Help regarding the MPH admission process.....

[drhnis]

Hi everyone, I am very new to this forum & MPH. I am International Medical Grad, finished MLE steps & GRE - 300 (V-146, Q- 154, A- 2.5) & TOEFL- 102. I am planning to apply for fall-2014. but I really no idea where to start or how to proceed..

Any help will be appreciated.

[themmases]

You should go to the SOPHAS website first so you know what to expect and can get your applications in early. This is the central application used by most CEPH-accredited public health schools. SOPHAS doesn't open until September, but all the instructions you need are available on the website before you're officially allowed to sign up and start filling things out. You should use these and information from your chosen schools to start writing a statement purpose-- it always seems to take longer and be harder than people plan for, including me. The instructions once you can log into SOPHAS won't be any more detailed than what's publicly available, so don't make the mistake I made and wait for the site to open before really beginning work on your SOP. If you want more specific guidance, contact your schools or SOPHAS directly. SOPHAS also hosts online fairs with many schools of public health, so if you register early you can get invited to one of the early ones. I found the fair really helpful.

 

If you are just starting to choose schools, start a spreadsheet to keep track of them. If you consider a school strongly enough to spend a few minutes clicking around its website, put whatever information you find in your spreadsheet so you don't have to look it back up later. Then you can use the spreadsheet to narrow down schools, keep track of comments and deadlines, and add up the cost of applying. Mine had school name and place, degree name/topic, expected yearly cost of attendance, prerequisites and test score/GPA minimums, cost to apply, and some text fields where I pasted advice given to me at the online fair or in emails with the schools, which research interests we matched on, and my likely options for work or scholarships. Later I gave them a subjective rating of how much I wanted to go to each one, and sorted by the rating and their application deadline to decide in what order to apply. I have a friend who would also keep track of any username/password/PIN she needed to access the school's site, which is fine if you keep your spreadsheet in a secure place. This all sounds really complicated, but honestly in the spreadsheet it was very easy to understand-- I just filtered out schools I ruled out or had already applied to.

 

It will help you to do a short literature review on some of your research interests and find out where the people whose work you like teach, then apply to those schools. If you want to go more into public health practice, look at programs and agencies that you would like to work for. Apply to schools that have internships at those agencies, definitely, and also apply to other schools that seem well-regarded in the same city or region.

[drhnis]

@Latte, thanks for drawing the outline for us. you gave me a dot & i will start drawing the line - the plan ahead.

I will be in touch, if want anymore guidance.