you'd get by interacting with students with overlapping research interests studying epidemiology, health services, etc. in a school of public health. Also, access to public health researchers expands the set of collaborative projects that Biostat students may get engaged with, and often these projects provide great(er) fodder for methodological development.

OK, "almost certainly" was probably a little strong. But I would guess that 80-90% of Michigan Biostat MS students who apply to their PhD program end up there.

Harvard doesn't seem to consistently admit their own Masters' students; however, a Harvard MS will get you into a lot of solid Ph.D. programs. Michigan uses its own internal pipeline a lot more for Ph.D. admissions. Though a Michigan MS is well-respected, it won't be viewed quite as highly as the Harvard one if you end up looking to change institutions for your Ph.D. Basically, if you do well at Harvard, you'll have a lot of good options for Ph.D. study, although Harvard itself may not be among them. If you do well at Michigan, you're almost certainly going to stay there for your Ph.D.

Here are some things which come to mind when I think about these programs. Of course, this is based on my observations (and narratives from others) and hence entirely subjective: Harvard: Light coursework, heavy emphasis on research. Can be competitive. Many graduates end up in Harvard-affiliated non-faculty (or contract faculty) positions. Hopkins: Heavy coursework. Fun environment (at least inside the building). Most well-known advisors very "data science"-y. UW: Heavy coursework. Fun student experience. Thin on advisors that don't do variable selection/machine learning. Students tend to graduate with a broad background but few papers. UNC: Moderate coursework. Strong connections to industry. Big program with high student-to-faculty ratio. Students can get "lost" and take a long time to graduate (or not graduate at all). Michigan: Moderate coursework. Big program. Well-rounded, particularly strong in genetics/genomics and causal inference. UC Berkeley: Light coursework. High flexibility, "choose your own adventure". Not affiliated with a medical school, so more emphasis on methods than application.

I see biostat admissions getting more competitive, not because incoming classes are getting smaller (though in some places they may be, somewhat) but because of increased interest in the field of biostatistics due to COVID. Nationally, applications to schools of public health are up about 20%, and while a good chunk of that is in other fields (hello, epidemiology!) there's definitely a spillover effect into biostat. Anecdotally, we're seeing a higher proportion of applications from people whose profile can be summed up as "I'm a smart person who didn't intend to go into biostat but gee that sounds pretty cool so let's give it a shot".

Traditionally, UNC/UMich/UMN rarely give funded offers to Masters students (at Michigan, it's only for people who are in the "PhD track"). Duke is definitely a step below those places in terms of prestige, but it's got some good faculty and is located in close proximity to the Research Triangle so is probably a decent bet in terms of landing a good job after you graduate.

You're clearly qualified for an MS stat, but I actually think your problem might be that you're overqualified; in fact, I'm not entirely convinced that most MS Stat programs would even take someone who already has an MS in Quantitative Econ from ISI. You've taken the "core" math stat and probability courses already (at an institution that is known for its excellent statistical training), so all you'd have left to do are a couple of secondary required courses and a handful of electives. Is that really what you want?

If you clicked "Submit" on SOPHAS before 12/1, that is generally considered as having met the deadline. After that point, you just need to make sure your materials are complete by the time reviewing starts, which at most programs is in January.

Offering to refund your application fee is the very least they can do if the mistake was their fault. If they're not willing to do that, that's atrocious.

As long as the letter is in by the time the application gets reviewed (likely January at the earliest), you should be fine. But, it's always best to check with each program.

No need to be fancy, just tell them you won't be needing a letter from them because you have a sufficient number from other faculty. Chances are, they'll appreciate that you're taking something off their plate.

I don't know of any programs that uses an auto-rejection rule based on a hard GRE cutoff. So, regardless of the range in which they occur (within reason; obviously improving from a 145 to a 147 isn't going to make you more competitive), incremental improvements in the GRE score are likely to have similarly incremental effects on your chances of admission.

Don't sweat it. At worst, you'll make someone reviewing your app chuckle.

Big difference between MS and PhD programs. That score is totally fine for all the former, but might be on the low end for the latter.

No.

Possibly, but such faculty are a dying breed. The trend in biostatistics is towards being more deeply embedded within the biomedical domains they specialize in.

It doesn't hurt to put your GPAs, if they're good. Also, I wouldn't include any kind of summary/objective text on a CV. Regardless, there likely won't be anything on your CV that isn't on your application in some other form (except maybe publications).

I see your point, but being in a department is about more than your dissertation work. Faculty and most students in biostat departments are excited about working on biomedical problems, and so while someone without much interest in biology might be able to get through the Ph.D., they would likely feel quite isolated from their peers and mentors that they don't share a passion with.

In normal times, having your own funding might be a "tie-breaker" if you're on the admissions borderline for a program, but wouldn't give you a big leg up. With COVID, I guess I could see a slight benefit in a situation where, say, you're ranked 20th and due to COVID they're only admitting 15 but they decide to extend you an offer since in normal times they would have admitted 25 and you're essentially "free" to them because you're coming with your own funding. But obviously that's a pretty special set of circumstances.

Yes. You'll probably find as you get engaged in research you'll learn (and hopefully become interested in) some of the underlying biology related to the problem(s) you're studying. A lack of interest in biological applications would make someone a bad fit for a biostat program, but a lack of experience and knowledge isn't an issue.

It's going to be really program dependent. I would guess that cohort sizes in statistics departments (main grad student support source: TAships) will decrease more than cohort sizes in biostat departments (main grad student support source: NIH grants) because universities are feeling the financial pinch but federal research funding hasn't yet been drastically affected by the pandemic. Another thing working in favor of biostat departments is that COVID has driven a lot of interest and investment in public health, so there is even more demand for health statistics expertise. And of course, reductions are much more likely to occur in funded Ph.D. programs as opposed to unfunded Masters programs which are generally money-makers for departments.

Your friend may be slightly more competitive than usual this year because, as others have noted, their GRE is a major weakness and many programs are not requiring it. That said, they should probably be looking outside the top 10 Biostat programs for PhD admission. However, they would likely be admitted to many Masters programs, even some in ranked in the top 5.

The letter from your Masters advisor will carry by far the most weight; the others are (relatively) less important. Seems like letter writer #2 would be your best option.