EpiGirl2016

Thanks for the info! It did seem like a really confusing process. Who knew so many UNC grad students would pop up on this specific thread?

If OP is going to a Public grad school it might be a requirement for in state residency and therefore in state tuition. Where I am going to grad school (UNC) we are strongly encouraged to apply for residency so we qualify for instate tuition or else we might have to foot the tuition bill ourselves. One of those requirements to apply (to my understanding) is that if we own a vehicle we need to change the registration from our home state to NC in order to qualify for in state tuition. I imagine that is a state by state or even school by school thing.

This is a little bit of a nebulous topic that can be hard to figure out. Some schools require you to have a Master's in advance in order for your application to even be considered but you still have to take the same courses. The PhD programs in Epi that I applied to were ones that want students to take their version of intro epi and in some cases intro biostats regardless of what students came in with. The exception to that as the poster above pointed out is if the person did their master's at the same institution. Here is a thread I found useful from student doctor network http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/list-of-epidemiology-phd-programs-that-admit-students-without-masters.822860/ (I know you didn't ask about schools that admit without master's but the thread contains a lot of generally helpful links for the topic you are asking about) At the school where I will be attending, UNC, students who have a prior MPH or MS skip out of introductory classes on some of the core areas in public health (Environmental Health, Behavioral and Social Science, and Health Policy and management). People like me who are coming in without a master's degree are required to take extra courses and do a practicum to get one on the way. All in all it is pretty program specific. If you can locate the department student handbook, that's a good way to figure out the program policy on it. They will usually have it stated in there what their transfer credit or credit waiver policy is for students with Master's degrees. These handbooks can sometimes be buried on the program websites but they are usually there.

I applied last cycle and I visited or made contact with professors before I submitted my application. The school I'll be attending I visited the summer before applying because I was in the area visiting family. I visited a school close to my undergrad institution in October. The other 2 I applied to weren't practical to visit so I e-mailed professors also in October. I submitted my applications in November and all applications had Dec. 15th deadlines. I wouldn't drop a whole bunch of money on visiting schools if they aren't already near you or you aren't visiting the area already for another reason.

I listed at least 3 people I'd be interested in working with in my applications. Some I had contacted beforehand, others I was just very familiar with their work. I echo the advice listed above about getting an idea of what the school wants you to do. However, finding this information isn't always straightforward. For some schools I found out that you need a faculty member to support your application only by having professors who had previously gone or taught at the institution I was applying to. SOPHAS does virtual school of public health fairs every so often and this can be a good place to ask whether you should reach out to faculty or not.

You'll have to be more specific. As far as I know, a PhD in Public Health doesn't exist. Are you looking for DrPH programs? PhD programs Epidemiology, Biostatistics, Social and Behavioral Science, Environmental Health etc? Each subarea can have different requirements of whether you need a master's degree or not.

For Yale (and probably the others) if you begin an application before it opens for your cycle, it will be deleted when it officially opens. So if you create an application now for Yale, it will be deleted on September 1st, or whatever date the application is live for your cycle. I would recommend thinking about your written materials now, like your SOP and thinking about who you want to ask for letters of rec. The SOP is far more time intensive than just filling out the application itself, and you can work on that whenever.

I would say it does on an interpersonal/social level. Like OP I am first gen for both grad and undergrad. I'm still trying to explain to my family what a PhD even is, what I do in a program, what types of jobs I'll be able to get with one that I wouldn't have been with just a BA. Fortunately I have no actual language barrier, but talking about grad school, PhD programs especially, just requires a totally different vocabulary that isn't a hurdle for people whose parents have also gone through the process themselves. Maybe on the day to day there is no insider advantage but I definitely think there is socially/interpersonally.

Got the Honorable Mention for the pre-doc e-mail today at 5:09pm Central Time. I'll be applying again next year as a first year grad student. Thanks to those of you who applied more than once who offered information about what changed on your application, that is super helpful!

PMed you!

*Updating for any future lurkers on this thread*Undergrad GPA/Major GPA: 3.75/4.0 IvyMajor/Minor: Public HealthGradGPA: n/aGrad Studies: Took 10 courses that count for an MPH as an undergraduate at my home institutionGRE: 87%V/71%Q/93%W.Experience/Research: Research experience since my freshman year, including 2 years of cancer epi research 4 1st author poster presentations at national undergraduate/graduate student conferences, 2 award winning 1 co-authored pub in public health nutrition National fellowship + AACR award winner LOR- 3 full professors in epidemiology, All of whom I have taken at least 2 classes with, 2 of whom were/are research advisors. Really interested in cancer epidemiology and racial health disparities in cancer outcomes for breast and gynecologic cancers, so that's what I've been working on most recently. As a current undergrad, my mentor (smartly) advised me to apply to Master's and PhD programs so I leave my options open.Applied: UT-Houston Epi PhD (Applied 10/18, Verified 11/2), Harvard PhD in Population Health Sciences-Cancer Epi, UNC MSPH-PhD in Epi, Yale Chronic Disease EpiInterview: Yale CDE PhD program (notified 1/22)Accepted: UNC MSPH-PhD (1/14, $34k first year stipend + tuition waiver), UTH PhD (1/20, with in state tuition and $5k), Harvard Population Health Sciences-Epidemiology PhD (2/12 $26.5k for 10 months + tuition waiver), Yale CDE PhD (2/24, $34k 4 year stipend + tuition waiver)Rejected: noneWaitlisted: noneAttending: UNC MSPH-PhD

All of my acceptances first came "unofficially" from a professor on the admissions committee. In all cases I replied back thanking them for their support of my applications. Only one for one of them (my first one) did I mention needing to wait to make a decision to see how funding/other offers work out because for that one I found out January 6th which was much earlier than anywhere else. I realize though that even that much detail was unnecessary so I didn't mention it to the others. Once the offers started coming in I began turning down the one's I knew I wasn't going to go to. I applied to both PhD and Master's programs and once I got into a single PhD program I turned down all of the Master's programs because I knew I wasn't going to go that route. I did that by just declining the offer in the online system. For PhD programs, I narrowed my choices to 2 and let the other programs know. After I submitted my official form, I sent an e-mail to the faculty who notified me of my acceptance thanking them again but I will attend x or y university because of fit and I wanted to let them know as soon as I knew so I could potentially help someone on the waitlist. The remaining two schools that I am selecting between I am revisiting but will not say anything until I make my actual decision. If you know you absolutely won't go to a place because you got into a place that you think suits you better, I think it is a nice courtesy to decline the offer as early as you know, especially if you run a waitlist, but you are absolutely under no obligation to do so.

I don't know that I would enroll in a grad program with the intention of getting below a 3.0, it seems like a waste to me. Grad programs exist to create leaders/scholars/high achievers in that field so a program that requires below a 3.0 to graduate definitely isn't in line with that mission and most likely is not very reputable.

My understanding of it is that they serve pretty different purposes. A PhD is generally considered a research degree like in every other field. A DrPH is a practice degree to prepare people for high level public health leadership. It's kind of the same as MPH vs. an MSc in epidemiology. An MPH provides a more general framework to work in more applied/practice-oriented public health while an MSc trains someone in a research capacity. What degree you pursue will likely be influenced by your life situation like the poster above and your ultimate career goals. If you want to one day have your own NIH grants and manage your own research projects a PhD is probably for you. If that is not really in your cards the DrPH is likely the better degree.

Same^ Though not for engineering, for me it is public health. I'm trying to limit the influence people who have no bearing on my decision will provide. I get asked multiple times a day how my grad school decision making process is going and I always say "I'm choosing between PhD programs at UNC and Harvard" and people outside of the field ALWAYS say "how is that even a question?" and people from inside the field either say "you can't make a wrong decision" or if anything they steer me more towards UNC (Harvard and UNC are both ranked #2 for schools of public health). I always keep in mind that yes it would be cool to be able to say "I got my PhD from Harvard," the only people I need to truly impress are those in my field and that is what matters the most. It's easy to get fixated on a name.