Statistics PhD Requirements

• PhD Minor
• PhD Co-Major

PhD candidates must complete at least 72 semester credit hours (half or more from Iowa State) with a minimum 3.0 (B) average, and submit an original thesis representing a substantial contribution to statistics as a science.

The PhD core courses may be taken after completion of the MS core. The PhD core courses are as follows:

See all courses offered by the department

In addition to these PhD core courses, the student must take 611 and at least four electives at the 500- or 600-level with at least one of these being at the 600-level. In addition to the course work, a PhD student must pass a written exam, an oral preliminary exam and a dissertation defense.

PhD Written Exam

The department offers one written exam for the PhD degree. The PhD written exam is given in August, the week before fall semester begins. This exam will be based on the statistical knowledge contained in the MS core courses (500, 511, 542 and 543) and the PhD core courses (601, 642 and 643). There will be only one guaranteed attempt at the written exam. Decisions will be in the form of Pass, Conditional Pass, Fail or Fail with an Invitation to Make a Second Attempt. (This evaluation applies to the full exam so it is not possible to pass part of this exam.) The exact timing and structure of this exam will be announced by the PhD Exam Committee during the spring semester.

For the dissertation there are many research areas available in the program. The current active areas are:

• Bioinformatics/computational biology
• Engineering
• Environmental statistics
• Nonparametric regression
• Social science
• Statistical computing
• Statistical graphics
• Survey sampling / Design & analysis of complex sample surveys
• Theory