"D.U." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>... > Hi, thank you all for your replies. They are really very helpful. > I'm sorry but I just had a few more questions after seeing them. > I'm wondering in the case of industry work, pharmaceuticals > for example, when they hire PhDs what do they be look for > and pay attention to? Is it a strong publication record, or it's > more the kind of projects a person has worked on? Also, in
Many, if not most companies will hire new PhDs with 'no experience'; meaning, someone who has yet to be paid for 'doing' real, applied statistics. But more likely than not, you will pick up experience at grad school. For example, 1) Any decent Statistics or Biostat program will have consulting unit; they provide statistical expertise and collaborate with the Med school, for example. Here, you'll pick up 'real world' experience, possibly even resulting in a publication (in a medical/public health journal). 2) You can become a Research Assistant (instead of a Teaching asssistant) for a Professor. It could range from working on a year-long assignment for a researcher in another dept. (you would be there statistican), to more theoretical work that results in your disserstation. The former helps you gain industry experience, the latter is better prepartion for academia. 3) You can do an internship with a local company (doesn't have to be in biostat). Anyways, if you come out of a good program, that should be enough for a drug company to realize you're competent. They won't care about publications. At the very least, you should do as much of 1) to 3) above, just to have an edge. Also, if you know you want to go into industry, the post-doc isn't necessary. > relation to this, does a post-doc help in such cases and do > people in fact often go to post-docs to make themselves more > attractive? On the other hand, what kind of qualifications would > be important for getting an academic job? And what would be > expected of a new faculty for him or her to get tenure at a research > university, especially since there may be much collaborative work? Academia is, of course, a different animal. Here, your ability to do independent research is critical. What I mean by this is the ability to come up with new statistical methods and grinding out the mathematics involved. Here, the 'theoretical' R.A. I mentioned above would be very helpful, as would a Post-Doc. Whatever university hires you will want to see a few publications either accepted or under review. And if you have a fairly well known advisor(s) that will give excellent recommendations, that will be even better. > I'm really interested in biostatistics and the kind of work biostatisticians > do. I am seriously considering getting a PhD in it. Meanwhile I thought it > wouldn't hurt to know as much as possible about what it's like in advance. > > Thanks again, very much. > dax urbszat Good luck to you. One piece of advice: if you are very talented at mathematics (e.g. Graduate level mathematics comes easilyy to you), it shouldn't be too difficult. If, like me, you're not bad at it (e.g. you can do Grad. level math, just with more effort than your lucky genius classmate), getting a PhD will of course, be a little more difficult but not impossible. My take: a PhD is less a test of your intelligence, but your work ethic and/or endurance (unless again, your a lucky genius). And if you have had very little math, I'd suggest you take AS MUCH MATH AS POSSIBLE - it will make grad. school much easier. And don't get scared by the qualifiers. Think of them as a personal challenge, not a test given out by the Biostat/Stat dept.) ----------------------------------------------------------------- . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
