<p>Hi everyone! I'm a senior at a state college graduating in the fall. I am a community health major with a health communications minor and I'm hoping to go into an MPH program after I graduate. I'm projecting a 3.3 cumulative GPA and a 4.0 in my major/ last 60 credits. I'll also be taking the GRE in the next couple months. I don't have any work experience in the field yet--I'll be interning at a public health agency in the spring but by the time I start I will have already submitted applications. Also I only have a few extra-curricular activities: I was recruitment chair for my sorority and I was an RA. Based on my current stats do I have a chance at any top programs? My dream schools are
1. Dartmouth
2. Columbia
3. Brown
I'm also looking at
UNC Chapel Hill
Tufts
University of Alberta
Memorial University of Newfoundland
And then I have a list of "if everything goes wrong/back up" programs</p>
<p>Also, I don't know if this helps but I'm African American</p>
<p>So do I have a chance at the Ivies or do I have my head in the clouds?</p>
<p>Try asking these questions on the Student Doctor Network…</p>
<p>Those are very different schools public health wise. Why are these ones of interest? What field are you looking to go into?</p>
<p>I’m a current mph student at UMich. I’ll write a longer response later- the mobile site here sucks.</p>
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<p>Oh. I see why you’re interested now. </p>
<p>Grad schools don’t work like undergraduates. Ivies aren’t necessarily the top. In fact, for MPH degrees, only Columbia out of those schools are even in the top 10. </p>
<p>Don’t choose a grad school based on the rankings of an undergrad institute. </p>
<p>What are you looking to get out of your MPH degree? What field are you hoping to go into? What area do you want to study? </p>
<p>Those are very different programs. Dartmouth has very few core courses whereas Columbia has rather little flexibility depending on your program. </p>
<p>GPA is not huge in MPH admissions, but they do want to see good GRE scores. Which ones are more important depend on your field. Quant needs to be better if you want to go into epid/biostats, writing better if you want to go into HBHE, Community Health, etc. What’s most important though is how that degree is going to fit into your professional development (shown through personal statements, etc) and how your background has prepared you to study public health. </p>
<p>I attend Columbia’s school of public health.</p>
<p>Your extra-curriculars aren’t public health related and therefore don’t matter that much - perhaps exception for the resident assistant experience, but only a little bit. Do you have any volunteer, internship, or research experience in public health? Your GPA is good enough (perhaps a tad low, but not too much), but MPH admissions are really about experience in public health. Consider taking 2 years off to get some work experience in public health first.</p>
<p>I agree with the above - UNC Chapel Hill is actually a top 5 public health program, better than Dartmouth and Brown’s. Browns’s SPH is good but relatively new.</p>
<p>What are your interests?</p>
<p>I was surprised not to see Johns Hopkins and Harvard also listed among the top Schools of Public Health</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins and Harvard are rated #1 & #2 for public health…</p>
<p>Try Tulane perhaps as a backup to Columbia… better than Dartmouth, Brown (and Yale), MPH-wise, especially if community health is your thing. So Brown and Dartmouth are, in fact, backups to UNC Gillings and Columbia Mailman.</p>
<p>I’m interested in health policy, health communication, and health ethics.
A little more information
+I’m also looking into getting a summer research position at university.
+I’ve been working on a research study about college students and HIV, which I might be presenting at a national conference in the fall.
& less relevant experiences
+my sophomore year I organized and hosted an event which raised $1500 for a girl in my community with cancer
+volunteered for Special olympics for 3 years
+volunteered for Girls on the Run for 1 year
My end goal is to enter the field of health law
Do admissions committees look at freshman/sophomore the same as junior/senior classes? I’m really relying on my last 60 credits/major GPA. My issue was that I started college way to early (at 16) although I did well freshman year I was burnt out by sophomore year- at that time i was premed/biological sciences. Long story short changing my major has been a turn around and i’ve been highly successful in my program. </p>