stat/biostat phd programs are of less than 5% admission rate

[Funkoverload]

It is getting more and more competative and many of top stat/biostat programs have less than 5% acceptance rate. You may check Northwestern stat webpage for application statistics.

I am an applicant for stat/biostat phd program but doubtful why so many good mathemticians and statistician are seeking stat/biostat programs. Bussiness phd degrees even in a very low ranked school will double your salary and you can still enjoy high level math/stat skill sets in there if you want.

[cyberwulf]

Northwestern is a bizarre case; a very small, relatively low-ranked program at a big-name school which likely attracts far more applicants than it ought to.

 

If I were to guess, I would say that the average PhD admit rate for top 10 biostat programs is 10-15%. And that's over all students; the admit rate for U.S. citizens/permanent residents is substantially higher, probably around 20-25%. It's true that the field is attracting more PhD applicants (many departments are up by 30-50% over the past five years), but there is still room in top-level departments for very good students who aren't absolute rockstars.

[Funkoverload]

You can check UC Santa Barbara Stat PhD program too. 12 were admitted out of 157 applicants. less than 10% admission rate for a medium level school. it is very competitive. 

[chrishacker]

Admission statistics doesn't mean anything if you don't know who is in the pool

If my memory didn't go wrong, in 2012 Stanford admitted 20 students out of 120, which is far more than 5%.

[Funkoverload]

that will be for master not phd i guess

[Funkoverload]

i agree that there is very high discrimination between domestic and international in biostat

[chrishacker]

that will be for master not phd i guess

No. This is for PhDs. Data for 2013 is here...

http://www-stat.stanford.edu/admissions/profilephd.html

[wine in coffee cups]

Stanford's acceptance rate is not comparable to other departments because of the math subject GRE requirement. The acceptance rate is relatively high only because many potential applicants are filtered out by this requirement.

[cyberwulf]

Acceptance rate is almost irrelevant; as examples on this thread show, it isn't highly correlated with program quality. What matters is where the "bar" is, i.e. how good is the weakest student accepted? This, of course, is much harder to glean from admission summary statistics.