Stat's PHD and Applied Stats PHD, what's the difference?

[elnino14]

Pretty basic,

I finished my Masters in Sociology at a state school, and I'm pretty interested in pursuing more education, I'm not exactly sure which field though. I know i'm not interested in more Sociology and my Master's reinforced that the passion I had for many Sociological topics and especially Sociological theory are waning fast. But I also discovered something else during my Masters, I discovered how much I enjoy doing quantitative research and working with statistics and databases. It's definitely something I'm interested in finding out more about in terms of PhDs. My concern is that it is so math based, that the research, the analysis portion is left out. My other concern is that it's the human aspect that drives me and keeps me sane when all the math and theory is going on, my thesis was very much based in social psychology even though it was quantitative in analysis.

I started looking at programs and my main question is what's the differences between a statistics doctorate and applied statistics doctorate? They seem rather similar in description but some schools/program actually make the distinction, so what's the difference? Where can I find a list of top schools on both, who offers the top Applied Statistics Programs and who offers the applied statistics programs? And anything else somebody is willing to share about this discipline?

Any help is appreciated....

Edited June 16, 2011 by elnino14