Determined to pursue statistics, Hanna Vaidya chose Wake Forest for its relatively new statistics program, small class sizes and undergraduate research opportunities. Vaidya has always had an interest in math and working with numbers, and taking AP Statistics in high school showed her a way to apply her skills to real-world problems.
“I feel like math, a lot of the time, is super theoretical, but I liked that there was a clear path for real-world issues being solved using [statistics],” Vaidya said. “Something that they say in the field of statistics is ‘all models are wrong.’ It’s just which one is the least wrong. Because there’s no way to 100% model real-world phenomena, just based on the nuances of things that happen.”
Coming to Wake Forest has allowed Vaidya to better understand the world through a statistical perspective.
“I felt like before coming to college in high school, I always thought there was just one right answer to do everything. So being able to see multiple paths and multiple ways to get to a conclusion is very interesting,” Vaidya said.
In addition to her major in statistics, Vaidya is also minoring in biology, computer science and health policy and administration. Despite her accomplishments throughout her years at Wake Forest, Vaidya admitted she initially felt unsure about what her social life and the peers in her department would be like.
“Computer science and [statistics] have traditionally been male-dominated. So I think that coming into a male-dominated field was something that definitely intimidated me at first,” Vaidya said. “But through organizations such as the Association for Women in Mathematics, I was able to really find a community of people more similar to me who are experiencing some of the same things I [was].”
Vaidya is currently the president of the Association for Women in Mathematics, where she is able to create a community for her fellow women in math to learn from and encourage each other. She is also a part of several dance organizations on campus and is the president of Setting the Groove, the tap dancing club on campus.
“Being able to integrate myself into the dance community at Wake [Forest] has been very important to me, because it allows me to do something besides just academic stuff all the time,” Vaidya said. “Having something that I like to do for fun as well as having a team of people in that aspect of my life is very important to me.”
Although the statistics program split from the mathematics department a few years ago, Vaidya feels confident and equipped through her classes to perform for internships and job opportunities.
“The fact that Wake Forest is able to train its undergrads to be almost as adequate as Master students sets us apart from other applicants,” Vadiya said. “And I’ve found that as I’ve applied for jobs that I’m super prepared [for] despite only having a Bachelor’s degree.”
After graduation, Vaidya will be doing data science for a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group in Charlotte, N.C.
