Who is it for?
- If your undergraduate degree contained only a limited amount of statistics, then postgraduate study provides a way of gaining a full professional training
- Undergraduates wishing to study deeper into the subject to broaden their knowledge and skills
- Increase job prospects in the competitive job markets
- Required as part of a research based statistical career.
Types of postgraduate qualifications
Taught courses
Taught courses usually lead to a Master of Science (MSc) degree.
Research-based courses
Programmes of research usually lead towards a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) qualification, although there are also research programmes that are shorter or less intensive that lead to a degree that is often called an MPhil.
MSc courses
Extension courses
These are designed for graduates who have already covered quite a lot of statistics in their undergraduate degrees, or perhaps gained a lot of professional experience in their work. Some of these courses cover statistics quite widely, while others specialise in particular areas such as medical statistics.
Conversion courses
These are designed for graduates from other disciplines (but usually in scientific, mathematical or engineering areas) who wish to learn about statistics.
Course structure
MSc courses usually last for one year of full-time study. Typically, the first eight or nine months are spent studying several units of taught material and the remainder of the year in preparing a dissertation. The taught material covers many aspects of theoretical and applied statistics. As well as formal lectures, there are tutorial classes and statistical computing workshops.
The dissertation is your own work, studying a particular area of the subject in depth. A member of staff acts as your supervisor and quite often is based on a real problem. Some universities require you to give a presentation based on it.
Part-time study
Part-time study often consists of attending the university for the taught material for one day per week for two years. The examinations are then taken, after which the dissertation is spread over several months (but usually with an upper time limit of about a year), during which you gradually develop the work and make visits to your supervisor from time to time to discuss progress.
Studying part-time is ideal for those in employment or have families to support. Many employers, especially in professional environments, will readily make arrangements for you to be away from your work for the one day each week when you need to attend lectures. But please be aware that you will still have your normal full-time job and will be expected to attend to your academic studies on top of this.
Other versions of part-time study are also available. You might be able to arrange to spread the degree over more than the usual period by taking only one or two of the units of taught material at a time, completing the programme over an extended number of years. Another variant is evening study; for example, Birkbeck College in London specialises in running MSc courses by evening study, and it has an MSc in Applied Statistics and Operational Research.
Distance learning
This is becoming increasingly popular. It obviously removes the need to attend a university – except perhaps for occasional tutorials, which might in any case be optional – and it means that you can plan your studies so as to fit in with requirements imposed by your employment or any other aspects of your life. You must, of course, be fully aware that studying in this way is rigorous and demanding.
Some university MSc courses have been formally accredited by the Royal Statistical Society. Among other things, this means that graduates from these courses are automatically eligible to apply for the Society’s professional qualification of Graduate Statistician. The list of accredited courses changes from year to year; the current list can be seen on the Society’s website. It should however be stressed that this accreditation is voluntary and there are also excellent MSc courses at other universities.
PhD study
The demand for good PhD-trained statisticians in and outside academia and other scientific research establishments is high. You can find more in-depth information about PhD’s on the findaphd website.
In brief, a PhD usually involves:
- Research-led study
- Full-time study of at least three years, although it can be studied part time
- Work supervised by a course tutor (although independent research is encouraged)
- Work could form part of a team’s research project.
MPhil
Several universities offer research programmes that are shorter and lead to a degree called an MPhil (MSc is also quite often used; this should not be confused with the situation of a taught course leading to the MSc degree, as described above). These programmes might involve an investigation of some of the tools of statistics, or could be application-based, perhaps involving the analysis of complex datasets. Such programmes are suitable for students who have a reasonable background in statistics and who want to learn research skills by pursuing a full-time project, but who do not want to commit themselves to the time and intensity of a three-year PhD programme.