Need help figuring out academic placements for programs

[Zaphod2020]

Does anyone have any tips/tricks for figuring out how programs' graduates place?

Some have clear and up-to-date alumni pages, while others provide next to nothing.

Is it considered impolite to ask the head of a department for more information about alumni placements?

Thanks!

[bayessays]

Not impolite and totally reasonable, you should do it.  Another way is to search "the name of the University PhD statistics" and find some people's CVs or Linkedin. Obviously doesn't work as well but you can get a couple sample points. 

[bayessays]

Another thing is to look at the webpages or CVs of individual professors of interest, which often have a previous student section and you can Google the name along with the word Statistics and usually find something. 

[Stat Assistant Professor]

You should definitely ask the Graduate Coordinators for this information! 

[Zaphod2020]

Thanks for the tips!

[Zaphod2020]

When it comes to placement, does the reputation of the department itself carry much weight or is it really just the reputation of your adviser that matters?

I ask because I am considering a program which may be losing one of their star faculty in the next few years and so am wondering whether I should just disregard the placement of that faculty member's students. By the same token, I worry about working with a new adviser who has yet to build a reputation even though they are in a strong department.

[Stat Assistant Professor]

Reputation of department certainly does carry weight, but I would say reputation of your PhD advisor and the quality of your papers matter far more. My program is solid in rankings but not a top 10 program. However, my advisor is world-renowned (i.e. gets invited to speak at conferences all over the world), and I got a paper accepted in a fairly selective journal (~20 percent acceptance rate) and another paper that won a paper award at JSM. As a result, I managed to get postdoc interviews at really good schools.

[Stat Assistant Professor]

That is not to say that people should write off Assistant Professors as potential PhD advisors, though. Although they may not be as famous or established yet, it's often the Assistant Profs that are doing the more innovative, "current" research. And success in publishing papers and getting good academic jobs has a lot to do with the topics you are researching -- i.e. whether it's something where not as much work has been done before, vs. doing research in areas that have been saturated to the point that publishing on these topics in top journals is difficult unless it's something *very* different from the current literature.

I would say to look at the publication records of faculty members and to go with the PhD advisor whom you get along with, whose research is most interesting to you, and who is actively publishing their work in respectable journals. An Assistant Professor who is very productive and publishes a lot in JASA, AoS, JRSS-B, Biometrika, Biometrics, etc. can be a great choice for advisor.

Edited March 12, 2018 by Applied Math to Stat