What are the pre-requisites for admission?
The GRE/GMAT are not required for admission.
A minimum undergraduate GPA of 3.0 is required.
Bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university
2 semesters of basic statistics
2 semesters of calculus
2 semesters of biology
matrix algebra
must know a programming language
International applicants must also include official TOEFL scores
How long does it take to complete the biostatistics coursework?
It usually takes students in the Biostatistics Track about 3 years to complete the program, especially if they are working part-time along with their studies.
How many faculty are associated with the biostatistics track?
There are currently 5 faculty members from the Department of Family & Preventive Medicine plus several faculty throughout the School of Medicine who work closely with Biostatistics students.
What kind of financial assistance is available to biostatistics students?
The Department of Family and Preventive Medicine operates a Health Research Center which sometimes employs biostatistics students. Please visit the fund request page for more information.
Other financial assistance may be available through sources external to the MStat program. For applications and other information visit www.sa.utah.edu/finance/
What are the curriculum requirements?
Click here for requirements page.
Where can I find more information about the practicum experience?
The practicum is one of the culminating experiences in the MStat in Biostatistics program. The purpose is to allow students to obtain specialized, hands-on, real-world experience in routine statistical consulting, data management, and data analysis comparable to that in a master’s level career biostatistics position. It also allows the student, advisor and a practicing data analysis mentor to evaluate whether the student's statistics and consulting skills are mature enough to go out into the field as a statistics professional. Former students have reported that the Practicum was one of their most valuable experiences.
Guidelines regarding appropriate objectives, situations, and time spent on the practicum are available from the MSTAT-Biostatistics track program coordinator.
The student is responsible to set up a practicum, in consultation with the advisor. The advisor will help choose a suitable practicum and find a statistics/statistics-related professional to serve as the mentor. The advisor and mentor will be the student’s main source of assistance and feedback during this time. Questions may be referred to the MStat in biostatistics track representative as necessary.
Practicums may be paid or unpaid, depending on what is available. The practicum is a 1-semester hour course. A practicum is different from the MStat project.
Before the practicum begins, some forms need to be completed and submitted to your advisor. After the practicum is completed, you must submit two copies of your paper by the last day of class in the semester in which you wish to graduate. This must include both student and mentor/faculty evaluations.
More information about the practicum experience are contained in the following documents.
What is the m.stat. project and what are the requirements?
Your MStat project is an example of the statistics that you would be able to perform as a career biostatistician. It should demonstrate your ability to think through a new (to you, but not so hard that your advisor needs to do it for you) statistical method and data analysis using it. The write-up should move through these thought processes: it should *not* look like a medical journal article. Your plan should be thoroughly discussed with and approved by your advisor and with the members of your supervisory committee. You are required to submit an IRB application for IRB scrutiny. Your advisor and the MSTAT-Biostatistics program coordinator will need a copy of your proposal and the IRB’s formal determination.
Notes for Students on the MStat Projects:
After completing their course work and practicum, every MStat in Biostatistics student completes one project instead of doing a Master's thesis, and writes a report on it. This project is an example of the kind of analysis that a person with an MStat is qualified to think their way through.
The project should not be simple regressions or t-tests or a technique that the student has learned in a class. If they involve solely routine data analysis, they are not good projects, although they would be excellent for a practicum. MStat in Biostatistics projects need to have some added component which makes them non-routine, and for which the student needs to learn something new, such as mixed models (although most of these have become routine), propensity score models, methods of missing value imputation, a simulation study of Phase I study designs, a special analysis for a crossover study, etc.
The student is expected to learn the technique well enough to explain it to other statisticians. Some students will read a statistical journal article, program the method and use it on a data set. Sometimes a very messy data set with multicollinearity and other issues is enough of an added feature to make a project worth being a Masters project. The rare student will actually invent a new statistical method or prove a theorem, since this would be PhD-level.
The student's supervisory committee members are there to witness that the student can think their way through a project. The student chooses them to be knowledgeable about the statistics and the projects. Usually two are PhD statisticians and one might not be. The committee can listen and be a sounding board, but if the student's committee members have to provide 'help' very much at all, that would be a warning flag that the project is too hard for the student, and another project should be selected. So, it is important to wait until the necessary coursework is completed, to be ready for the work of the project.
The written report is to be written in good scientific English and to show how the student thought their way through the project. It describes the medical or scientific issue, the statistical method, and how the statistics answered the research question. The report needs to justify the student's choices of analyses, checks of assumptions, and other analytic decisions to another statistician. This is different from the kind of writing that would be done for the MPH program, as it is more statistically sophisticated. It is generally NOT the kind of writing that is suitable for a medical journal.
Some MStat students are able to find funding for their projects, and others do the projects for free. It is ok to get paid for doing the projects, and it is ok to do the projects for free, if there is a project that interests the student, and for which there is no funding.
When to start the projects? A student should have taken the Math 5010-5080-5090; at least one of the FPMD 6106-6107; and Math 6010 or FPMD 7120 before they start their projects, so that they will have enough theoretical basis to be able to teach themselves a more advanced statistical technique and use it on data. Preferably, they will also have had a regression class, Math 6020 or FPMD 7130, and the Biostatistics seminar, and they will be just starting the Stat 6869 course. However, it depends on the project and the student.
What can I do with an m.stat. in biostatistics?
The paths taken by Biostatistics graduates are varied, and include the following careers:
- Biostatistician in the pharmaceutical industry
- Medical research in clinical trials
- Epidemiology
- Health services research
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