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Admissions
Course Descriptions
Graduate School
PhD Program
Though the M.S. program is small, the Department provides a wide variety of courses leading to the Master's degree. The basic philosophy is that this program should provide broad training in statistical theory and practice, with specialization in either applied or theoretical areas. Students who have completed the Master's program have had little difficulty in finding jobs in industry or government. Many have found the M.S. in Statistics a beneficial adjunct to a Ph.D. degree in another field of study.
1. Summary
Completion of the MS degree requires at least 30 semester hours of graduate coursework, 24 of which must be taken in residence. Upon approval of the Graduate School, as many as six of these hours may be transferred from another accredited institution, or from UNC-CH for courses taken before admission to the Graduate School, or from a different graduate program at UNC-CH.
All students are required to take or exhibit competency in Stat 126 and 127. Students can place out of these courses with the consent of their advisor, but will not receive any course credit for doing so. Under the new system all students must
- a. Pass Stat 174
b. Take and pass 4 additional Statistics courses numbered 127 or higher.
c. Take and pass 12 additional semester hours of coursework either inside or outside the Department; these courses must be approved by the Department's Curriculum Committee.
d. Take at least 3 credit hours of 393 (MS essay). A maximum of six credit hours of 393 registration may be counted as part of the 30 hour minimum.
- Students must pass their ten required
courses with no more than two grades of L.
Students must take and pass the written examination at the M.S. level. The exam will consist of questions from three or more courses taken by the student. With the consent of the curriculum committee, one of the three questions may be from a course outside statistics (provided that the instructor of that course is willing to set and grade the question). All remaining questions will be selected from the annual comprehensive exams (courses at the level of 174 and up).
Each question will be scored on a scale from 1-10. The scores of each student will be rank-ordered, and the three highest scores will be added together. In order to pass the written exams at the MS level, a student must have a cumulative score of 16.5 or greater. This corresponds (on average) to three low passes at the PhD level.
Satisfactory completion of the MS essay will be based on an oral examination. The current policy of granting MS degrees to doctoral students after the successful completion of their PhD oral exams will be maintained.
3. Time Limit
All work credited toward MS degrees, except transferred course work, must be completed within a period of five years from the first date of registration.
