Statistics PhD program comparison: Wisconsin-Madison vs. Penn State

[Blain Waan]

I was recently accepted to the Ph.D. program in the Department of Statistics (Biostatistics major), the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I also got an offer from Penn State University. I summarize the offers below:

 

1) University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Statistics (Biostatistics major), they offered a TA appointment worth a stipend of $22,500, health coverage, and tuition waiver (except for segregated fees).

 

2) Pennsylvania State University, Department of Statistics, offered a graduate assistantship worth a stipend of $23,490, tuition waiver and waiver of all academic fees, a guaranteed summer assistantship of at least $6,930 (if I stay on the campus during the summer), a fellowship from the Department of Statistics for the first year of the program worth $1,500 and a further $300 if I have a summer assistantship, a subsidy in the amount of 80% (for individual coverage) of the annual premium cost of health insurance.

 

I'm confused about where I should go. I haven't contacted any professor in either department yet but there are professors in both departments whose research interests (statistical learning, causal inference) match mine. My career goal is to find an academic appointment when I graduate. When I explored the profiles of the faculties of top 60 Statistics/Biostatistics programs, I found significantly higher number of appointments from Wisconsin-Madison compared to Penn State (almost 3 times more). I am not sure if any of these programs actually have a higher reputation over the other at all. The US News ranks are very similar (UW-Madison: 16, Penn State: 20), but I don't want to base my decision on these ranks. I'd like to know about the culture, prelims, research output, reputation, graduate placements, how theoretical these departments are, etc. A little higher pay at Penn State is also not a big concern for me. if Wisconsin-Madison is considered as a stronger or more reputed department. It will be great to know your thoughts (especially those who have experience with these programs) while making this important decision of my life. Thanks in advance!  

[Stat Assistant Professor]

University of Wisconsin seems to do better in terms of academic placements. They've had some very solid grads, like Ming Yuan at Columbia University. I also think that Madison is a better location than State College personally.

If I were you, I would look carefully through faculty websites and see what journals and/or conferences the faculty are publishing in. If you see a lot of JASA, Annals (any of the stats or probability journals), JRSS, Biometrika, ICML, NeurIPS, COLT, etc., then I would consider that program to be very strong and promising for a future academic career.

I would also consider things like coursework, qualifying exams, etc. At some schools, they have a lot more course requirements, and some have two written exams rather than one. That could add to the length of study. I know of some people who graduated from Wisconsin Statistics with their PhD in three or four years, so I'm not sure if they have fewer exams/course requirements.

Edited February 28, 2021 by Stat Assistant Professor

[trynagetby]

Are all the Annals considered prestigious/indicators of the same publishing quality? So is the reputation of Annals of Applied Statistics and Annals of Statistics on the same level?

[Stat Assistant Professor]

I don't think they're necessarily directly comparable, since Annals of Statistics pertains mainly to mathematical statistical theory (and is indeed the most prestigious stats journal for statistics theory). I would say among methodologists/theoreticians, Annals of Statistics is considered more prestigious.

 However, Annals of Applied Statistics is considered a top-tier journal and has had some very influential papers appear in it. For example, the original Bayesian additive regression trees (BART) paper (BART is one of the top-performing ML methods for prediction) and the pathwise coordinate optimization paper by Friedman et al. appeared in Annals of Applied Statistics. 

[Blain Waan]

13 hours ago, Stat Assistant Professor said:

University of Wisconsin seems to do better in terms of academic placements. They've had some very solid grads, like Ming Yuan at Columbia University. I also think that Madison is a better location than State College personally.

If I were you, I would look carefully through faculty websites and see what journals and/or conferences the faculty are publishing in. If you see a lot of JASA, Annals (any of the stats or probability journals), JRSS, Biometrika, ICML, NeurIPS, COLT, etc., then I would consider that program to be very strong and promising for a future academic career.

I would also consider things like coursework, qualifying exams, etc. At some schools, they have a lot more course requirements, and some have two written exams rather than one. That could add to the length of study. I know of some people who graduated from Wisconsin Statistics with their PhD in three or four years, so I'm not sure if they have fewer exams/course requirements.

Thanks for your kind reply. It's a huge help! There are a few programs that are yet to let me know their decisions. I have to let Wisconsin-Madison or Penn State know my decision before April 15th. I emailed a few to know if they can let know their decisions before April 15th, and some of them replied that I am in their waiting list and they cannot guarantee that they can inform me anything before that deadline. If I accept an offer and then receive another in a preferred program after April 15th, what should I do? How common it is to receive offer after April 15th deadline?

[Stat Assistant Professor]

27 minutes ago, Blain Waan said:

Thanks for your kind reply. It's a huge help! There are a few programs that are yet to let me know their decisions. I have to let Wisconsin-Madison or Penn State know my decision before April 15th. I emailed a few to know if they can let know their decisions before April 15th, and some of them replied that I am in their waiting list and they cannot guarantee that they can inform me anything before that deadline. If I accept an offer and then receive another in a preferred program after April 15th, what should I do? How common it is to receive offer after April 15th deadline?

You should just make your decision on or close to April 15 if you're waiting to hear back from other programs that you are seriously considering. I don't think a program would appreciate it if you accepted their offer only to renege on it later.

[statsguy]

On 2/28/2021 at 4:03 AM, Blain Waan said:

I was recently accepted to the Ph.D. program in the Department of Statistics (Biostatistics major), the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I also got an offer from Penn State University. I summarize the offers below:

 

1) University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Statistics (Biostatistics major), they offered a TA appointment worth a stipend of $22,500, health coverage, and tuition waiver (except for segregated fees).

 

2) Pennsylvania State University, Department of Statistics, offered a graduate assistantship worth a stipend of $23,490, tuition waiver and waiver of all academic fees, a guaranteed summer assistantship of at least $6,930 (if I stay on the campus during the summer), a fellowship from the Department of Statistics for the first year of the program worth $1,500 and a further $300 if I have a summer assistantship, a subsidy in the amount of 80% (for individual coverage) of the annual premium cost of health insurance.

 

The academic points have been covered so I'll add this:

The Penn State offer is really generous and I would definitely put some weight on it. TA'ing, while not the end of the world, can be a hassle and took up 10-15 hours/week my first semester when I was getting started. There were horror stories of year 1-2 students being saddled with 25+ hours/week of work because the course instructor wanted every single homework in a class of 100+ students graded carefully, gave out tons of quizzes and exams that the TA had to grade, and got stuck with a "needy" group that was emailing the TA non-stop. 

With the Penn offer you could start reading papers and thinking about research topics first year, and hit the ground running during that first summer. Or you could use the extra time to really drill down on the qualifying exam ensuring a first-time pass. Or just have a few more hours to decompress each week

[bayessays]

I personally wouldn't weigh a 1-year fellowship very highly (it would be different if it were for all 5 years and included summer funding without work duties).  I've been a TA at 3 different programs; 2 semesters I had about 10 hours/week of work, 1 semester I had about 5 hours a week, and 2 semesters I had less than 1 hour per week.  Most people don't do research their first year anyways, and I almost can't imagine TA duties being so heavy that they interfere with taking courses even if you have the full 20 hours/week.  A lot of people I know found their TA assignment to be a nice break from their routine (although probably moreso not during COVID when you actually personally interact with students).  I agree with statsguy's general point that you should consider all these aspects, but I think it would be short-sighted to tip your decision based on a very temporary inconvenience at worst.

[Blain Waan]

@Stat Assistant Professor @statsguy @bayessays thanks for the guidelines. I think I can figure out most of what you suggested by talking to the departments. But in general, I was curious to know how theoretical these departments are. I have pretty good math background, but I think PhD level courses could be more challenging and some departments are significantly more theoretical than the others (although the required courses may look similar).  

[Stat Assistant Professor]

Wisconsin and Penn State both seem to have a good mix of theory and applied people, though it seems PSU is leaning a bit more towards the applied side (e.g. lots of faculty working on statistical genetics, spatial statistics, climate modeling, etc.). UW-Madison also has some good theory people, but good applied people as well. I have a collaborator who is an applied statistician and he just got hired as TT faculty at UW-Madison, and it also seems like UW-Madison has a bunch of applied people working in areas like astrostatistics, statistical genetics, etc.

I believe that the Statistics Department at UW-Madison allows Statistics PhD students to do an emphasis in Biostatistics: https://stat.wisc.edu/graduate-studies/. Thus, there seems to be much less separation between the Statistics and the Biostatistics and Medical Informatics departments at UW-Madison (whereas at some other schools, there is hardly any interaction between the Biostat and Stat departments, because the Stat department is super theoretical).

Edited March 2, 2021 by Stat Assistant Professor

[Stat Phd]

Definitely Penn, way superior offer.

[statsguy]

On 3/1/2021 at 2:38 PM, bayessays said:

I personally wouldn't weigh a 1-year fellowship very highly (it would be different if it were for all 5 years and included summer funding without work duties).  I've been a TA at 3 different programs; 2 semesters I had about 10 hours/week of work, 1 semester I had about 5 hours a week, and 2 semesters I had less than 1 hour per week.  Most people don't do research their first year anyways, and I almost can't imagine TA duties being so heavy that they interfere with taking courses even if you have the full 20 hours/week.  A lot of people I know found their TA assignment to be a nice break from their routine (although probably moreso not during COVID when you actually personally interact with students).  I agree with statsguy's general point that you should consider all these aspects, but I think it would be short-sighted to tip your decision based on a very temporary inconvenience at worst.

Many don't do research first year, but those that start first year (and stick with their topic/advisor), have a large advantage. The Penn state offer facilitates starting research year 1.

Another thing to consider is that if you're getting such a good first-year offer from Penn State, that probably means they really want you to attend and you're a "top tier" applicant. If you continue to show promise, chances are you'll get some more perqs down the road (fellowships, easy teaching assignments if you get a TA, summer funding, course waivers etc.). The department I went to (top 15 in Stats) had 1 student that got a first-year fellowship. This student was usually treat very, very well even in subsequent years...

Edited March 6, 2021 by statsguy

[bayessays]

Just to be clear, upon a second reading, there is nothing in @Blain Waan's post that says he does not have to TA at Penn State -- in fact, it says he *does* have a graduate assistantship, and that the fellowship is an additional $1500 on top of that.  Many fellowships still require TA duties -- I got three such "fellowships" in the past admissions cycle that just are additional money and not additional freedom.

[Stat Phd]

3 minutes ago, bayessays said:

Just to be clear, upon a second reading, there is nothing in @Blain Waan's post that says he does not have to TA at Penn State -- in fact, it says he *does* have a graduate assistantship, and that the fellowship is an additional $1500 on top of that.  Many fellowships still require TA duties -- I got three such "fellowships" in the past admissions cycle that just are additional money and not additional freedom.

He says “graduate assistantship worth a stipend of $23,490” though.

 

that sounds like a stipend without TA duties

 

if not then you are right, there’s not much difference between offers

[statsguy]

6 minutes ago, Stat Phd said:

He says “graduate assistantship worth a stipend of $23,490” though.

 

that sounds like a stipend without TA duties

 

if not then you are right, there’s not much difference between offers

I agree, I assumed it was a no-teaching graduate assistantship, especially since he specifically mentioned the Wisconsin offer being a TA appointment. If OP has to TA year 1, then it makes the Penn State offer only a little better than Wisconsin, and probably a non-issue. If, on the other hand, OP is ready to hit the ground running with research, and Penn State's offer doesn't require TAing year 1 and gives him pure gravy that first summer, then the Penn State offer will definitely make life easier...

Edited March 6, 2021 by statsguy

[Blain Waan]

Thanks, the Penn State offer still includes TA/RA duties. The only benefit is the confirmed summer assistantship if I stay in the campus and the additional $1500 and $300 (if I work during the summer) as the fellowship stipend at Penn State. I looked at the academic placements in top 60-65 schools and found 11 assistant professors who graduated from Wisconsin vs. only 2 who graduated from Penn State (they were in Yale and Purdue though). I also found 15 professors/associate professors who graduated from Wisconsin vs. 6 who graduated from Penn State. I'm not sure if that is because the Wisconsin program is larger or this is also something related to the academic reputation of the programs. However, I do realize that finding an academic placement will largely depend on the advisor and the work I'll be able to do during my stay in the program. But the difference that I see in academic placement records is not what I expected.