Candidates must fulfill the requirements of the College of Graduate Studies and of the Division of Statistics. See the College of Graduate Studies section of part 4 in the UI Catalog for the applicable general degree requirements.  The College of Graduate Studies requires a minimum of 30 credits for the M.S. degree.

Before the 2003-2004 catalog, students were required to pass a Qualifying Exam over their core statistics course material and to also complete and defend a master's thesis. 

With the new 2003-2004 catalog 3 different tracks to the MS are now offered .  There are two non-thesis options and one thesis option: 

1. Thesis (Stat 500) (with no qualifying exam) 
2. Internship (Stat 598) with an internship report 
3. Research course (Stat 599) that includes a comprehensive examination and presentation of written and oral project reports 

An individual graduate program is tailored for the student, but all students must complete a basic core requirement of 12 credits and one of the three degree options.   The core requirements are:

• Stat 451 Probability Theory  (3 cr)
• Stat 452 Mathematical Statistics (3 cr)

• Stat 507 Experimental Design (3 cr)

• Stat 510 Regression (3 cr)

A maximum of 6 credits of Stat 500 Master's Research & Thesis may be counted toward the thesis degree option.

Students are required to register for ST- 501 (seminar) and attend this class regularly. Each semester all students enrolled in ST- 501 give at least one seminar presentation to the faculty and graduate students.