Master's Decision: Toronto Biostats vs Harvard Health Data Science vs UMass-Amherst Statistics

[hcms1]

Hello everyone. I've heard back from all my applications and I've been fortunate enough to have a lot of options. I've whittled down my choices to these three, but not sure which to pick, so any help would be greatly appreciated. The top three I'm deciding between are:

1. University of Toronto - MSc in Biostatistics, $26K CAD

2. Harvard - MS in Health Data Science, $71K

3. UMass Amherst - MS in Statistics $24K

I'm an American living in Boston, so I would love to stay around Massachusetts, but I absolutely loved Toronto (the city) when I visited so this Toronto acceptance (with the low tuition and all) has got me rethinking. My other concern is that this border closure between the US and Canada is gonna mess things up so I'm not even sure whether I can even obtain a student visa in the middle of a pandemic.

I also love the Harvard name and the opportunities from there, but the cost is just so damn expensive, so I don't know whether it's worth it or not. I have no plans to go into academia or PhD and intend on going into industry so the Harvard name is very attractive right now.

I'm also more interested in healthcare and the UMass program is theory-heavy and general statistics, which is why I'm a bit hesitating on this, despite being a solid program with low in-state tuition.

Anyone have any experience with one of the master's programs? Any help would be awesome. Thanks so much!

Edited March 19, 2020 by hcms1