Thinking about going into the statistics field, was it a good choice for you?
Hello Anon!
Short answer: Yes, for me it was. (Tho my current job is more statistics adjacent.)
Longer answer: The field of statistics is AMAZINGLY broad, and has applications in tons of other fields: wildlife research, healthcare, healthcare research, manufacturing, actuarial planning, airline route planning, etc., etc., etc. And there is “Big Data” where you are dealing with millions or billions of rows and how do you do that without breaking your computer’s brain?
Think of any science field or major business and there is probably a way they use statistics.
Stated another way: Statistics is a broadly applicable field, that you could use to get a job in a ton of different kinds of fields.
So, I’d suggest that you spend some time thinking about how you want to apply statistics. Do you want to learn about animals? Healthcare research that helps understand how diseases propagate? I’m not thinking of the right word, but like Social Care research. (Human services?) That’s going to involve surveying people. Is there another field you’re interested in?
When I graduated I had a general statistics degree, no specializations. I interviewed at an insurance provider, a healthcare research facility, and had applied to a couple consulting firms. The job I landed was in Institutional Research at a 2-year college.
Institutional Research was not a job I was familiar with before I found the job listing. For my particular college, I handle some of the mandatory reporting the college has to do to the state and federal government, I work with the long-term planning folks to measure if the college is meeting it’s goals, I work with individual instructors to determine if a change they made is helping students succeed in the way they intended, I work with college administration to understand the population of our service area, and to see if there are parts of that population that we’re not reaching. A lot of my job is at the “summary statistics” level rather than at the predictive analytics or or really heavy analysis, but I do get to do some of that. (And my boss encourages me to when something comes up.) I am also working to increase the data literacy of the college, so we can get to a point where there is room and request for some more advanced things.
We’re a pretty small department, so I get to pull a lot of my own data, so my SQL skills get pretty regular use, too. (Which is something I also enjoy. I would encourage anyone going into Stats to take some SQL, python, or other computer programming classes.)
My job isn’t super stats heavy, but It’s a great fit for me, and I really enjoy it. (Having an awesome boss helps, too.) I know that some of my colleagues at other colleges work on some more statistically heavy stuff, and have even written some research papers.
I hope that’s helpful, Anon. Statistics is so broad, and I don’t know you, so I can only really talk about my little corner of it.
I will give my advice for anyone going after an advanced degree: Make sure that before you commit, you can answer the question: “Getting a [masters/doctoral] degree in _____ will unlock the doors to allow me to do ______, which i couldn’t without getting that degree.” We’ve got folks fighting for higher ed, but the cost is still high.
Please feel free to message again if you have further questions.
