Statistics or Biostatistics PHD

[Agun]

I am planning to apply for a PHD for Fall 2013 and below is my profile

- I hold a MS degree in statistics

- I have 5 years experience working as a bio-statistician at a cancer center

- will write GRE in October 2012.

I am planning to apply for UC- Berkeley and UC- Davis...and may be stanford too ( I doubt I would get an admission in Stanford or Berkeley for that matter). I don't know if I should apply for statistics or Bio-statistics...my reasearch experience is in Bio-statistics and statistical genetics ..

Any comments will be greatly appreciated..

[Agun]

True..I agree with you on that. I would prefer a Statistics Phd than a Bio-statistics one because you have the choice of doing research in what ever field you want. In my case, I am stuck to the San Francisco area and have only Stanford, Berkeley and UC-Davis ( long commute)..but Stanford and Berkeley being so highly ranked for Statistics, I don't know if I would be selected. I would prefer getting selected for Bio-statistics program instead of not getting selected at all.

[ongtz]

I may be naive on this. I gathered information from my peers and department about the same question as well. It is true that Statistics encompass a wide variety of research fields compared to Bio-Statisitics. But then Biometrics is much more hands-on and applicable (direction specific), with the potential of furthering the depths of current methodologies.

I am torn between the two as well but I do feel (I may be wrong) somehow, you can get some sort of a "balance" from how you shape the discipline based on the courses you undertake before heading full-time into research/thesis.

By the way, I really need some advice from any of you. I got rejected from all 6 schools (3 waitlisted before rejection) which I applied for PhD. The only 1 school I applied for MS accepted me. What are the experiences like in grad school? I am only told that it is a total different world. I am pursuing Applied Statistics (been approved by the department with the course combination in an attempt to encompass both tracks; stats & biostats). I am hoping with a MS, my odds of fighting a spot in PhD would be better.