With the explosion of data science and data analytics over the last decade, employees with a background in Statistics are in high demand. The Statistics major allows students to build quantitative skills, develop proficiency with computational tools, and strengthen analytical thinking, all of which can be applied in many different disciplines. You can read more about students’ post-grad destinations here.

To change your major to Statistics or Stat&CS, you must first meet certain declaration criteria.

Changing your major to Statistics is fairly straightforward. To declare the Statistics major, students must complete all three levels of calculus (MATH 220 or 221, MATH 231, and MATH 241) , and earn a B- or higher in STAT 400. Upon completion of those criteria, you can change your major to Statistics or add Stat as a second major. Please see the College of LAS’s page for more details.

Joining the Stat&CS major is competitive, and involves a portfolio application. We have a whole transfer guide posted here that outlines the criteria, timeline, portfolio, and other details for applying to Stat&CS. There is no guarantee of admission to the Stat&CS major.

Currently, we do not have assigned advisors in Statistics. We have a shared email address (stat-undergrad@illinois.edu) and open drop-in advising hours where we serve students on a first-come, first-served basis. Students in our department can work with any of the undergrad advisors on our team; you can view our hours and information here.

If you’re pursuing a major in Statistics & Computer Science, you have access to the Stat advising team and the CS advising team. You can view the CS advising page here. Your CS advisor is your best resource for questions about the CS side of the curriculum.

The vast majority of our courses will use R for statistical computing. Certain courses will use Python, and some may include other packages, languages and platforms like RStudio, Git, shell, SQL, Jupyter, etc.

Use whatever you’re the most comfortable with! R can run on Windows, MacOS, and other platforms. You probably want something a little more powerful than a Chromebook, but otherwise most laptops and desktop computers will be fine. If you find that you need something more specific for a particular course or project (or if your regular machine breaks!), you can look into options with the Loanable Tech program through the University Library or visit a Computer Lab on campus.