PhD Biostats: Columbia vs Berkeley

[ang92]

Hi everyone, 

I'm currently trying to choose between Columbia and Berkeley for a PhD in biostats. Does anyone have any advise on this one? I am interested to hear about the reputation of both programs and the areas that they are known for. I want to go into academia, is there a program better suited for this? 

Thanks!

[StatsG0d]

This one I think is relatively tougher than the UNC vs. Columbia post. I guess the big advantage of Berkeley is that (I think) you don't have to take written qualifying exams. They also (I believe) allow you to pretty much take whatever classes you want. Although I think in a way the second thing can be a disadvantage should you end up not having the same background as your peers or what other schools would call "core" classes. Berkeley also is very tiny. And in my opinion, it is kind of hard to see who belongs to biostats and who belongs to stats (it seems every prof advises almost exclusively stats students). Also only having 2 other people in the cohort would personally make me feel pretty isolated. And while Berkeley has a sizable stats program, in my experience there is a big disconnect between stats / biostats people (I am not sure why). I would also be concerned about the research diversity of the department.

I think Columbia is slightly larger than Berkeley. On their web site, it seems they have some research diversity (at least more than Berkeley). It also is easier to distinguish the program between the stats program since it is housed in the School of Public Health (side note: Berkeley people say their biostats program is also in their public health school--and you gotta apply to SOPHAS. However, their web site more indicates it's a group within statistics). 

I know Berkeley is very strong in causal inference--if you're interested in that for sure, then there's an obvious choice. I think Columbia diversifies their research specialties, so if you're not committed to causal inference, Columbia might be a better choice.

 

 

[cyberwulf]

Berkeley has had much better academic placements than Columbia in the past 10 years: Kasper Hansen (Hopkins), Sherri Rose (Harvard), Maya Petersen (Berkeley), and Alex Luedtke (Fred Hutch/UW), among others. I can't think of anyone going to a top-tier biostat place recently coming out of Columbia biostat.