FreeRadical

What type of organization do you plan to work for after getting your MPH degree? Basically there are three sectors: academia, government and non-profit. If you're thinking academia, you'll want to get some research experience to show that you're truly interested in changing career paths. Between government and non-profit work, infectious disease prevention tends to happen through government initiatives. As an American, global disaster management probably means working for an international non-profit. It really depends on what you're going for, but try to get experiences that show an admissions committee that you know what you're getting yourself into!

If you're looking to do policy work, you'll probably want to look at Health Management & Policy programs. The prerequisites for HMP are a lot less stringent than other programs like epidemiology and biostatistics. For example, at Michigan there are no prerequisites at all: "Since we are looking for students with varied backgrounds and interests, the Department welcomes applicants from all undergraduate majors, and therefore no specific undergraduate courses are required" (http://www.sph.umich.edu/hmp/programs/masters/admissions.html). If you're looking to do research, you'll have to have at least some basic background in math. For biostatistics, obviously, you're going to need a pretty extensive background. For example, at Michigan (for the sake of comparison): "The minimum mathematics prerequisite for admission is one-and-one-half years of calculus, a course in matrix or linear algebra, and an introductory course in statistics or biostatistics or the equivalent" (http://www.sph.umich.edu/biostat/students/#prereq). In general, epidemiology and biostatistics are two sides of the same coin, where epidemiology focuses more on health outcomes and biostatistics focuses more on the numbers. Epidemiology will usually require only one math course, although many schools don't even require that (like Michigan, ;-P ). But, like others have said, it ultimately depends on the program. Every program is explicit about their prerequisites, and you just have to find the right website to know what they are.

Congrats on getting into all of your programs! GW's global health program seems better than the school's #16 ranking on U.S. News and World Report. I checked it out when I was accepted into their MPH program for global health a few years ago (I ultimately decided on a different program). I think its location in Washington D.C. is very helpful for making connections with global health organizations. On the other hand, I'm sure I don't need to tell you that UPenn's medical program is fantastic. If it were me, I'd go with UPenn for a medical/academic focus or GW for making connections that will progress your global health career.

Bieber.

1978 http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929254.600-the-wonder-year-why-1978-was-the-best-year-ever.html#.UxpY4s6mVmg

I'm surprised at the amount of people on Grad Cafe who were in communication with their professors of interest during the application process. If that's you, how did you approach him/her for the first time? How did you develop the relationship?

They made people decide whether to accept funding by March 4th. Congrats on the acceptance!

I'm right there with you. I emailed my schools yesterday because I have a scholarship offer that expires soon. In any case I don't think it's unreasonable to ask at this point, especially if you've seen that others have been accepted/rejected awhile ago. Alternatively, based on other posts, calling seems to be a good way to get an immediate answer.

I applied to the environmental epidemiology track for Epi PhD at Hopkins. No news for me either, even though the bulk of epi notifications was sent weeks ago. I wonder if all of the environmental health/epi folks are considered together. Edit: What is BMB?

+20 When you looked into his eyes, did it feel like you were looking at the back of your own head?

A Cogitation Concealing Every Poison Tempting My Ego

Funny you mention number theory... I heard about Godel's incompleteness theorems on an episode of Radiolab, which led me to read the book "Godel's Proof" by Ernest Nagel, which led me to "Godel Escher Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter. Hard to imagine another book having such an impact my thinking.

Yeah, that seems pretty common. I'm still waiting on Harvard and Johns Hopkins, and they both sent out their first notifications weeks ago.

12:28 p.m. EST

Yeah, this is the most articulate flame war I've ever seen. Grad Cafe is so weird.

formal proposition

space, dude I think you just introduced a nuance to the game

A few things seem to stick out to me... -MPH epidemiology applicants are much more likely to report acceptances than rejections. This is probably either the result of reporting bias and/or the fact the MPH programs are easier to get into. You don't see the same discrepancy among PhD applicants. The potential for reporting bias is what makes me hesitant to do tests of statistical significance; it's easier to conceptualize the effect of bias when looking at descriptive statistics like this. -Among PhD applicants, acceptances are most common from the middle to the end of February. Rejections are most common around the beginning of March. -Among PhD applicants, acceptances seem to drop off dramatically after the first week in March while rejections taper off more gradually over time. -Friday is the most likely day to get a notification (either acceptance or rejection) among PhD applicants. This seems to be the case with MPH applicants too but to a lesser degree.

Here's by day of the week, rather than week of the year (as above): Looking forward to Friday tomorrow!

This is what happens when you stress out a data geek for too long... Using R, I scraped the data you would get by searching for "epidemiology" in the Results Search. The dates are from the "Decision & Date" column, not the "Date Added" column. The fourteen bins in each histogram roughly correspond to the 14 weeks between January 1 and April 15. This also excludes people who put "Other" for degree type (not PhD or Masters), reported something other than acceptance or rejection, or applied for something other than the fall term. The sample size is 779. I'm curious to hear your interpretations of the data. Anything else I could look at?

+1 Upvote for oddly repeating yourself without apparently being aware of it. This level of crazy is knocking at my door.

receiving touchdown

Maybe his first post ("I have received a letter of admission") was referring to an UNOFFICIAL letter, followed by an OFFICIAL letter a week later ("After 1 week, they sent me the official letter"). If that's the case, the advice giving/taking could have taken place at any time. But it's still weird to receive two letters (as opposed to emails), so that doesn't really make sense either lol

wet whistle

out manuever