Which colleges should i apply for phd in bioStatistics(profile eval)

[nazi]

Hi guys. i am an international student and never studied in U.S universities. I plan on applying to biostat phd  programs in fall 2015. I am trying to figure out which programs are the best target for me. can you take a look at my cv and offer me your 5-6 best choices?(please help me with high ranked universities as well as low ranked ones)

here is my background:

 

graduate & undergraduate universities: public known universities in my country

 

MS (graduated as the first  rank), Biostatistics :GPA: 3.9 / 4

 

 BS, Statistics: GPA: 3.1 / 4

 

 TOEFL score: 98

 

 dont take GRE yet

 

 1 publication which is index in pubmed

 

Letters of rec: one from the dean of my graduate department.two from my supervisor and advisor.

 

Professional in  sas, spss. Work with LISREL & Mplus for my thesis

 

I will really appreciate  your  help)

[StatsG0d]

It would probably he helpful if you posted which math courses you've taken as well as your grades in them. Also, you may want to list your research interests.

That said, your undergrad GPA is quite low and I think a masters does not directly replace undergrad performance, particularly if the masters was completed outside the US. Cyberwulf has often mentioned that the competition for international students is very keen, and his department only accepts students from international schools that have a track record for producing successful phd students. I suppose if you went to one of those, you have a decent shot.

[cyberwulf]

I'm going to assume here that you did not attend one of the top handful of Chinese universities (PKU, Fudan, Tsinghua, etc.) If you did, your chances might be a little (but not a lot) better than this:

 

With your fairly low undergraduate GPA and low TOEFL (many departments get nervous with scores below 100), you will not be competitive for admission at places ranked in the top 15. You may be able to get an offer from a lower-ranked program (20-30), but even then there are a lot of international students with much better academic records than yours who will also not be admitted to top 15 places. To give you a rough idea, a typical top 10 program sees 150-250 PhD applicants. About 50-60% of these are international students, and they are all competing for ~5-10 offers. The remaining ones -- many of whom are good students -- have to go somewhere, and often make up a very high fraction of enrollees at at lower-ranked departments.