I have a question for you experts out there, enough that I finally stopped lurking and made an account. I want to say I appreciate all of your support for each other through this insane time. I've profited from it even though I haven't participated until now.
Anyway, I've been accepted to the University of Washington Epi PhD, but it's one of those programs where they accept you but don't fund you, so you have to find funding on your own. I'm going out there next week to interview for RA positions. They recommend you contact 20-60 faculty during the RA search, which is insane (the poor profs), but that's advice for the MPH students as well. They say that all PhD's get funded, but I'm sure it's only the ones that are funded who accept. And funding only lasts one year or one part-year, so I've heard of PhD students who were funded the first year and thought they had funding for more, but it fell through, so they had to take out loans. On the plus side, there is good research going on and a large number of faculty doing very interesting work, so I'm going to see what happens.
So, I've been asked to provide a 2-page writing sample as part of the application for one RA position, but I don't know what to send. I have a journal article where I'm the first author, and am thinking of sending the first two pages of that or two pages from the middle. I did most of the writing though the other authors contributed some. It's been years since I did my MPH, so I don't have any 2-page academic papers lying around. I haven't dealt with writing samples in this process besides the personal statement, and I'm not sure what they're expecting. Has anyone else been asked to submit a sample like this?
Anyway, good luck to everyone who is still waiting. From talking to people, I get the impression that those who have gotten into multiple schools are sitting on their acceptances until the last minute, and then there will be a deluge of spots opening up. I mean, if 10 people are accepted to 6 schools each, when those 10 finally accept, 50 slots open up. And once you're in it doesn't matter if you got early acceptance or were the last one in the door, everyone will start fresh from zero. For full disclosure, I also got into Emory, which funds Epi students for the first two years, and I am still considering that acceptance until I find out about financials at UW.
