Université de Montréal/McGill M.Sc. in Statistics

[forthorn]

I'm a junior at a top-5 US university studying applied math. It's been a dream of mine for a long time to move to Europe or Quebec, and I also want to go to grad school in stats. I don't know how strong of an applicant I would be for US PhD programs, because my GPA (3.90) isn't super high, and I don't have much research experience (although I will hopefully have some by the time I apply in the fall).

Therefore, I am looking at the masters programs in stats (or biostats) at UdeM and McGill. I'd also be interested in a masters in Paris, but it's hard for me to tell which ones are good. I'd have to find a way to pay for it through some sort of fellowship/scholarship.

How would going abroad to Canada/France be looked at by top US PhD programs? Would it be seen as necessarily a "step down" from a US university? If I ended up getting a PhD there, would it be significantly harder to get an academic job in the US? Does anybody know more about these programs than I can find on their websites, especially the one at UdeM?

[bayessays]

I definitely don't think it would be a step down. Everyone knows McGill is a good school, and though some people might not be familiar with UdeM because it's French only, the quality of their faculty is great.  I strongly considered going to UdeM for my PhD, but it was pretty difficult to understand whether it would be possible for a US citizen to get funding equivalent to what we would get in the US, as most of the funding is reserved for Canadians. Yves Atchade went to UdeM and got faculty jobs at top departments Michigan and BU so it's definitely possible to have success from there in the US. Also, obviously your French has to be very good to go to UdeM.

Also, not sure if this was a typo, but a 3.9 is a very high GPA.  You go to a top 5 school and could just apply to PhD programs, including top US ones. 

 

 

[csheehan10]

I definitely don't think a Canadian or European masters would be seen as a step down. America has a lot of the top ranked universities, but a high ranking one in France should be seen as just as good as a similarly ranked one in the States. For example, Université PSL and the Sorbonne are both ranked in the top 30 in the world for maths, and in the top 40 for stats by QS. A masters at either of these would certainly not be seen as a weakness, especially since they are all taught through French.
One thing to note is a separate Statistics department is less common in France, so most of the relevant programmes are mathematics masters where you could choose a lot of stats options. 

[frequentist]

I do not know about statistics, but in our mathematics department "Europe educated" usually means "obviously she is great." Of course, this need not always be true, but you sort of get a sense how European schools are viewed.