PhD in Statistics

Doctoral study here centers on the harder, less routine problems of statistics and on carrying that work into real settings, from university research to banking and healthcare. The program is interdisciplinary. Students work closely with approachable faculty and frequently team up with colleagues from business, engineering, bioinformatics and data science. A core skill is collecting large bodies of numerical data, analyzing them, and explaining the results to audiences in other fields. Degree requirements depend on prior preparation. Entrants holding a bachelor's degree need ninety graduate semester hours, and those holding a master's need sixty. Thirty of those hours must go to dissertation research, and candidates spend at least one unbroken academic year in full-time residence at the university. Graduates move toward data-driven employers, including companies shaping products from customer data and healthcare organizations that need statisticians for clinical trials and drug development.