Do people transfer biostat phd programs?

[goodatstats]

Hi all,

 

Thanks very much for your help on this site. I am wondering, do people ever transfer from biostat phd programs at very good but not top tier schools (Emory, Wisconsin, JHU, etc) to a top tier phd program (Harvard, UW, UNC, UCLA)? What if you are not being funded by the school?

 

I know it is possible to do great research at any school but as I am an international applicant it seems that a lot more opportunities will be open to me if I graduate from one of the top programs that has great recognition around the world.

[biostatdude]

I can't answer your question, but I think you have JHU and UCLA in the wrong categories. JHU is a consensus top three biostats program (along with UW and Harvard), while UCLA is generally considered a "good but not top tier" program along with Emory and Wisconsin.  

[Quantum Buckyball]

You will have to go through the whole application process again if you intend to leave your current program.

It would make you look real bad if you do intend to leave your current biostat program to join another biostat program at a different school.

[biostat_prof]

It happens, but it's not common. Your best bet would be to finish an MS at your first school and then try to apply to other programs. Keep in mind that you almost certainly will be in school for more time if you do this, since it typically takes two years to get an MS but having an MS will usually shave at best one year off of a PhD program. And asking for recommendation letters is likely to be very awkward if you try to do this. (Although it would be a different story if you are not being funded by your first PhD program. I can't imagine any professor would hold it against you if you tried to transfer to a school with a funding. But if they spent money funding you for a couple years and then you wanted to transfer, that could ruffle feathers.) Also, if you are not competitive for a higher-ranked program now, you would have to do extremely well in an MS program to change that.

 

As an aside, I have said many times that prospective PhD students worry way too much about rankings, given that the reputation of your adviser matters far more than the reputation of your school. That said, I'm scratching my head that anyone would say that the "consensus" top-three biostat programs are UW, Harvard, and Hopkins. No offense, but don't base these evaluations on the USNWR rankings. The consensus of everyone that I talk to is that you have to add UNC to that list and maybe Michigan as well... But as I said, worry more about the reputation of your adviser than the reputation of your school. The only real advantage to attending a higher-ranked school is that they have more strong faculty members in more research areas and they are also likely to have more funding. If you are not admitted to a "top tier" department, I would recommend that you choose a department that has a strong faculty member or two in an area that you are interested rather than trying to transfer.

[cyberwulf]

Transfers between PhD programs in the same discipline are rare in the first place, and even rarer when a student is only moving up a rung or two on the prestige ladder. The main reason is that students who are excelling at a good program are generally very well-regarded and have little incentive to leave. Indeed, adcoms are often suspicious of PhD transfers: Was there a personality conflict? Were the faculty just not excited by this person's potential? Was language ability a concern? Add to that the fact that faculty at the school you are leaving have "invested" in you and will not be keen to write you strong letters of recommendation so that you can go somewhere else, and it's very hard to build a strong enough application to crack a top-tier place.

[cyberwulf]

As an aside, I have said many times that prospective PhD students worry way too much about rankings, given that the reputation of your adviser matters far more than the reputation of your school. That said, I'm scratching my head that anyone would say that the "consensus" top-three biostat programs are UW, Harvard, and Hopkins. No offense, but don't base these evaluations on the USNWR rankings. The consensus of everyone that I talk to is that you have to add UNC to that list and maybe Michigan as well... But as I said, worry more about the reputation of your adviser than the reputation of your school. The only real advantage to attending a higher-ranked school is that they have more strong faculty members in more research areas and they are also likely to have more funding.

 

I'm going to quibble with you a bit here, since I'm of the belief that Harvard/Hopkins/UW are deserving of their "top-3" moniker (though it of course goes without saying that UNC and Michigan are also excellent departments).

 

You can dismiss the US News rankings, but prestige matters, and there's not much doubt that these three schools draw the strongest incoming classes; UNC, Michigan, Minnesota, Emory, etc. just don't win student recruiting battles against these schools with any regularity. Furthermore, I don't think you'll find a lot of people who would say that, on average, the faculty at UNC/Michigan are as strong as the top 3. Of course, this isn't to say that the top 5-8 faculty at some lower-ranked places aren't on par with faculty at H/H/W, or that there aren't some specialty areas where lower-ranked schools are stronger than the top 3. But, just as with students, hotshot new faculty are consistently accepting offers at UW, Harvard, and Hopkins and not at UNC/Michigan, which indicates to me that a gap exists and is likely to be maintained for awhile.

Edited March 4, 2013 by cyberwulf

[biostat_prof]

I'm going to quibble with you a bit here, since I'm of the belief that Harvard/Hopkins/UW are deserving of their "top-3" moniker (though it of course goes without saying that UNC and Michigan are also excellent departments).

 

You can dismiss the US News rankings, but prestige matters, and there's not much doubt that these three schools draw the strongest incoming classes; UNC, Michigan, Minnesota, Emory, etc. just don't win student recruiting battles against these schools with any regularity. Furthermore, I don't think you'll find a lot of people who would say that, on average, the faculty at UNC/Michigan are as strong as the top 3. Of course, this isn't to say that the top 5-8 faculty at some lower-ranked places aren't on par with faculty at H/H/W, or that there aren't some specialty areas where lower-ranked schools are stronger than the top 3. But, just as with students, hotshot new faculty are consistently accepting offers at UW, Harvard, and Hopkins and not at UNC/Michigan, which indicates to me that a gap exists and is likely to be maintained for awhile.

 

I hate debates over rankings given how meaningless these rankings are in the first place... Having said that, saying that Harvard/Hopkins/UW are a clear step above UNC/Michigan is an extremely questionable claim. If anything, I would rank UNC above Hopkins at this point given some of their recent faculty losses (Francesca Dominici and Giovanni Parmigiani jump to mind immediately, and I think there are a couple others). Indeed, the ranks of senior faculty at Hopkins strike me as a bit thin these days. It's still a great place because of all the collaborations with the #1 medical school in the world, but I think they probably have less world-class senior biostatistics faculty than UW/Harvard/UNC right now. (Although this is just my opinion, and I think others might disagree.)

 

I'm not aware of any comparable faculty losses at UNC. Indeed, if anything UNC has strengthened their department considerably with recent hires at both the senior (Michael Kosorok, Jason Fine) and junior (Yun Li, Yufeng Liu) levels. If none of these people qualify as "hotshots" in your book, I would be interested to know who you consider to be a hotshot. And my recollection is that UNC has also had something like 6 new IMS/ASA fellows over the past 2-3 years. So I can't see any reasonable metric by which one would rank UNC below Hopkins at this point. Overall I would still probably put them very slightly below UW/Harvard, but that's mainly my subjective opinion. There is very little meaningful difference between these schools.

 

As for Michigan, it's hard to do an apples-to-apples comparison given that they are easily the top department in the country for statistical genetics (which is a red-hot area right now) but considerably weaker in most other areas. Does excellence in one area compensate for weaknesses in other areas? Who knows? That's why this idea of ranking departments is so silly in the first place. In any event, given the fact that statistical genetics is so hot right now, Michigan's placement record for its recent PhD graduates compares favorably with any school in the country. Off the top of my head, in the past few years they have placed Ali Shojaie at Washington, Liming Liang at Harvard, and Yun Li at UNC, and I am sure there are others. Indeed, I'm not aware of any other school in the country that has placed as many of their recent graduates in tenure-track positions at top-tier universities as Michigan has. Any student who definitely wants to study statistical genetics would probably be wise to choose Michigan over any other school in the country (other than maybe Stanford). And if a student doesn't have strong feelings about their dissertation topic but simply wants to maximize their employment prospects, Michigan is a very solid option as the top school in a very high-demand research area.

 

Also, the claim that UNC/Michigan don't win student recruiting battles against UW/Harvard/Hopkins is simply false. I can say this as someone who has been involved in admissions and student recruitment at one of these schools. I can't share this data publicly, obviously, and it's too small of a sample size to draw any firm conclusions. But I can definitely tell you that UNC and Michigan hold their own against UW/Harvard/Hopkins in terms of student recruitment.

 

In any event, I tell my students that if they aren't married to any particular research area, they can't go too far wrong with any of UW/Harvard/Hopkins/UNC, since they all have strong faculty in a wide variety of research areas. Michigan is also worth a look assuming that the student doesn't totally hate the idea of studying statistical genetics. After that, my advice is to find a department that has at leats 1-2 strong faculty members in a research area that one is interested in, because the reputation of the adviser is more important than the reputation of the department at that point. But I would definitely take issue with advising someone to definitely choose UW/Harvard/Hopkins over UNC or Michigan, because I simply don't see good evidence to support that advice.

[JZappa]

biostat_prof... I thought Yufeng Liu was in the regular stats department at UNC. Or does he have a joint appointment?

[biostat_prof]

biostat_prof... I thought Yufeng Liu was in the regular stats department at UNC. Or does he have a joint appointment?

 

He has a joint appointment in biostatistics, as do many of the statistics faculty at UNC.

[biostatdude]

As an aside, I have said many times that prospective PhD students worry way too much about rankings, given that the reputation of your adviser matters far more than the reputation of your school. That said, I'm scratching my head that anyone would say that the "consensus" top-three biostat programs are UW, Harvard, and Hopkins. No offense, but don't base these evaluations on the USNWR rankings. The consensus of everyone that I talk to is that you have to add UNC to that list and maybe Michigan as well... 

 

My "top three" statement wasn't based on the USNWR rankings, it was based on what I have heard from many (unbiased) professors in the field.  

[biostat_prof]

My "top three" statement wasn't based on the USNWR rankings, it was based on what I have heard from many (unbiased) professors in the field.  

 

Well, no offense, but I have never heard similar statements from anyone that I have ever worked with. See my post above. The fact of the matter is that Hopkins has been weakened by several recent losses of senior faculty members. I suppose you could still make the case that Hopkins is stronger than UNC on the basis that UNC doesn't have any "rock stars" on the same level as Rafael Irizarry or Scott Zeger, but from top to bottom I think UNC's current faculty is a bit stronger. Although this illustrates the silliness inherent in such a comparison. And while Michigan's faculty may not be as strong overall as some of these other schools, I'm not aware of any other departments that has placed as many graduates in top-ranked departments over the past few years. And at the end of the day, isn't that what really matters?

 

I'll repeat my advice: Choose programs based on the reputation of your prospective adviser, not the reputation of the overall department. If you're not wedded to any particular research area, UW/Harvard/Hopkins/UNC all have numerous excellent faculty in a wide variety of research areas. And if you are okay with studying statistical genetics, Michigan should give you as many job opportunities as any of the aforementioned schools. And if you are choosing between any of these schools, I would base the decision on the strength of the faculty in your area of interest or even funding/quality of life issues. When hiring new PhD's the quality of your research and the reputation of your adviser are far more important than where you went to school, so I would strongly advise against choosing a department based on its subjective ranking.

[Shostakovich]

Well, no offense, but I have never heard similar statements from anyone that I have ever worked with. See my post above. The fact of the matter is that Hopkins has been weakened by several recent losses of senior faculty members. I suppose you could still make the case that Hopkins is stronger than UNC on the basis that UNC doesn't have any "rock stars" on the same level as Rafael Irizarry or Scott Zeger, but from top to bottom I think UNC's current faculty is a bit stronger. Although this illustrates the silliness inherent in such a comparison. And while Michigan's faculty may not be as strong overall as some of these other schools, I'm not aware of any other departments that has placed as many graduates in top-ranked departments over the past few years. And at the end of the day, isn't that what really matters?

 

I'll repeat my advice: Choose programs based on the reputation of your prospective adviser, not the reputation of the overall department. If you're not wedded to any particular research area, UW/Harvard/Hopkins/UNC all have numerous excellent faculty in a wide variety of research areas. And if you are okay with studying statistical genetics, Michigan should give you as many job opportunities as any of the aforementioned schools. And if you are choosing between any of these schools, I would base the decision on the strength of the faculty in your area of interest or even funding/quality of life issues. When hiring new PhD's the quality of your research and the reputation of your adviser are far more important than where you went to school, so I would strongly advise against choosing a department based on its subjective ranking.

 

Hi biostat_prof,

 

Thanks for all of your advice so far. Do you think it would be possible to outline some areas to look into for a prospective student (who is undecided on research area) at a top Biostat program (perhaps UW/Harvard/Hopkins/UNC)? I think this could really help some of us decide on where we want to go as April 15th is fast approaching. Thanks!