The standard period of study is three years and ends with the conferral of a doctorate degree at one of the respective Faculties. Graduates will also receive a certificate stating their qualifications, facilitating their entry into the working world. During the introductory year, the doctoral candidates will complete an intensive education programme in statistical methods, followed by a two-year in-depth phase with practical experience. They will also conduct a doctoral project in a special area. Candidates will have two years to complete their dissertation including the first year as an orientation phase. All doctoral candidates are strongly suggested to take advantage of a stay abroad. This can be conducted using the good contacts abroad offered by the Institutes and Faculties that partake in the Centre for Statistics. The programme aims to give doctoral candidates the skills they need to precisely structure and formulate statistical questions, to formulate them as mathematical problems and solve them with the suitable techniques, as well as to independently and scientifically conduct in-depth work. Specific fields include the Agricultural Sciences, Biology and Genetics, Economic Sciences, Forestry Sciences, Mathematics and Statistics, Medicine and Epidemiology, Psychology as well as the Social Sciences. The programme is located at the Göttingen Centre for Statistics, which is interdisciplinarily supported by twelve Institutes: Centre of Methods in Social Sciences, Institute of Agricultural Economics, Seminar for Economics, Department of Genetic Epidemiology, Department of Medical Statistics, Georg-Elias-Müller Institute for Psychology, Institute of Forest Biometry and Informatics, Institute of Microbiology and Genetics, Institute for Numerical and Applied Mathematics, Institute of Statistics and Econometrics, Department of Forest Inventory and Remote Sensing, and the Institute for Mathematical Stochastics. Occupational fields include the academic career path as well as positions as statisticians in fields of application in industry and business.

This programme is being phased out. Enrolment is no longer possible.