Choosing a program (Statistics PhD)

[drmrpr]

Hi all, seeing as the April 15th deadline is coming up in a bit and I only have a couple more schools to hear back from, I figured I would make this post. I am trying to decide between TAMU and UCLA, both for their PhD programs in statistics. Unfortunately I did not get to visit either school in person, but did have a couple of Zoom sessions, one with professors from UCLA and one with current students from there. 

My personal research interests lie in high dimensional statistics, as well as network analysis and more generally inference on graphs. That being said, I am definitely looking to broaden my horizons and explore other sides of statistics as well, and would be open to research in other areas if they piqued my interest.

From what I can tell, UCLA's program seems a little more applied - even in their core course requirements, they do not require a measure theoretic probability course, and a good number of their professors seem to do a lot of work in interdisciplinary areas. On the other hand, TAMU's seems to be a little more traditional. From a location standpoint, I'd rather be in LA than College Station, but honestly I would say this isn't the biggest deal for me as I'm a bit of a homebody anyways. On US News, TAMU is ranked a bit higher, but from what I've read here and heard from others, that is not really as important as just doing research. Is TAMU generally more highly regarded when looking for jobs in academia? 

Overall, at the moment I'm leaning towards UCLA, because there are a couple of professors whose research I find pretty cool - Professor Arash Amini and Professor Oscar Padilla. But I would love any advice or input from others! I appreciate the help!  

 

 

 

[bayessays]

UCLA is a solid department and it would be totally reasonable to go there over TAMU.  Amini is good, and if you're interested in network analysis they have Handcock. 

[drmrpr]

Thanks! I appreciate the input