MS Statistical Science Duke

[Andy C.]

Anyone else admitted? Rejected? Would love to connect and hear your thoughts on the program. It's either here, or Columbia's MA Stats.

[Stat Assistant Professor]

Congrats on your acceptances. Duke is a MUCH smaller program (I think they admit fewer than 10 Masters students every year and only 4-5 PhD students max), so you'll likely get to form a closer rapport with your cohort. Additionally, its location in the Triangle area means you will have proximity to a LOT of stats internships at places like GlaxoSmithKline, SAS Institute, IBM, etc.

 

I'm sure there are a lot of opportunities like that at Columbia too, but I would personally prefer Duke and consider it to be a more elite program than Columbia's (more selective as well).

[StatPhD2014]

What are your goals do you want to apply for a PhD after or go after jobs?

[Triamvx]

Anyone else admitted? Rejected? Would love to connect and hear your thoughts on the program. It's either here, or Columbia's MA Stats.

 

Also interested in hearing MA perspectives on this program.

 

I'm currently deciding between Duke's program and UVA's new data science program, among those I've been admitted to so far. It's comparing apples to oranges, considering Duke is 2 years statistics and UVA's is 11 month data science with no track record. My focus is on jobs and not a PhD, so data science and the much shorter program length at UVA are attractive. However, hearing very good things about Duke adds pressure to the other direction.

[Y.T. Safire]

I would definitely choose Duke over Columbia.

 

The class size of MA program at Columbia is 150+, making it rather difficult for academic advisers to take care of each student. Also, it seems that there is big variance among various courses in terms of teaching quality. For instance, Nonparametric Statistics is good while students complained a lot about Linear Regression Models which is worrisome considering linear model is important for job-hunting.