2020 Stats/Biostats application help

[bokoi]

Hello everyone.  I only recently became interested in applying to a PhD program in the fall (in either stats or biostatistics) and have no idea where to begin.  I'm a bit worried that my GPA might hold me back (due to a lot of bad grades in less relevant courses), but willing to do a masters degree first if it makes up for it.  Where can I apply to?  any help would be appreciated.  Thanks.

Undergrad Institution : Big state school 

Major(s): Statistics

GPA: 3.58 (hopefully >3.6 by the end of this semester)

Minor(s): N/A

Type of Student: Asian Domestic male

 

Courses taken and taking: Calc III (A), Linear Algebra (B), Linear Algebra II (A), Advanced Calculus (B), Analysis I (A), Introductory Statistics 1/2 (A's in both), Statistical Computations (A), Advanced Programming with SAS (B), Mathematical Probability (A), Mathematical Statistics II (A), Intro to Linear Models (B), Numerical Analysis (A), a few math courses in other topics and a few introductory programming courses.  Mostly A's, with a few B's.   

GRE General Test: 

Q: 166 (90%)
V: 161 (89%)
W: 4.5 (81%)
 

 

GRE Mathematics Subject Test: N/A

 

Programs Applying: Stats/Biostats PhD

Research Experience: Did research under a mathematics professor most of undergrad in mathematical biology (presentation at a conference).  Some undergraduate research with well known statistics professor.  Summer research internship in biostatistics at a hospital. 

Pertinent Activities or Jobs: Data analyst internship for one summer.  

 

Letters of Recommendation: Should be fine here hopefully.



[Geococcyx]

Can you give us an idea of roughly where your big state school is on the USNews undergrad rankings (for example, Clemson and Texas A&M are tied at 66th)?  Admissions committees will take your record a bit differently depending on whether you go to, say, UCLA or Mississippi State.  Regardless of your school's ranking, though, I don't think there's any reason you'd need to do a master's degree first.

We can work on target grad schools once we know more about your undergrad school, but do you have any areas of research you're especially interested in?  Are you trying to stay in mathematical biology, or do you have interests in social science or probability theory or time series too?  Any sort of preferences geographically, or in the size or characteristics of the programs?

 

[bokoi]

Hi, 

Thank you for your reply.  My school is around 60 on the USNews ranking.  I would preferably like to stay in biology since I have a little background in it, but I'd say I have interests in probability theory as well.  I have no preference for geographic location or size ?

[Geococcyx]

As a heads-up, I have maybe a fifth of the experience evaluating people's profiles as some of the other most likely posters on here, so don't take my word as gospel.  Even so, I hope I'm not too far off.

Overall, I'd say that you should be applying in roughly the range I did (as you can see in my signature) -- potentially better.  I had a better GPA from a similarly good state school, and really high GRE scores that might have oversold my abilities.  Even so, though, you clearly have a better math background -- when I was applying, I had taken 2 proofs-based math classes, and was currently taking real analysis.  As it is, I would think you could take shots at most of the top 10 biostatistics schools (via USNews grad school rankings);  the top 3 (Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Washington) are tough to crack, so those would be reaches, but places like UNC, Minnesota, UCLA, Wisconsin would probably be good options.  Some of those might still be reaches, but I feel like if you apply to several of them, you'll stand a good chance of getting in at at least one of those 4-10 range schools.  If you're still in school this upcoming fall, and are taking more real analysis/measure theory or a grad-level statistical inference class, then you'd be more likely to get into those top programs.  If you're interested in both probability theory and mathematical biology, then you might also consider schools with combined statistics/biostatistics departments, like NC State and Illinois;  these might fit your interest profile a little better than just a biostatistics department.  You'd still probably want to choose a couple safety schools a little below where I'm talking about in the rankings -- my only particular note about this is that a lot of the biostatistics programs below the ones I listed are pretty small programs (Yale, Brown, Duke, Vanderbilt) that may not make for good safety schools just due to how few people they accept each year.  

That said, I've leaned pretty heavily towards biostatistics departments in this analysis, partially because your math background will probably be a little stronger in that application cohort.  That doesn't mean you need to go to a biostatistics or combined statistics/biostatistics department to do biological applications.  For instance, the Duke statistics department has several top faculty members who work on biological applications, Columbia statistics has several people who do neuroscience research (as I recall), and you can work with Michael Newton (an award-winning statistical geneticist) as either a Wisconsin statistics or biostatistics student (as far as I know, anyways).  

I hope this helps.  If I've erred in evaluating you, I hope I've underestimated you -- clearly I did fine in applications with a limited theoretical math background, and I would hope non-major GPA and GRE scores wouldn't mean much.  

 

[bayessays]

Above advice is great - since your bad grades are in non-math classes, they matter much less (if you also told us you had an upward trend and most those grades are from freshman/soph year, your profile is even better!)

I would have also said apply widely to biostat programs. Your profile (decent amount of math but not super strong math background, bio research) plays way better at a biostatistics department. There are so many good programs in the 4-15 range and I'd apply widely there.

[bokoi]

Thanks for the helpful suggestions.  You've given me a lot to think about! ?