UNC Chapel Hill

[gracem]

Hi everybody!

 

I'm wondering if anyone has any personal experience with UNC Chapel Hill's Gillings School of Public Health. I've been accepted into the MSPH/PhD program in Epidemiology and have been offered funding for my first year. I'm leaning strongly towards UNC over an Epi MS at Harvard and a MHS at Hopkins (both of the latter haven't offered any funding at present, the three schools' rankings are very close, research interests mesh best with UNC, etc.). Unfortunately I'm going to miss UNC's admitted students day, though, so I thought I'd see if anyone has any advice to share.

 

Thanks!

[mpheels]

I attended UNC for both undergrad (not SPH), then an MPH from the School of Public Health. I've been on staff at the UNC school of medicine since I graduated, and have been taking courses at the SPH as a continuing ed students at least once a year since I graduated. What do you want to know?

 

Chapel Hill and neighboring Carrboro are a great places to live. They have a small town feel most of the time, but with almost all of the amenities you would ever want in a larger city. If it isn't available in town, it's easy to get in Durham (or Raleigh). The transit system is the best in the state and one of the best in the South. Buses are fare free, and the routes are well designed to get people from where they live to where they need to be. The cost of living is higher than average for the region, but quality of life is higher as well. The School of Public Health itself is a great facility, with one building that opened within the last 10 year and the other buildings somewhat newly renovated. There is a lot of collaboration between faculty at SPH and in other health affairs programs at UNC (medicine, nursing, dentistry), so you can find experts from other programs to flesh out your committee if needed. I completed my MPH before the Gillings made their donation, and before the school became a "global school." I have mixed feelings about the new(ish) global focus, but that is because I'm a North Carolina native and feel strongly that the school's primary mission is serve the people of NC, and I feel the global health focus has weakened that mission to some extent. On the other hand, if you are looking for more international health exposure (or at least not NC-centric), then it's great.