weiwentg

From prior experience, I don't believe it's impossible to find a job in a hospital with an MHA. There are a number of hospitals or systems that won't sponsor you, so it is something you should check first. For example, Kaiser Permanente and New York-Presbyterian Hospital did not sponsor H1B visas in 2007. However, I think I remember some international students who got work as MHAs in hospitals, or in consulting (but again, not all consulting companies sponsor entry-level masters). Having a quant-centered degree would be to your advantage - although I have to say, much of the quant work I've done in consulting and state government has involved cross tabulations. I hate cross tabs. So unfortunately, if you don't plan on getting married to an American but you want to work here, you have your best chance of getting sponsored if your degree ends in D. That means MD, PhD, possibly JD. I ended up marrying an American, so that problem took care of itself. Yes, US skilled worker laws are crazy and counterproductive. It is one thing I will consistently denounce my adopted country for, and I don't think I'm the only one who will. Unfortunately, I don't write the immigration laws.

From my experience last year, you may be on their waitlist. They made me an offer on April 15. However, I'd already accepted at Minnesota - and Brown would most likely not have changed things. From what I heard last year, they only accept 4 students a year, and then invited 10 of us to interview day. So you may be a strong candidate, but they're waiting to hear from their initial 4 picks (who will probably accept or decline on the 15th). Make of that what you will. FYI, that's why I sent in my acceptance to UMN and my declines to the other programs early. PS, if you are in Brown's top 10, you really have nothing to be ashamed of. Too bad they don't have enough space to accommodate your brilliance this year.

I also studied in Ann Arbor for my MPH and my undergrad. It is obviously colder than Atlanta, but it is indeed livable if you layer properly. I cannot comment on the Epi program, unfortunately.

I am not in Epi, so I am not sure how well my comments generalize to Epi. I have some offers in health services/policy with guaranteed funding. I have one without guaranteed funding, but in practice, everyone there has got funding, as the professors are quite active in grant writing. The latter school did indicate to me that rely on NIH funding, and thanks to austerity mania, NIH funding is getting squeezed (to the great detriment of America imo). I think the Ivies will be able to guarantee better funding - they are more competitive for the remaining grants and they have endowments. (This may or may not translate to willing, although as someone indicated, Brown is definitely willing.) The top tier non-Ivy research universities are also very competitive on grants, but they may have less money behind the program. I see you're waitlisted on UW; like I said, I am not in Epi, but I believe that the program will be able to scrounge out some sort of funding. UW is a younger program, so they don't have as much endowment money, whereas UMN has some fellowships available that are not from AHRQ funds. In my area, most programs get AHRQ training grants. They will provide tuition waivers and a stipend for a number of students (e.g. UW health policy has 3 slots). Others may be covered by other funds or by research assistantships linked to current faculty grants. I'd recommend that you ask the program administrators how many students have got grants, and whether ANYONE has had to pay their own way at ANY point in the program. The previous poster alluded to this already. For example, not all the Epi students at Hopkins are funded, as I have been told (by a relative who attends). (This is doubly insane because the university should be more than able to get sufficient grant funding.) I agree with the other poster: if you cannot get full funding, do not attend. You will come away with six figure debt and a mid 5 figure salary (if you go into academia).

pardon the late reply, I hadn't been checking this thread. I submitted my SOPHAS app on 12/1.

You answered your own question. Thanks to austerity, NIH funding has been cut pretty badly. We are destroying our investments in the biological sciences and whatever else it is that NIH funds.

@legan sounds like you're in a difficult situation. my boss is not difficult, and for the first interview I needed to travel for, I just said that I need the time to travel, like @geologizer suggested. the other two were phone interviews. I now have 3 accepted students days to attend, and I will tell them the truth. I'd stick with your plan of providing minimum info. I've been at work for about 1 year. I think the organization is poorly run. 1 year is the minimum I feel is reasonable to stay in a professional setting, so your 6 months is a bit harder. best wishes.

I just got an email from Minnesota (health services PhD) that I was accepted. So people should be hearing soon.

For PhD applications, two out of the eight schools I applied to were on SOPHAS. With all the time I wasted manually entering courses and grades, it would have been better if none of them accepted SOPHAS applications. I seriously question the value of entering grades manually for any program. Is it to prevent fraud? The admitting school will or should be checking your attendance with your alma mater in any case.

I just came back from recruitment day, where all the programs were present. From what I heard, we were all the top candidates, and they're only taking 4 to 5 applicants per program (there were about 10 to 11 people present per program). It is really competitive! I got 97th percentile verbal, 87th quant (raw scores of 167 and 163, I think). Not a good GPA in my MPH (about 3.15 out of 4), but a lot of work experience in an area where Brown HSR faculty have a lot of work, so it's a good match.

I am married. My wife is graduating with a statistics-heavy MPH, so we'll be able to live comfortably enough when she gets a job plus my stipend. You have an MD already. If nobody's willing to fund you for an epi PhD, then you should ask if you really need one, and if you couldn't just work as a researcher at a research university. Remember, you already have an MPH, so that plus your MD should be sufficient street cred unless you really skimped on methods in the MPH.

I had middling to poor MPH grades, and I have been accepted to two PhD programs on the strength of my work. So, as Neurosci said, you should play up your work experience. You have experience manipulating data from your psych RAships (I assume), you have actually taught, you have two existing publications. You also have pretty high GPAs in your last two years. I'm not really seeing anything to lose sleep over on your end.

I applied for a bunch of health policy PhD programs. Penn State: accepted University of Washington (Seattle): accepted Brown University: on the way to interview right now I haven't yet heard from: University of Minnesota UNC Harvard Brandeis Rejected by BU. It wasn't the best fit, so I'm not worried. As I said, I applied and I haven't heard. As I said, not from UNC. And as I asked on the other thread, does UM mean Minnesota, Michigan, or some other state? The two folks who applied to Harvard for the ESS track - I applied to that one as well. Harvard is a stretch (not very good MPH grades), but best wishes to you.

Which UM? I applied to Minnesota, and haven't heard back yet. I've also applied to UNC and not heard back yet.

OK, this really makes me curse and swear. If you take your PhD and go into the private sector, you may make as much as if you had an MBA or a JD if you end up working for pharma. In that case, it might be worth going partially unfunded, as you'll be able to pay it back (but keep in mind that MBAs are two years, and you will be in a PhD for at least 4). If you go elsewhere in the private sector, you still aren't going to make as much as if you went and got an MBA. If you are going into academia, you are effectively trading current income for academic freedom and often, good health and retirement benefits. I would not consider any program that did not fully fund me. I don't care if I have to be an RA or a TA all 5 years. Of the two that have accepted me so far, one is definitely nominating me for a fellowship, and I get the sense that the other one will. And all are fully funded for at least 3 years. I do not mean to sound like I'm so damn smart that I can get full funding. It is irresponsible of universities to not offer full funding to PhD students, regardless of discipline. The stipend is often not enough to live on by itself, as someone observed. You will not earn as much as you would in the private sector. And if you go into academia you probably have to spend some time as an adjunct, which really pays badly. You are not guaranteed tenure. You can rack up a mountain of debt if you aren't funded, in addition to the debt you have from your bachelor's program or your MPH or MD or JD or RN or whatever you have. I have no problem with working for my degree. I have a problem with universities that don't fund you. If they can't fund you, they shouldn't admit. And if they offer admittance, I hope people choose not to accept: You can get many places with an MPH or MS. Heck, you can teach yourself stats if you are so inclined - I have a coworker who learned stuff like latent class analysis on his own.