Graduates in Biostatistics

[clamofee]

People seem to say that Biostatistics graduates have no problems finding a job since there is a "shortage" of Biostatisticians, and that the pay will likely be well (certainly enough to support a family). This trend seems to continue for the next (n) years or so.

 

Is that true? I guess with the recent budget cuts, I'm starting to get skeptical. I guess I'm also skeptical because I'm not sure how medical/basic scientists view Biostatisticians. Are Biostatisticians really needed?

 

Of course, nobody will know how this industry will be like in 5, 10, 20 years. Those of us who entered the profession years ago didn't know how it would turn out to be. I'm just curious about what people really think about the field of Biostatistics in general.

 

For those of you already in Biostatistics, why did you choose the field? What are some of the advice for someone considering it?

 

Sorry about the rant. I'm seriously considering enrolling in a graduate program in Biostatistics this coming Fall, and I'd really like to know what I've gotten myself into.

[Biostat_Assistant_Prof]

I'm interested to see what the experts on here have to say (the few faculty members that frequently comment)... But if I were to guess, I'd think that positions in academia will become harder to obtain in years to come, but positions in academia will still be available for most graduates. 

[Shostakovich]

I think the situation might not be as rosy as the program recruiters make it sound sometimes, but my position is that it's probably one of the best (if not the best) career options nowadays for someone with math/bio type of background. Uncertainty exists anywhere and the budget cuts may affect some government jobs as well as academic funding, but many statistical skill sets such as the ability to analyze large data is something coveted in many disciplines. If you're worried, I think a good idea is to look into research areas in Biostats that could be applied to other areas (e.g. machine learning).

 

Just my conjecture and also interested in what the experts think.

Edited March 20, 2013 by Shostakovich

[DMX]

What Shostakovich is true (at least from my observations).

I work in quantitative finance and in our team there are several biostatistics PhDs.

[Eracer]

From everyone i've talked to in programs, jobs just aren't falling into your laps like program recruiters are saying.  Just like every other field, you have to seek them out, network, get your name out there.  I don't think the market is as rosy for fresh MS and MPH graduates either because their old jobs are being taken by freshly graduated PhDs.  Though if you believe that the healthcare industry is going to explode in the next few years because of retiring boomers, then maybe the market will expand!

[DMX]

I wonder if any biostatistics graduates end up with faculty positions at non-biostatistics departments (stats/applied math/cs etc.)?

 

I've heard some people comment that graduates of theoretical biostats programs (typically the top 3) have some success finding positions at stats departments.

[biostatdude]

I wonder if any biostatistics graduates end up with faculty positions at non-biostatistics departments (stats/applied math/cs etc.)?

 

I've heard some people comment that graduates of theoretical biostats programs (typically the top 3) have some success finding positions at stats departments.

 

I came across a faculty member in the stats department at NC State who got his PhD in biostats at Minnesota. I also know a professor in the math department at my school who got his PhD in biostats from a lower ranked program (outside top 10). I'm sure there are many others as well. 

[biostat_prof]

Repeat after me: "There is no 'top 3.' Your ability to find a good job in academia depends on your publications and your adviser's recommendations, not the name of the school you attended." Sorry that I keep saying that over and over again, but I don't know where this idea that UW/Harvard/Hopkins are somehow orders of magnitude better than any other biostat departments got started on this board, because it's simply false. As I have noted elsewhere, as near as I can tell Michigan is placing more students in the best jobs than any of these three schools right now.

 

Now that I have vented my spleen about that, I'll try to answer the OP's question. The short answer is that it depends heavily on whether you are getting an MS or a PhD and where you attend school. (I know that seems to contradict me previous paragraph. Bear with me for a minute and I'll explain.) Right now I would recommend the MS program in my department to anyone. All of our graduates seem to find jobs without too much trouble and they usually seem to be able to find them in the area they want to live (assuming that it's not rural Nebraska or something like that). And the starting salaries are good; around $65k-$75k seems to be the market rate, with salaries using increasing pretty rapidly for the first few years. I would say that's an excellent investment for most people even if the MS program is unfunded. However, do bear in mind that my department is traditionally one of the top-ranked departments and it also has close ties to industry. I'm not sure things are this rosy everywhere. I would still guess that most stat/biostat MS graduates will be able to find jobs somewhere assuming that there are no huge red flags on their resume.

 

A PhD is another story. My usual advice to students is to ask the following three questions: Do you love research? Do you really love research? Do you love research so much you can't see yourself doing anything else? If you can answer "yes" to all three questions, considering getting a PhD. Otherwise an MS is probably a better choice. The salaries for PhD-level biostatisticians tend to be higher than that for MS-level people (and the upside is certainly higher) but for most people the salary difference between the MS and PhD levels isn't enough to justify the lost earnings resulting from another 2-4 years in school. And the job market is much tighter for PhD's than for MS graduates. (I know that sounds strange, but there are far more job openings for MS statisticians, and they typically don't want to hire PhD graduates because they assume that you'll get bored with the position and leave after a year or two.) Generally speaking, a PhD is a bad choice unless you are willing to live pretty much anywhere in the country. (And that's not always a realistic option if you have a significant other. I know of plenty of PhD graduates from the very top schools who were either badly underemployed or stuck in commuter marriages due to the difficulty of finding a job in the same geographic locale as one's significant other.)

 

To be more specific, at my department, pretty much everyone who wants a job in academia seems to find one, and our placement record in industry is also solid. But my department is ranked fairly highly, and even at my department the vast majority of our graduates find jobs in lower-ranked research universities. These days a paper or two in the top journals (JASA, Annals, Biometrika, JRSS- seems to be almost a requirement to land a job at even mid-tier universities. I would imagine that it's even tougher at lower-ranked schools where frequently there is little or no methodological work being performed. I also don't know what it's like finding a job in industry coming from a lower-ranked school. My guess is that it's doable but they may want to see evidence of experience (usually obtained during summer internships in grad school) and they may also want to see evidence of specific skills on your resume. The main advantage of attending a higher-ranked school for industry jobs is that many larger employers only recruit from certain schools (usually the higher-ranked schools). For academia, the advantage of a higher-ranked school is that typically there are more well-known faculty who are publishing in the best journals. If you attend a lower-ranked school and publish in JASA three times, you're golden, but it will harder to do, because most of the faculty who publish in JASA regularly are at the top-ranked schools. (Indeed, my limited research suggests that in the biostatistics world outside of the top 5-6 departments quite frequently there are only a handful of faculty doing methodological work or sometimes none at all. That will make it very tough to find an academic job at a strong stat/biostat department, since many of them don't care about non-methodological publications unless it's in Science or Nature or something like that.)

 

And yes; it is definitely possible to find jobs in non-biostatistics departments with a biostat degree. In fact it happens all the time. I have a PhD student on the market right now who had several job offers from math departments and statistics departments. And these days it is fairly common for statistical genetics people to find jobs in genetics departments.

[cyberwulf]

I agree with much of what biostat_prof laid out above. A few points of difference (and some of agreement):

 

- At the risk prolonging a fruitless debate, I don't think one can argue that there is at least a general perception among students and many faculty that UW/Hopkins/Harvard are a notch above other departments. Obviously, there are some metrics which would disagree with this ranking and others which would agree, but one result of this "perception gap" is that these three schools attract the strongest applicant pools and have the strongest (on average) incoming classes. The fact that the strongest students are most likely to end up in top academic positions serves to reinforce the perception gap, though these students might have been equally successful at other schools. The obvious corollary to this is that a strong student need not attend a "top 3" school to be successful.

 

- biostat_prof is exactly right that the productivity and reputation of your adviser matters much more than the name on the front gates of campus; the advantage of a higher-ranked school, then, is that increases the chances that you will find a productive, well-known adviser to work with. Things rarely go exactly as planned in graduate school, so being at a top place provides some comfort in knowing that if you "fall into" (or get assigned to) a project with almost any faculty member, turning that project into a dissertation will set you up well to achieve your goals, whether they be a job in industry or a tenure-track faculty position. As you go down the rankings, a student has to be more mindful of seeking out an appropriate adviser to match what they want to achieve.

 

- The industry job market seems pretty strong to me for both MS and PhD grads, and might even be stronger for the latter than the former. PhD graduates from our department looking to work in industry typically have jobs lined up before they graduate or shortly after; many looking down this path do summer internships at their eventual employers.

 

- Academic positions are a different story. A strong publication record (1-2 first authored in good journals minimum) has become a de facto lower bound for hiring at methods-oriented departments (roughly the top 10-12), and more students are taking post-doctoral positions to boost their CV even beyond this. I have to admit I'm not as familiar with hiring at lower-level departments, but I think that most good graduates of the top handful of departments would be able to find a position at a lower-ranked place. Some of the perceived 'tightening' of the academic job market may be a result of graduates of these top departments having unrealistic expectations about where they might be hired, and hence being 'too proud' to apply to places down the ladder, or to research-track appointments. 

[applyin&prayin]

hi biostatprof and cyberwulf, I think our perception of biostat depts is mostly formed by USNR rankings. I was wondering whether you guys can provide a list of places you would consider top 5 or 6 and have capable advisers working on things publishable in top journals.

 

I want to see if it conforms to the USNR rankings cause I think some programs like Emory are highly underranked on that site.

[Biostat_Assistant_Prof]

hi biostatprof and cyberwulf, I think our perception of biostat depts is mostly formed by USNR rankings. I was wondering whether you guys can provide a list of places you would consider top 5 or 6 and have capable advisers working on things publishable in top journals.

 

I want to see if it conforms to the USNR rankings cause I think some programs like Emory are highly underranked on that site.

Just thought I'd mention this, the USNR rankings we last updated in 2010... So it's possible things have changed a good bit in the past three years in terms of schools making a name for them-self (just a guess though).

[clamofee]

Thank you everyone for the replies!

 

 

hi biostatprof and cyberwulf, I think our perception of biostat depts is mostly formed by USNR rankings. I was wondering whether you guys can provide a list of places you would consider top 5 or 6 and have capable advisers working on things publishable in top journals.

 

I want to see if it conforms to the USNR rankings cause I think some programs like Emory are highly underranked on that site.

 

applyin&prayin, I can't speak for the faculty, but it seems like Harvard, Hopkins, Michigan, UNC, UW (in alphabetical order) are generally ranked top 5. Emory is probably top 10? I'm not sure how these rankings work though... Are they for MS or PhD?

 

 

 

Just thought I'd mention this, the USNR rankings we last updated in 2010... So it's possible things have changed a good bit in the past three years in terms of schools making a name for them-self (just a guess though).

 

^ditto. Perhaps it's time for an updated set of rankings? Although I'm not sure how useful it'll be. 

[Biostat_Assistant_Prof]

applyin&prayin, I can't speak for the faculty, but it seems like Harvard, Hopkins, Michigan, UNC, UW (in alphabetical order) are generally ranked top 5. Emory is probably top 10? I'm not sure how these rankings work though... Are they for MS or PhD? 

I'd agree, Emory is usually consided to be right around 8-10 in the ranks... However, as Biostat_prof advocates, rankings don't matter nearly as much as your mentor/advisor and the work you do while in the program, especially when you start getting out of the top 3 or 4 schools... Also, I believe the rankings are created based off of the overall quality of faculty research/publications and grad student placement after graduation... Because of this, higher ranked programs will typically provide more opportunities for students to succeed (becausd of the connections they have to quality research opportunities) but attending a lower ranked program doesn't condemn your academic career because it ultimately depends on how well you perform.

[biostat_prof]

I agree with much of what biostat_prof laid out above. A few points of difference (and some of agreement):

 

- At the risk prolonging a fruitless debate, I don't think one can argue that there is at least a general perception among students and many faculty that UW/Hopkins/Harvard are a notch above other departments. Obviously, there are some metrics which would disagree with this ranking and others which would agree, but one result of this "perception gap" is that these three schools attract the strongest applicant pools and have the strongest (on average) incoming classes. The fact that the strongest students are most likely to end up in top academic positions serves to reinforce the perception gap, though these students might have been equally successful at other schools. The obvious corollary to this is that a strong student need not attend a "top 3" school to be successful.

 

- biostat_prof is exactly right that the productivity and reputation of your adviser matters much more than the name on the front gates of campus; the advantage of a higher-ranked school, then, is that increases the chances that you will find a productive, well-known adviser to work with. Things rarely go exactly as planned in graduate school, so being at a top place provides some comfort in knowing that if you "fall into" (or get assigned to) a project with almost any faculty member, turning that project into a dissertation will set you up well to achieve your goals, whether they be a job in industry or a tenure-track faculty position. As you go down the rankings, a student has to be more mindful of seeking out an appropriate adviser to match what they want to achieve.

 

- The industry job market seems pretty strong to me for both MS and PhD grads, and might even be stronger for the latter than the former. PhD graduates from our department looking to work in industry typically have jobs lined up before they graduate or shortly after; many looking down this path do summer internships at their eventual employers.

 

- Academic positions are a different story. A strong publication record (1-2 first authored in good journals minimum) has become a de facto lower bound for hiring at methods-oriented departments (roughly the top 10-12), and more students are taking post-doctoral positions to boost their CV even beyond this. I have to admit I'm not as familiar with hiring at lower-level departments, but I think that most good graduates of the top handful of departments would be able to find a position at a lower-ranked place. Some of the perceived 'tightening' of the academic job market may be a result of graduates of these top departments having unrealistic expectations about where they might be hired, and hence being 'too proud' to apply to places down the ladder, or to research-track appointments. 

 

Yeah, I don't think that a debate about rankings is productive, either, but for what it's worth, I have a hard time seeing any objective criteria by which one can rank Hopkins in particular above UNC/Michigan given the faculty losses that Hopkins has suffered in the last few years. Anyone who is really interested in the subject can go to these departments' web pages and judge for themselves. Hopkins and UNC both have SciVal Experts profiles for all of their faculty and Michigan has Google Scholar pages for their faculty, so it's easy to pull up the list of publications. Count how many of their tenure-track faculty have recent publications in the top statistical journals (JASA, Annals, Biometrika, JRSS-B and AJHG are probably the best ones; Biostatistics, Biometrics, Annals of Applied Statistics, Bioinformatics, and Genetic Epi are also very good). I didn't take the time to count or average or anything, but just eye balling it I would say both UNC and Michigan doing better than Hopkins on average (and probably not far behind UW or Harvard). And as I have said elsewhere, Michigan seems to be placing more students in the most competitive jobs than any school in the country right now. And I don't know where you get the information that UW/Harvard/Hopkins have the strongest students, because as one who is involved with admissions at one of the schools in question, I'll just say that I have very strong reason to doubt that statement. UNC is fond of pointing out to prospective students that their students win the greatest number of student paper awards at ENAR virtually every single year (ahead of Harvard/Hopkins/Michigan; UW generally doesn't send students to ENAR). Granted, this may be due to the fact that UNC's department is larger (and they may send more students to ENAR as well), but their department is definitely solid and their students seem to produce quality work.

 

Anyway, enough about rankings. I think we all agree that your adviser matters more than the ranking of the school. So research the faculty at the schools you are considering carefully along with things like funding (and what type of work you have to do in exchange for funding), quality of life, etc.

 

As for jobs in industry, I think it probably depends on the department. It's easier if the department has ties to industry and a track record of sending students there. I have known plenty of students who graduated from very good departments who struggled to find jobs in industry and sometimes ended up badly underemployed for a while. Granted, in every case that I know about the person was looking for jobs in a specific geographic location (due to a significant other or whatever). My advice to prospective students would be to try to talk current students/recent graduates and find out how many students take jobs in industry, what types of jobs they take, and how much trouble they had finding them. My impression is that some departments do a better job of placing students in industry and it doesn't correlate well with the usual "prestige" rankings. Sometimes the best departments place a higher percentage of their students in academia so industry doesn't recruit heavily from these departments and faculty don't have experience helping their students find industry jobs. (Indeed, I have heard stories of faculty getting upset and acting like a student is a failure if they want to work in industry.) Also some of the "best" departments tend to be highly theoretical which may not be what industry is looking for. Bottom line: Research the department carefully.

 

And I will readily admit that my data about the "tightening" of the academic job market is anecdotal and based on a very small sample size. That said, I don't think it's just a case of graduates of top-tier schools being too proud to apply to lower-ranked departments. I know of a couple cases in the past years of job candidates with outstanding credentials (multiple papers in JASA/Annals/Biometrika/JRSS- who took jobs at schools that would be considered "second-tier" at best. A few years ago these people probably could have picked any job in the country. Granted, it's a tiny sample size, and maybe these people could have gotten "better" jobs if they wanted them but chose not to. But I still feel like prospective students should know about this.