In order to prepare for the preliminary schoolwide oral exam, students are require to satisfactorily complete a practice oral exam, given by a standing committee of Biostatistics faculty.  The practice exam is to be scheduled for no later than six months after the end of the fourth term of the second year.  Students will be evaluated on their ability to communicate statistical ideas and concepts.  Students should prepare a paper/proposal related to their potential thesis topic.

Some suggested topics are:

• Nonparametric inference/resampling (bootstrapping or jackknifing)
• Nonparametric regression (generalized additive models, classification/regression trees [CART], or multivariate additive regression splines [MARS])
• Sample surveys
• Foundations of inference/statistical evidence
• Spatial analysis
• Categorical data analysis
• Survival analysis
• Measurement error modeling
• Causal inference
• Missing data problems
• Longitudinal data analysis
• Generalized linear models
• Bayesian analysis
• Markov chain Monte Carlo
• Decision theory
• Statistical genetics
• Statistical imaging
• Estimating functions
• Nuisance parameters

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