Safety Schools?

[LaDiDa]

For anyone who has applied or is applying to MPH programs, how have you determined what your safety schools are?

[phdaspiration]

Well for any program your safety schools should be the ones that you think you could get in to. You should be willing to go there if you get in (if you don't get in to your top choices), so don't apply to schools that you wouldn't be willing to attend. For my PhD, I based my selection of safety schools on admissions criteria. If they aren't listed on the website, make sure you email the program coordinator or admissions representative and ask about the average GPA and GRE scores for people admitted for the last few years. Your safety schools should be the schools where your scores and GPA fall at or above the median for admitted students at that school. Hope this is helpful

[vielglueck]

This is a great help!

[sunshine6]

This needs a bump.

In other fields (like social sci) safety schools are those that may not be as well recognized, yet offer value to the applicant as far as close student/faculty ratio, or recently established sub-disciplines that offer interest specific programs that may fit a limited scope, and therefore limited applicants. I come from Anthro, which has many programs that are not really "ranked", as the sub-fields are very diverse and individual (like location-specific cultural, physical, or linguistic categories.. ex. biocultural studies on HIV in Urban Areas in the US etc).

So PH folks, what does one define as a "safety school" in your dicipline? The more generalized MPH programs? Those that are not ranked on US News& World Report?

Do tell....

[Biz]

My safety schools were places where I knew I was more likely to get funding but had more generalized MPH programs. I live in the SE and CDC friends were big proponents of both UGA and UAB, saying that former CDC folks like to teach there (close to home but away from the city).

Those were my safety picks... but they didn't offer the global epi combination or the proximity to epi jobs that I wanted and therefore I didn't end up choosing either of them.

[TypeA]

One thing that you might want to consider when picking "safety" programs is accreditation. There are a lot of "public health" programs at schools that aren't CEPH-accredited, and it's my understanding the accreditation can be pretty important.

I chose to only apply to my top-choice program this year, because I could work for an additional year if I wasn't admitted. But I did my research on other programs in Michigan (where I live), and there's only one school besides U-M that has a CEPH-accredited program in the state--Wayne State University, just accredited last year if anyone's curious. But there are other schools in the state that offer MPH degrees/certificates that don't have that accreditation (offhand, I recall MSU and EMU).