MS -> PhD pathway at UW

[ProsBiostat2017]

Long time reader first time poster.  I have an offer from the University of Washington biostatistics for an MS that I'm taking more seriously as the deadline approaches.  The reason is that they allow you to transfer to the PhD provided you do very well on the qualifying exam and get a recommendation.  About 1-2 students per year of a small cohort do it, so we're not talking astronomical odds.  My question is whether anyone has done something similar at UW or another school and if they have thoughts on whether this is a good option.

On one hand it seems risky, especially since I'm probably at the low end of their talent pool given that they did not send me a PhD offer.  On the other hand UW is a substantially better school at placing folks into academia than my PhD offers (Minnesota, UCLA being the highest ranked) and academia is my eventual goal / pipe dream.  It seems to me that the worst case is getting an MS from UW, not a horrible end, and I happen to be in a situation where I can afford it financially.

Thanks in advance, for any thoughts and the posts from the past which I have already benefited from.

[twilightgalaxy]

Re: odds of transfer, you should consider that not all MS students wish to transfer to the PhD. Anecdotally, everyone I know who wanted to transfer to PhD (as you said, 1-2 students of a small cohort) managed to do so. Of course, I could have missed people who wanted to transfer but did not get in. I'm sure there's issues of selection too, in that better students are more interested in doing PhDs. But just something to consider. 

Edited April 7, 2017 by twilightgalaxy

[ProsBiostat2017]

Thanks for the reply, that's quite helpful.  I did consider that but of course it's hard to peg down exact numbers of who's interested and who is not, your anecdote gives me a bit more to go on and I sincerely appreciate it.