Advising
The vice chair for graduate studies is the chief graduate adviser and heads a committee of faculty advisers who may serve as academic advisers. The research interests of the members of this committee span most of the major areas of statistics. During their first quarter in the program students are required to meet with an academic adviser who assists them in planning a reasonable course of study. In addition, the academic adviser is responsible for monitoring the student’s degree progress and approving the study list each quarter. Students are encouraged to begin thinking about their research interests as early as possible. After the student identifies a dissertation topic, the chair of the dissertation committee becomes the student’s academic adviser.
Continuing students should meet with either the vice chair for graduate studies or their academic adviser at least once each quarter and a record of this interview is placed in the student’s academic file. Each fall a committee consisting of all regular departmental faculty meet to evaluate the progress of all enrolled doctoral students. This committee decides if students are making satisfactory progress, and if not offers specific recommendations to correct the situation. For students who have begun dissertation work, the determination of satisfactory progress is typically delegated to the academic adviser. Students who are found to be consistently performing unsatisfactorily may be recommended for termination by a vote of this committee. Doctoral students normally are considered to be making satisfactory progress if they take the written qualifying examination in the summer following their first year of study and the University Oral Qualifying Examination by the end of their second year.
Major Fields or Sub-disciplines
The strengths of current and prospective faculty dictate the specific fields of emphasis in the department: applied multivariate analysis; bioinformatics (Center for Statistical Research in Computational Biology); computational and computer-intensive statistics; computer vision; cognition; artificial intelligence; machine learning (Center for Vision, Cognition, Learning, and Autonomy); social statistics (Center for Social Statistics); experimental design and environmental statistics.
Foreign Language Requirement
None.
Course Requirements
Students are required to pass, with a grade of B- or better, 54 units of approved graduate course work (200 series) and to maintain an overall grade-point average of 3.0 or better. At least 40 of these units must be in courses from this department; the remaining units may be from courses in related departments. Students are strongly encouraged to take Statistics 200A-200B-200C, 201A-201B-201C, and 202A-202B-202C. All doctoral students are required to take Statistics 290 for at least six quarters, and strongly encouraged to take Stats 290 during each quarter of enrollment. In addition, all doctoral students can take Statistics 296 and/or 596, or 599 as needed. Please note that up to two units of Statistics 285 and eight units of Statistics 596 can be counted toward the 40 units from our department. Stats 290, 296, and 599 are not counted.
Students with gaps in their previous training are allowed to take, with the approval of their academic adviser, undergraduate courses offered by the department. However, Statistics 100A-100B-100C, 101A-101B-101C and 102A-102B-102C may not be applied toward course requirements for a graduate degree in the department. Students who need a basic refresher course are encouraged to take Statistics 100A-100B-100C.
Teaching Experience
Students are required to complete at least one quarter of service as a teaching assistant for a minimum of 25% time appointment. Students who serve as teaching assistants in the department must have taken or be currently enrolled in Statistics 495A-495B-495C. International students for whom English is a second language must pass either the Test of Spoken English (TSE) or the UCLA Test of Oral Proficiency (TOP) in English before they may serve as teaching assistants.
Written and Oral Qualifying Examinations
Academic Senate regulations require all doctoral students to complete and pass university written and oral qualifying examinations prior to doctoral advancement to candidacy. Also, under Senate regulations, the University Oral Qualifying Examination is open only to the student and appointed members of the doctoral committee. In addition to university requirements, some graduate programs have other pre-candidacy examination requirements. What follows in this section is how students are required to fulfill all of these requirements for this doctoral program.
All committee nominations and reconstitutions adhere to the Minimum Standards for Doctoral Committee Constitution.
After passing the written qualifying examination, students select a doctoral committee that administers the University Oral Qualifying Examination, required for advancement to candidacy. Students are encouraged to begin thinking about their research interests as early as possible and to seek out faculty members who might serve on their doctoral committee. PhD students making satisfactory progress are expected to take the written qualifying examination in the summer following their first year of study and the University Oral Qualifying Examination by the end of their second year.
Written Qualifying Exam Guidelines
The written qualifying examination consists of a high-quality paper, solely authored by the student. This paper can be a research paper containing an original contribution, or a focused critical survey paper. For the latter, students can only choose a subset of papers from a paper pool (Please first log out of all Google accounts, and then log into just your @g.ucla.edu account to access this link) which is made of suggested papers from our faculty. This paper pool consists of either classical papers or represents some most recent breakthrough in one or more research areas our faculty are working on.
In either track, students need to follow three principles in the literature review: a. comprehensive coverage: capture the full breadth of the relevant literature, including seminal works, recent advances, and diverse perspectives; b. critical evaluation: rather than summarizing sources, critically analyze and compare works in the literature with a goal to identify gaps, contradictions, and areas of opportunities; c. coherent synthesis: organize the literature around central themes, questions, or trends with an aim to connect individual studies to form a clear narrative.
The paper should demonstrate that the student understands and can integrate and communicate ideas clearly and concisely. The paper should be single-spaced using 12 point fonts, and the style should be suitable for submission to a first-rate journal or technical conference. The length of the paper will depend on the content and topic necessary to have a publishable paper. The suggested length is 20 pages. PDF format is required. Any contributions that are not the student’s, including those of the student’s adviser, must be explicitly acknowledged in detail in an Acknowledgements section.
The paper should have been written since the student started the PhD program, so that, for example, a MS thesis from a prior program would not normally be accepted. An exception is made for our own MS students who have transitioned to the PhD who are permitted to submit an extended version of prior work as long as:
- it clearly and explicitly references the previous work and describes the parts of the submitted work that are truly different.
- they add pages to critically discuss the previous work and/or discuss new context or new aspects learned since the prior work was written or suggest possible avenues for future research.
Grading rule: each paper will be graded according to three aspects.
For a research paper: originality of the proposed research idea; rigor of the proposed method/theory; clarity and organization. For a survey paper: comprehensive coverage; critical analysis and synthesis; clarity and organization. Reviewers in the committee are encouraged to pose follow-up questions on the submitted written exams.
A score from 1 (minimal achievement) to 10 (maximum achievement) will be given to each aspect by every committee member. To pass, a student must achieve a combined average score of more than 20. Papers scoring 20 or below will not meet the exam’s requirements.
The students are required to pass this written exam within 8 quarters (including summer quarter) since starting the PhD program. The maximum number of times that the written exam can be attempted is 3. Note that students have 3 chances (Sep 1, Dec 1, March 1) to submit their written exams each academic year.
The deadlines for submitting your paper are September 1, December 1, or March 1. In case you fail the exam, you have another chance to submit a paper a subsequent.
Note: Last Day to Submit Doctoral ATC Requests for Non-Resident Supplemental Tuition (NRST) Reduction is in September for Fall, December for Winter and March for Spring. For exact dates, see https://grad.ucla.edu/gasaa/library/deadlines.pdf
Written Examination Submission Link: Please first log out of all Google accounts, and then log into just your @g.ucla.edu account to access this link.
Oral Qualifying Exam Guidelines
The PhD Oral Qualifying Exam serves two key purposes:
- To provide faculty the opportunity to offer constructive feedback on the student’s research, including suggestions for improvements, extensions, and potential future directions.
- To assess the student’s ability to present their research in a clear, compelling, and concise manner. Whether pursuing a career in academia or industry, the skill to effectively communicate research is crucial for future success.
Presentation Format
- Duration: The student should prepare a 60-minute presentation. Exceeding this time limit may hinder discussion and feedback from the committee, which is a central component of the exam.
- Content: The focus should be on the research the student plans to complete for their PhD, together with all preliminary results and literature review. The talk should be structured as follows:
- Background and Literature Review (~10 minutes)
- Preliminary Results (~35 minutes): Present an overview of the main issues, research questions, and any early findings.
- Future Research Plans (~15 minutes): Discuss proposed directions for the remaining work, including a timeline and expected milestones for completing the research.
Addressing Key Questions
At the beginning of the presentation, briefly (30 seconds each) address the following:
- Why is your research of interest to the statistics community?
- If your research involves an application, why would your findings be important to that field?
- If your research is mostly about theoretical results, what is the novelty in theory or what new technical tools are invented?
Presentation Tips
To stay within the 60-minute limit, consider outlining the key results and ideas at the start of the talk, and fill in details as time allows. Reserve the last 5 minutes to conclude, emphasizing the significance of your findings and how they fit into the existing literature.
Committee Interaction (~30 mins)
- Q&A: Faculty may ask questions during or after the presentation. These questions will focus on your research on top of general knowledge.
- Feedback: After the presentation, committee members will ask further questions and offer comments or suggestions.
Written Component
- Thesis Proposal: At least three weeks before the exam, submit a written thesis proposal to the committee. This document should summarize your preliminary results, and also focus on your future research. It is expected to be approximately 20 pages (single-spaced, not including references).
Exam Logistics
- Scheduling: Work with the department office to book a room for the exam. The exam should be scheduled for 2 hours, although it may finish early.
- Committee Deliberation: At the beginning of the exam, the student will briefly leave the room while the committee has a preliminary discussion. Similarly, after the presentation, the student will leave the room while the committee deliberates, and will then be invited back to receive final feedback and a pass/no-pass decision.
Final Note
The oral exam is not only a presentation but also an opportunity for in-depth discussion with the faculty. The interaction between the student and committee is often the most valuable aspect, as it provides insight and guidance for shaping the remainder of the student’s PhD research.
Students are expected to pass the oral exam within 12 quarters (including summer quarter) since the time they start the PhD program. Students only have two chances to pass this oral exam.
Advancement to Candidacy
Students are advanced to candidacy and awarded the Candidate in Philosophy (C.Phil.) degree upon successful completion of the written and oral qualifying examinations.
Doctoral Dissertation
Every doctoral degree program requires the completion of an approved dissertation that demonstrates the student’s ability to perform original, independent research and constitutes a distinct contribution to knowledge in the principal field of study.
Final Oral Examination (Defense of the Dissertation)
Required for all students in the program. Please see the Advice on Taking the Oral Exam for more information.
Time-to-Degree
Students are expected to advance to candidacy for the Ph.D. degree within six quarters of full-time work. Completion of all degree requirements (including the dissertation) normally takes 15 quarters. The maximum time to degree is 24 quarters.
Termination of Graduate Study and Appeal of Termination
University Policy
A student who fails to meet the above requirements may be recommended for termination of graduate study. A graduate student may be disqualified from continuing in the graduate program for a variety of reasons. The most common is failure to maintain the minimum cumulative grade point average (3.00) required by the Academic Senate to remain in good standing (some programs require a higher grade point average). Other examples include failure of examinations, lack of timely progress toward the degree and poor performance in core courses. Probationary students (those with cumulative grade point averages below 3.00) are subject to immediate dismissal upon the recommendation of their department. University guidelines governing termination of graduate students, including the appeal procedure, are outlined in Standards and Procedures for Graduate Study at UCLA.
Special Departmental or Program Policy for the Ph.D. Program
A student who does not advance to doctoral candidacy within six quarters of full-time study is subject to a recommendation for termination. The graduate vice chair informs a student of such a recommendation and the student is asked to submit a written appeal and to solicit letters of support from members of the faculty. The appeal is considered by the Graduate Studies Committee, which makes the final departmental decision.
For Students Who Entered Before Fall 2022
Please click this link. Then navigate to “Program Requirements” in the tab that opens and select the academic year when you matriculated.
Timeline to Filing Your Dissertation
- By Fall of your 2nd year, choose your Faculty Adviser and discuss with your faculty adviser who will be on your committee. Once you have selected your faculty advisor, please submit this form to your faculty advisor. Then after it’s signed by both you and your advisor, submit the form to the SSA (Jose Salas).
- Complete and submit the Nomination of Doctoral Committee Form at least one month before you take your orals.
- Contact Student Affairs to schedule a time and date to take your orals. Confirm the time and date with your committee.
- Your Adviser will let you know when you are ready to take your final orals and submit your dissertation online. When that time comes, arrange time, date and location with the student affairs office.
- If you still need more time and after you’ve advanced choose to do a Filing Fee instead please read this website carefully: https://grad.ucla.edu/academics/graduate-study/filing-fee-application/
- You must also complete the Filing Fee application found here: https://grad.ucla.edu/gasaa/etd/filingfee.pdf
- Important dates and workshops are found here: https://grad.ucla.edu/academics/calendar/thesis-dissertation-filing-deadlines-and-workshops/
- Should you choose the Filing Fee for a specific quarter, you must be registered and enrolled the quarter before AND you must submit a complete first draft of your dissertation to all committee members at the time you submit your filing fee application (in order to apply the filing fee, students must be registered and enrolled in at least 2 units the quarter before).
Faculty Research Interest
See the faculty directory listing for current members and their interests at http://directory.stat.ucla.edu/.UCLA M.S. to Ph.D. in Statistics
Applications are accepted once a year. This application is for currently enrolled UCLA graduate students that wish to apply to the PhD in Statistics program. (Deadline Dec. 10, 2025 @ 11:59pm PST). Please submit the following Google Form. This Google Form is your application.- [Example: Currently enrolled UCLA MS in Biostats student would like to apply for the PhD in Statistics.]
- “Readmitted” graduate students must apply via regular Graduate Admissions application (https://grad.ucla.edu/admissions/admission-application-for-graduate-admission/). DO NOT USE THIS GOOGLE FORM. If you will have at least a 1 quarter gap (not including summer) between end of your current graduate program and the start of PhD in Stats, you are considered a “readmit” and must apply using the official UCLA graduate application.
- [Example: You complete your MS degree in Winter 2026 and would start the PhD in Fall 2026, this would be a “readmission” case and requires the official UCLA graduate application.]
- If you are non-UCLA student, DO NOT USE THIS GOOGLE FORM. It will not be reviewed. Please apply via the regular Graduate Admissions application (https://grad.ucla.edu/admissions/admission-application-for-graduate-admission/)