cyberwulf

Yes. Assuming you do well in the additional math courses, having more math will definitely help you much more than a few additional biochem courses.

One can teach from Casella & Berger at many levels of rigor. Most undergraduate courses taught out of C&B cover the elementary concepts but leave out some of the more advanced material or give it only a cursory treatment. I would consider the linked PhD math stat exam to be at the level of a standard first-year Masters exams at a top biostat department. I have trouble believing that advanced undergrads anywhere would find it easy, never mind sophomores!

Whenever I give talks about biostat as a field/profession, I start with John Tukey's quote that "the best thing about being a (bio)statistician is that you get to play in everyone's backyard." So, I think you've got the right attitude towards the field! I know that some on here will disagree with me, but I don't think that you need to have strongly developed specific interests in a particular area of biostatistics before you apply. While it's good to have identified some topics of interest to you, most students end up writing a dissertation on something quite different than they originally planned when they entered graduate school. For most students, what they say they want to do has relatively little impact on their admission chances at top departments (there are some exceptions, typically students on the waitlist/borderline who may receive funding or not based on their "fit" with a particular project that has a spot available). The reason for this is that few applicants have meaningful research experience prior to starting graduate school, and the field is still narrow enough that with a few courses worth of training, you can pursue research in a wide variety of areas. The general attitude of most elite departments is: "Let's find the smartest/most talented people we can; they'll probably be pretty good at whatever they choose to do." Hard to give you much concrete advice without knowing more about your background and goals. A 3.9 in math sounds like a good start, but where you should be aiming depends on where you received your degree (Ivy league, flagship state school, local commuter college, etc.) and whether you are looking to pursue an academic career. In the meantime, Marie Davidian at NC State has a nice presentation entitled 'What is biostatistics?' that you may find interesting.

Based on my experience, only a tiny fraction of applicants to U.S. stat and biostat programs come from the U.K., certainly less than 5% and possibly less than 1%. So adcoms just aren't very familiar with the British grading system, and might not have a good feel for the quality of various universities beyond the big names (Oxford, Cambridge, University College London/Dublin, LSE, etc.). This 'feel' is particularly important in your case, since your grades would appear to put you in the 'good but not exceptional' category along with a large number of other English-speaking (mostly U.S.) applicants with GPAs in the 3.5-3.8 range. Within this range, the strength of the school you attended, your specific course grades, and your letters of recommendation are going to be the difference between admission and rejection at many of the more realistic places you applied (basically places other than Berkeley and Stanford). If the faculty reviewing your application didn't quite know what to make of your academic record, they might have moved on to other applicants they could more easily evaluate. Given your prior mathematical coursework, I think you might help your application for next year by taking the math GRE. Scoring well on that would provide more objective and comparable evidence of your mathematical abilities.

Davis is a solid program, with an established name and some really good faculty. Doing well there will carry meaning in both academia and the private sector.

Note that I said that it was the lack of any advanced coursework that was problematic. And while curricula vary, most decent programs offer and require (or very, very strongly suggest) a year of mathematical statistics beyond the usual Casella & Berger-based course for Masters/advanced undergraduate students. A lot of stat departments will also throw in a course or two in measure theory and large sample theory, and biostat places typically require a course on linear models. One of the major reasons to attend a quality stat/biostat program is that the professors there can teach students this material better than most can learn it by themselves. In such programs, "independent reading" is what you do when you're working on your dissertation and need to learn about a special topic that goes beyond the core training.

Wow, 20 posts in 3 hours! I have to say I share the OP's concern about the value of a PhD in stat from Stony Brook, given the program description on its web page. While I don't have a comprehensive knowledge of PhD program curricula in ranked biostat/stat departments, I feel pretty confident that the vast majority (if not all) require at least a few PhD-level courses prior to the qualifying exams. For example, consider the curriculum at SUNY Buffalo, a relatively new and little-known biostat PhD program: http://sphhp.buffalo.edu/biostatistics/education/biostatistics-phd/requirements-and-curriculum.html . Furthermore, even departments with relatively few required courses offer several advanced elective courses that further students' training. The lack of any advanced coursework is indeed a red flag. From the perspective of an employer, the main value of hiring a PhD over a Masters-level (bio)statistician is that the PhD has more advanced training in statistics which brings with it a better understanding of core statistical principles and exposure to a wider variety of concepts and ideas. Having a PhD is supposed to signify that you have received that advanced training, but if the program doesn't offer it, what's to distinguish a PhD recipient from a Masters recipient who has worked on a project for a couple of years and who claims to have 'self-studied' various statistical topics? The fact that so many graduates of a supposed 'applied statistics' PhD program (which aims to place students in industry, per their own advertising) are taking postdoctoral positions is a bad sign, and suggests that employers are having the same concerns that the OP is. Obviously, Stony Brook's locally-renowned name and local faculty connections aren't helping students land jobs; the proof is in the pudding. WaddleDoos, without knowing the level of biostat program the your boyfriend has been accepted to, it's hard to say how much better of an option that program would be than Stony Brook, but it sounds like it would almost certainly be better. The core statistical training at quality biostat departments is usually similar enough to decent stat departments (in fact, key courses are often taken *in* the stat department) that graduates are able to land non-biostat related jobs. Feel free to PM for more personalized advice if you want.

Maybe, but this varies from school to school. At some places, graduate tuition is the same for all students; at others, the graduate school subsidizes the extra cost for funded international PhD students. In any case, given the massive domestic/international imbalance at many stat departments, it's apparently not a major factor for most places.

In many biostat departments, several PhD spots are funded by NIH training grants. This funding is only available to U.S. citizens and permanent residents, and in order to keep these grants departments have to demonstrate a track record of recruiting and successfully graduating eligible students. So, if (say) a department has 5 training grant spots and 10 spots funded by other sources per year, then domestic students are competing for all 15 spots while internationals are, in reality, competing for 10. And since the 5 training grant spots have to be filled by domestic applicants, the department has to *make sure* that they get at least that many domestic students to enroll, so they need to admit quite a few more than 5, particularly since they know that competing departments will also offer these students admission and hence their "accept rate" among domestic students is likely to be relatively low. Further, there's an upper limit on the total number of students they can admit because they only have 15 total spots to offer. Consider the following hypothetical but semi-plausible numbers: - 50 domestic applicants, 100 international applicants - 5 training grant spots + 10 other spots = 15 total spots - Expected enrollment rate among admitted domestic students: 30% - Expected enrollment rate among admitted international students: 40% - Admit 20 domestic students to yield ~7 enrollees (5 receive training grants) - Admit 20 international students to yield ~8 enrollees - Domestic admit rate: 20/50 = 40% - International admit rate: 20/100 = 20% In stat departments, the situation is a bit different since most spots aren't funded via grants (and to kimolas, above, I think you're mistaken that NSF grants are available only to U.S. citizens; for these awards, the U.S. government doesn't typically distinguish between citizens and permanent residents), but the percentage of international applicants is quite a bit higher, often north of 80%. Hence the admit rate gap is more of a function of the fact that most international applicants are from Asia, and there may be concerns about their English language abilities, so the relatively small number of mathematically qualified students with English as their first language are hot commodities. Bottom line: Being a permanent resident will substantially increase your chances of gaining admission to a biostat department, but is unlikely to significantly improve your chances in stat departments. sisyphus, feel free to PM me about your situation.

You're going to need both, big-time. Also you'll probably want to add on a mathematical statistics course.

To the two underlined questions: 1) To some extent, and the degree may depend on whether the school has experience with Canadian universities or has someone familiar with them sitting on the admissions committee. Canadian transcripts will often report class averages, so that B- doesn't look so bad when the class average is a C+. 2) Yes, absolutely. Many Canadian students apply and are admitted to U.S. PhD programs upon completing their Bachelors degree. Indeed, the more specialized nature of the Canadian/British system means that these students often have more discipline-specific (e.g., mathematical) coursework than their U.S., and even Chinese, counterparts.

I think that French Canadians are likely to benefit from the assumption that English isn't a concern for Canadian students. And in most cases, French Canadian students' English abilities are well beyond your typical international student. Other things that can favor Canadians include: 1) the structure and syllabi of courses taken are usually familiar, and 2) Canadian professors writing letters are more likely to be known by adcoms.

Agree completely with this assessment of your chances and advice. I think being Canadian does give you a leg up within the pool of non-U.S. students, though, because language is a non-issue.

Yes, that's correct; in my initial (probably incorrect) reading of your comment I thought you were suggesting waiting until *after* the deadline to communicate with the department. But even waiting until deadline day is a risky move, in my opinion. If the relevant faculty member/administrator happens to be out that day or doesn't get to your email, it makes for a difficult situation.

Mostly agree with biostat_prof. The one thing I'd add, though, is that letters of recommendation, like transcripts, are read and interpreted in the context of your undergraduate/graduate institution. If you're at a little-known local school, you probably need glowing letters saying that you're the best student in your graduating class. If you're at an elite college, it's often sufficient to have solid letters saying that you were an above-average student.

I think you should contact the place you're waiting on to find out your status. If you wait until April 15th, then the place which has admitted you is within its rights to pull your offer and give it to someone else, which would be an undesirable outcome to say the least.

A couple of things: - The grading scale in graduate school is different; at most places, anything below a B is a de facto failure, so averages are inflated. I view a student with a 3.7 GPA in a Masters program as having been about average for that program. - While the average ability level at a good Masters program might be higher than most undergraduate institutions, these programs are also typically lacking the really high-end students you find at most good undergraduate programs (these high-end students generally go straight to PhD programs). So, it's somewhat easier to get an A when there aren't a small number of 'elite' performers who really distinguish themselves and gobble up the highest grades. The more accurate tennis analogy would be someone who had a mediocre junior career, then all of a sudden showed up and won a small pro tournament. Sure, there's a chance they could compete consistently at the pro level, but I'd much rather bet on that 18-year-old who just won the junior U.S. Open but has never played a professional event.

This is a common misconception about adcoms; many look at transcripts carefully, and do give credit for good grades in relevant (mostly math) classes and improved performance in more recent coursework. See my comment in the previous post about level of competition. It isn't that adcoms write off students from lesser known undergraduate institutions, just that the GPA bar (and to some degree the letter of recommendation bar) is set higher for these students because their peer group is weaker.

1. Top graduate programs want to identify the most talented and motivated students while minimizing the potential for academic disaster (i.e., flunking out of the program). While it's not universally the case, talented and motivated students tend to perform well across a variety of disciplines and hence have high undergraduate GPAs. 2. Students from more prestigious undergrad institutions face stiff competition to get good grades, so a strong undergraduate performance is a fairly unambiguous indication of ability. There is more uncertainty about whether good performance at a weaker school indicates talent and motivation or rather a lack of peer competition. The same comment applies to performance in many Masters programs; outside of a handful of elite places, it is often unclear how strong the Masters peer group is, and this is particularly difficult to gauge as the funding balance tips more heavily towards PhD programs. 3. There is a sample size issue as well. Undergraduate GPA is calculated over four years of coursework generally worth 120+ credits. A student in a Masters program may only have their first semester grades (often < 12 credits) available when they are being reviewed. Obviously, graduate GPA is a much "noisier" (hence less reliable in a statistical sense) indicator of ability, and is down-weighted somewhat. These are interesting thoughts. But for me, the biggest problem with a very low GPA at any level of study is that it's hard to believe that it can be entirely blamed on lack of effort, so that the poor performance is therefore unrelated to lack of ability. We know that humans tend to claim a lack of interest or engagement in things they haven't succeeded at ("Oh, I wasn't really trying to win that tennis match. It's a stupid sport anyway"), so I do question *why* a student didn't try. And of course, the name of the game in research is to keep trying even when you've encountered something you don't understand very well and may not particularly enjoy doing.

If that 2.8 undergrad GPA isn't a typo, I think you might be setting your sights too high. A sub-3.0 GPA is a tough thing to overcome, even with two Masters degrees. Honestly, I think that several of the places on your list are out of reach, including Chicago, Wisconsin, NCSU, Princeton, and CMU. I don't think your chances are too high at Minnesota, Iowa State, Purdue, UNC, or Davis either. You *might* have a shot at Iowa, Northwestern, and UIUC, but those places can get dicey because of how small the departments are. Given that you're getting shut out this year, I think that going "up the ladder" in terms of school quality is a bad idea; at best, you should keep the average strength of school the same and improve your application to get better results.

In my department, students aren't "matched" to faculty until well after they've been admitted; faculty with RA/TA spots don't have input in admissions decisions unless they sit on the admissions committee, so name-dropping has virtually no impact. biostat_prof, are things handled differently in your department? Is the difference due to your operation making both funded and unfunded PhD offers, whereas we only make funded offers?

Honestly, I wouldn't spend much time worrying about the personal statement. Sure, it's good to mention a couple of potential research areas, but I assume that most students are writing something reasonable these days, so the benefit of improving the SoP is likely to be negligible. The fact is that even applicants to the top schools have little relevant statistical research experience (note the term relevant), so expressed research interests are rightly taken with a large grain of salt. Given that so many students end up studying something very different than what they wrote in the SoP, why would adcoms give it a lot of weight? Nah, I wouldn't bother taking a biostat class; just work on that math profile. Given your info I think you would have a pretty solid chance of admission at most of top biostat departments, though you will face a higher bar as a non-citizen/PR.

I disagree that trying to get more research experience is the right way to go. If you're planning on applying again next year, you've only got six months, and there's no way you can do anything substantial in that time period, particularly if you're working full time. Even if you're looking to apply in fall 2014, a year and half is a relatively short time window. Everyone here seems to take it as a given that your math grades/profile were just fine, but I think this is where you should focus your improvement efforts. Based on the info you've provided, if I were evaluating your application I might be concerned that your math background was a bit light, and that the lower grades in your more advanced math classes (analysis and calc III) indicated that you were approaching your "mathematical ceiling", so that more advanced math/stat coursework at a top-level department could go badly. You could go a ways towards alleviating those concerns by doing well in a couple of advanced math courses (e.g., measure theory, topology, etc.) and in the math GRE (e.g., 80th percentile or better). Oh, and you should probably take a hard look at your letter writers again, to see if you might be able to discern who (if anyone) wrote a less enthusiastic one.

Yeah, I think UNC is your best bet.

Excellent point.