MSW/MPH Career Changer w/Many Questions

[anony2888]

I am planning to apply for Fall 2016 admissions for MSW/MPH programs.  I finished undergrad over ten years ago and have enjoyed a successful full-time career in fundraising since that time.  I have worked for a university that provides medical education as well as a university that mainly serves first gen and disadvantaged population. I am currently in a management position. 

 

My goal is to be a trained clinician in social work and to be on an oncology or transplant service working with young adults. I am not am not interested in being an administrator as my primary role. I have an interest in research.  I am drawn to this program of study for personal reasons- I faced very serious health challenges as a young adult, including medical errors and I experienced a system that has no plan for serving this unique group of patients- too old for pediatrics and much too young for an adult system that is geared towards geriatrics. 

 

I have no obvious public health experience beyond my own illness (participated in various online communities, pointed other patients to resources and peer-reviewed research, filed complaint letters with hospital/medical board following my situation) and fundraising is my human services experience (yes it counts- I checked).

 

I graduated from a less-competitive UC with a 3.2-ish GPA.  I started a grad program in an entirely different field but was academically disqualified after I stopped going due to my illness. I took the old GRE many years ago and I scored in the 95th percentile in verbal and also very high on the writing.  Math is my weakness.  I am planning to take it again in early October, working on the math part now. 

 

I have many questions beyond "do I have a shot in hell."

 

-How personal is acceptable in a personal statement?  I fear being perceived in a negative way by saying out loud that I had x illness.

 

-Do my personal experiences count as "public health experience?"  

 

-I don't think I can get a letter from a professor as I don't work with them directly and I haven't been a student in years.  Can I submit three professional ones? 

 

-For many of the MSW/MPH programs, you apply to each department separately. If I only get in on the MSW side and not the MPH, can I go ahead and just do the MSW?

 

-How many schools should I be applying to?  I have nine currently. 

 

Thank you for reading this far and for any help you can offer!  

Edited June 14, 2015 by anony2888

[pickfights]

Hey! There is a social work specific forum in the 'Menu' section of the grad cafe. I would recommend posting there instead. I'm also applying to MSW programs in CA this fall. It seems like a lot of your questions are for the schools/departments you are applying to. They will be able to answer questions about LOR, how applying works, etc. I would definitely recommend trying to find some kind of academic letter though - most schools require it. Poke around the websites of the schools you plan to apply to, that should answer a lot of questions! Also, many schools/programs have Informational Nights which could also answer these questions. Good luck! Where are you thinking of applying?

[juilletmercredi]

My PhD in in public health.

 

1. In my experience, not too personal. There's a research study conducted by two psychology professors that investigated the so-called "kisses of death" in clinical psychology PhD program admissions, in the words of graduate professors who participate in admissions. Three of the four most damaging things they found about personal statements were discussions of personal mental health (“when students highlight how they were drawn to graduate study because of significant personal problems or trauma. Graduate school is an academic/career path, not a personal treatment or intervention for problems.”), "excessive altruism" (“Everybody wants to help people. That’s assumed. Don’t say the reason you want to go into clinical psychology is to help people.” ), and excessive self-disclosure ("The applicant mentions in the personal statement that he/ she decided to pursue a career in clinical psychology due to personal family experience with psychopathology. This isn’t always a kiss of death, but a sensitive area such as this should be communicated carefully. If the applicant is “spilling” overly personal information in a written statement, I often view this as a “worry sign” or an indication of poor interpersonal boundaries.") Of course this is a different field, but social work and clinical psych are related enough to believe that these apply somewhat to social work programs, too.

 

I think it's okay to reveal that your motivations are an interest in improving the lives and clinical outcomes of adolescent oncology patients, but express an academic and professional interest in it instead of a personally motivated one.

 

2. If you did it only for yourself, probably not. If you volunteered to do these things for other people, yes. It's the same reason why planning your own wedding isn't event planning and paying your own bills isn't accounting. It seems like you did volunteer to do some of these things for others, so I would count that, but not the stuff you did for yourself.

 

3. No, you'll need to submit at least one academic reference, and preferably two. And your professional reference needs to be social work or public health-related in some way. Graduate programs are interested not only in how successful a professional you are; they are interested in how well you will perform as a student. You can reach out to professors you had in undergrad and send them a letter jogging their memory and a copy of a recent CV plus a draft of your personal statement, and some of them will write for you.

 

4. Usually, yes, if you are admitted only to one school and not the other, you can just apply the program you were admitted to. You can also get admitted to one program and during your first year apply to the joint program on the other side - and at some schools, it's easier to get into joint programs that way.

 

5. There's no hard and fast number. It depends on how competitive an applicant you believe you are. I applied to 4 MPH programs and 1 PhD, because I knew that I was competitive for MPH programs (the PhD program was on a whim, because it was perfect). I think between 4 and 10 is probably a good number for master's programs.

[anony2888]

This is extremely helpful information.  

 

Of course it would be oversharing to go into detail what my experiences were, makes perfect sense. It's essentially served as the jumping off point, if you will, of my interest in improving survivorship and quality of life for adolescent and young adult cancer patients. 

 

I would be surprised if anyone from undergrad remembered me but it's worth a shot.  I'm taking a health care finance class right now through a local university and will be asking that professor.  

 

I have noticed that some of the MSW/MPH programs are set up that way specifically- where you start in social work then apply to public health during the first or second year.  

 

Thanks for your thoughts!