It is clear that the teaching of medical statistics needs to be improved, yet areas for priority are unclear as medical students' learning and application of statistics at different levels is not well known. Our goal is to assess the attitudes of medical students toward the learning and application of medical statistics, and discover their learning needs. We conducted a cross-sectional survey of learning and application of medical statistics among graduates and undergraduates at a medical school in Chongqing. More than 70% of the medical students thought that the medical statistics course was as important as other medical courses. Among them, 62.58% of graduate students thought that it was very hard to learn medical statistics, whereas only 27.72% undergraduate students held the same opinion. Both graduates and undergraduates stated that the main difficulties involved in learning medical statistics were its abstract principles and the large quantity of concepts and formulas. In all, 70% of both graduates and undergraduates could conduct a basic statistical analysis of general medical data independently, although undergraduates demonstrated greater proficiency in applying basic statistical methods than did graduates (p<0.05). The most common mistake students made in solving statistical problems was the misuse of statistical methods. In conclusion, medical students do not perform well in learning and applying medical statistical methods despite a clear recognition of the importance of the course, and we should start to make the necessary reforms in the teaching of medical statistics.