<p>I recently graduated college with a B.S. in Biology and Neuroscience and a minor in Chemistry. I currently work at a CRO and have been interested in pursuing an education in Biostatistics.</p>
<p>I've been looking up doctoral programs and know that they are pretty competitive, but how competitive do applicants tend to be? What would I need to ensure that I have on my application in terms of courses taken, undergraduate GPA, GRE score and other credentials/experience?</p>
<p>Many (most?) biostatistics PhD programs require a master’s. The work experience is good, because people who get graduate degrees in biostats tend to have some work experience beforehand. The CRO should give you both post-bacc work experience and the research experience that is necessary to get into a biostats PhD program.</p>
<p>At minimum, you’ll need to have taken three semesters of calculus, linear algebra, and 1-2 undergraduate statistics classes (like the two-semester sequence Intro to Stats and Intro to Prob). Real analysis and a programming language is also recommended; some programs will require the programming language. Realistically, if you can learn at least one statistical program (R or SAS would be best) before you go that would be great, because you’re going to be expected to already know one when you begin the program. Having taken more math and stats classes would, of course, be great.</p>
<p>Columbia (my alma mater) recommends a score of at least 700 on the Q section of the GRE; on the new GRE, that would be at least a 155, which is about the 66th percentile. I think that you should aim quite a bit higher - more like a 160 (78th percentile, according to ETS) or higher. They also recommend at least a 600 on the V section, which is a ~160 on the new test.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, some of this advice is off-base. Virtually no PhD programs in biostatistics require a Masters, and in fact the vast majority of students enrolled in PhD programs at the top 20 departments came in straight out of undergrad. Some places offer a Masters “on the way” to the PhD, which can be a little deceiving to the untrained eye. I’ve also never seen a program that requires knowledge of any particular programming language, or expects you to know one coming in the door. Most incoming students have had some programming experience, but (all?) programs offer some kind of computing “boot camp” to get students up to speed on the necessary commands and techniques.</p>
<p>It’s hard to say what kind of GRE Q you should be aiming for without knowing about the rest of your profile and hence where you would be competitive for admission. I’ve written quite a few posts on biostat graduate admissions (under the same username) at the Mathematics & Statistics Forum on GradCafe (<a href=“Mathematics and Statistics - The GradCafe Forums”>Mathematics and Statistics - The GradCafe Forums). You might head over there for a few details, and some advice from others who can speak from experience.</p>
<p>I actually looked at PhD in biostatistics programs for myself, and found some that do require or recommend master’s degrees before admission, Columbia’s program included (and it’s not an MA in the way - I have a PhD myself with a non-terminal MA earned along the way, so I know the difference). Although perhaps instead of many, I should’ve said “some”; I wasn’t sure how many did, so I was guessing based on the distribution of programs I looked at myself. Nevertheless, it’s great for OP that most PhD programs don’t require the master’s before admission.</p>
<p>Also, the ‘in the door’ knowledge I was referring to was statistical packages, not programming. Although no PhD program I found said on the website that they required knowledge of a specific statistical package ahead of time, from my own experience with statistical training I am willing to be that most PhD programs in biostatistics would expect at least intermediate knowledge of some statistical package/statistical computing in general. I just thought programming knowledge would be helpful but not required, since it seemed like OP had some time before admission to acquire skills.</p>
<p>Grr… posted before edits were finished…for the last paragraph I meant to say that I have seen some statistics programs with biostatistics concentrations (as opposed to straight biostatistics programs in SPHs) require a programming language. Several of the programs I was looking at at the time were statistics programs instead of actual biostatistics programs, so that’s where my mistake came in!</p>