Welcome to the undergraduate program in Statistics at Iowa State University! Our program offers a Bachelor of Science degree in Statistics plus a minor in Statistics. A Statistics degree can create a large variety of opportunities in your professional future.

Our degrees are designed to serve the needs of students who wish to pursue a career after completing a B.S. degree as well as students with an interest in graduate education. We offer a broad variety of classes taught by dedicated and experienced faculty and our coursework is designed to provide solid training in statistical methods and scientific applications.

Currently we have about 100 undergraduate students enrolled in our B.S. degree program, making our undergraduate program one of the largest in the United States.

If you find yourself asking why you should study Statistics and what a degree in statistics might do for you, then you are at the right site. This site will provide you with important information about our degree program as well as schedules for upcoming events and activities. The site also offers easy access to links and other useful information regarding the main aspects of the program.

Areas of Study

A degree in Statistics opens up a broad range of opportunities for your professional career. After graduating, you can choose from employment possibilities in the financial sector and industry, health and government agencies, or from outstanding graduate programs around the country. In particular an undergraduate degree in Statistics can give you an advantage in applying for graduate programs in fields with a quantitative emphasis, such as: economics, marketing, finance, biology, psychology, public health, epidemiology, bioinformatics, and biostatistics; to name just a few. Most importantly, if you are interested in one of the natural or business sciences or in one of the humanities but also enjoy Mathematics, you can combine both areas of interest with a double-major including Statistics.

What do we have to offer?

At Iowa State you will receive training in statistical methods and applications from award winning faculty, providing you with a strong foundation for your future development either as a working professional or a graduate student. A fundamental background in areas such as design of experiments, regression, survey sampling techniques, multivariate analysis, and theoretical statistics as well as statistical computing is established during your 4-year degree. You will learn how to determine the appropriate statistical methods for a given scientific problem and data structure at hand and in being able to effectively communicate these statistical analyses in both oral and written forms. Experience with the common statistical software packages is an essential prerequisite for future employment and graduate study, so you will be given opportunities to learn advanced statistical software packages such as JMP, SAS, and/or R as a part of your studies and training.

Because Statistics is used in so many different areas (e.g. industry, financial sector, pharmaceutical, health and environmental sciences) it is of great advantage to have a minor or at least some substantial coursework in one of these fields. Naturally you should choose the area that you picture yourself working in after graduation. A specific choice however does not necessarily bind you to this particular area, but most likely will benefit you when you apply for your dream job.