> Start with Wasserman

If you're referring to "All of Statistics" by Wasserman, then there are some significantly easier textbooks to learn statistics from. Depending on the program, "All of Statistics" is a book used by senior undergrads or grad students. Are there more mathematical heavy stats books, yes, but this isn't a casual read for someone who is trying to learn statistics either.

I like "Probability and Statistics for Engineering and the Sciences" by Devore as an intro book. It covers the basics of probability distributions, maximum likelihood and method of moments estimation, ANOVA, and linear regression. Pre-requisite knowledge is probably multivariable calculus, matrix multiplication, determinants, and eigenvalues.