Texas A&M PhD vs UMich bridge masters

[statsday]

Hi All, 

 

I have been accepted to the PhD in stats at Texas A&M and today I was accepted into the bridge masters at UMich. Does anyone have experience with this bridge masters, and know how likely it is for bridge masters students to transfer to the PhD? Right now I am just deciding between the two and I would love input from anyone. Both are fully funded with stipends/insurance coverage. Thanks in advance!

[Stat Assistant Professor]

If you have a fully funded PhD offer from TAMU, I would be inclined to take that over a Masters from anywhere else. 

[bayessays]

I'd normally agree with above, but the Michigan program does sound like guaranteed admission if you meet certain grades in the MS.  If you are very smart and confident you can get As, and think the uncertainty won't stress you out too much, Michigan sounds pretty appealing.

[Stat Assistant Professor]

Oop! Somehow I missed the part in the original post about the bridge Masters program also being fully funded. I would agree with @bayessays then that if you're virtually guaranteed admission to the PhD (conditional on academic performance) and think you can perform well in your courses, then UMich is an appealing option.

[statsday]

Thank you @bayessays and @Stat Postdoc Soon Faculty as always you have helpful and thoughtful advice. I will decide later today, and for now I will just look at UMich faculty that I might want to work with. 

[statsforyou]

As I’m sure you know, according to https://www.amstat.org/asa/files/pdfs/OGRP-USNews_StatisticsRankings.pdf Texas A&M is ranked slightly higher than UMich, but they’re essentially the same. The real answer is that you should choose based on research interests. Another thing to consider is total time to completion, working at Microsoft research for 2 years after finishing a PhD in 4 is better than masters + PhD in 6, especially if you’ve already done a masters in Stats / Math beforehand. that’s just another reason to just going for the guaranteed Texas a&m PhD and finish in 4 years! Good luck!

[anotherday]

I agree with the previous posters that both are great choices, you can’t go wrong. Another thing to keep in mind is that if you go for Michigan bridge masters and don’t get into the PhD (it seems from the website a bad grade might disqualify you from transferring to the PhD but I’m not exactly sure), you might be in a precarious spot because reapplying to PhDs in the next few years might be more competitive due to the economy (people apply to grad school at higher rates during recessions). so the security of 4 years fully funded with the cheap cost of living in Texas would be  a smart choice to minimize risk. I would go for Texas a&m unless you can’t find more than 2 or 3 professors you’d be happy working with there.

[bayessays]

To add to what the above two posters said, I'd factor in the environments of the 2 schools.  One is a very cold, liberal town and one is a very hot, conservative town.  Really couldn't be more different places to live.

[statsday]

Thanks for all the input. I chose A&M for the reasons mentioned by statsforyou and anotherday. 

Edited April 14, 2020 by statsday