PhD in Biostatistics which school to go ?

[mtzh4]

Hi, everyone:

 

Since one of the schools require me to respond by March 29th, I probably have to make my decision now, the schools on hand are:

 

1. U pittsburgh: PhD in biostatistics, concentration in statistical genetics (thus the direction of future dissertation), RA, monthly stipend of 1.9k +  SPH ranking 11, overall ranking 58, 

 

2. Univ of Southern California: PhD in biostatistics, under medical school department of preventive medicine, first two years fellowship 30k/yr, 3rd yr on RA monthly stipend of 2.5k+ tuition waiver + insurance, thus can decide dissertation direction on 2nd or 3rd year, cannot find the subject ranking (their professor claim this is because they do not have SPH, but they have the most NIH grant among all departments of preventive medicine, and probably top 10 in NIH grant among  ), overall ranking 25

 

3. Still pending: Boston U, UCLA, Brown U... 

    

    Boston Univ has probably waitlisted me, the admission said the result would be coming up soon.

 (Anyone who got the offer from BU and plan not to go? Could you please kindly drop it earlier, BU is really my dream school...   thanks)

 

    Brown U has contacted my thesis advisor, but not pretty sure if they will give me an offer.

    UCLA will probably reject me, though no news so far...

 

4. A few safeties, for personal reasons, gonna reject them within this week.

 

Can anyone give me some suggestion on the selection?  Thanks so much.

 

 

BTW, I am currently a master at Yale

[Shostakovich]

Hi, everyone:

 

Since one of the schools require me to respond by March 29th, I probably have to make my decision now, the schools on hand are:

 

1. U pittsburgh: PhD in biostatistics, concentration in statistical genetics (thus the direction of future dissertation), RA, monthly stipend of 1.9k +  SPH ranking 11, overall ranking 58, 

 

2. Univ of Southern California: PhD in biostatistics, under medical school department of preventive medicine, first two years fellowship 30k/yr, 3rd yr on RA monthly stipend of 2.5k+ tuition waiver + insurance, thus can decide dissertation direction on 2nd or 3rd year, cannot find the subject ranking (their professor claim this is because they do not have SPH, but they have the most NIH grant among all departments of preventive medicine, and probably top 10 in NIH grant among  ), overall ranking 25

 

3. Still pending: Boston U, UCLA, Brown U... 

    

    Boston Univ has probably waitlisted me, the admission said the result would be coming up soon.

 (Anyone who got the offer from BU and plan not to go? Could you please kindly drop it earlier, BU is really my dream school...   thanks)

 

    Brown U has contacted my thesis advisor, but not pretty sure if they will give me an offer.

    UCLA will probably reject me, though no news so far...

 

4. A few safeties, for personal reasons, gonna reject them within this week.

 

Can anyone give me some suggestion on the selection?  Thanks so much.

 

 

BTW, I am currently a master at Yale

 

 

I think still too early to lose hope on UCLA. I know there have been a few acceptances posted here and they have already had a visit event for some early admit students, but according to some of my friends who went to the event the department was still looking at some of the files for more potential offers.

 

If you don't get into the schools in your #3 I think I'd personally lean towards Pitt. I visited the USC Biostats department last year, and the notion that I got was that it was a small department not on the level of established programs (like Pitt). I also didn't like the school environment too much, the Health Sciences campus is actually in East LA, pretty far from the USC campus itself. Also, I don't think it's a good thing that the department is in the med school; departments in the school of public health are more autonomous and have more say in what they want to research.

[echlori]

I'm still waiting for BU and UCLA as well.

[jhpark3]

Well, it looks like you don't have to RA or TA for the first two years at USC while still getting free money. That sounds good.