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Hey, I'm not a current student but I applied this cycle to do an MD/PhD in Public Health/Epi so I can give you a little insight. I only applied to programs that specifically OK-ed PhDs in Public Health, which isn't all of them (this helped). Of the schools I interviewed at, I'd say 70% of them would allow you to finish the PhD in 4 years, 20% said you could shoot for 4 but it would probably be 5, 10% "allowed" public health but really discouraged their students from pursuing it due to bureaucratic problems within the university system. Since you have an MPH you should be able to convince a committee to let you skip a few classes and finish in 4 years, I probably wouldn't worry about that. One school told me that having a UG minor in public health is enough to reduce the time from 5 to 4 years.
I'll say that I was one of very few people I met during my interviews that was aiming for public health and I had to do a heck of a lot of justification to committees for why I felt a PhD was necessary. I think basic science people probably get grilled a little less on their motives that so it's something I would recommend you prepare for. Once you get into a program and commit to a public health PhD, they're going to support you 100%, schools want you to be successful and they're going to do everything they can to get you through with the rest of the class. All the current MD/PhD students doing public health stuff that I talked to while interviewing seemed like they had a lot of support for their projects/interests.
I'll say that I was one of very few people I met during my interviews that was aiming for public health and I had to do a heck of a lot of justification to committees for why I felt a PhD was necessary. I think basic science people probably get grilled a little less on their motives that so it's something I would recommend you prepare for. Once you get into a program and commit to a public health PhD, they're going to support you 100%, schools want you to be successful and they're going to do everything they can to get you through with the rest of the class. All the current MD/PhD students doing public health stuff that I talked to while interviewing seemed like they had a lot of support for their projects/interests.
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deleted949953
No programs I applied to required the GRE, I think that's not a common thing. Some MD-MPH programs did require it, but none of the MD-PhD ones that I saw.
I didn't talk to any PIs before applying. I did some basic research to confirm that a school had research I'd be okay with doing (didn't have to be a perfect fit, but at least ballpark). I made sure there were at least 2 or 3 PIs doing that kind of research there just in case one of them didn't work out. Then applied and waited to see where I got interviews. For interviews most schools have you pick PIs to talk with when you visit so I chose the ones I wanted and met them for the first time at the interview. IMO it doesn't make a lot of sense to get invested in a specific PI before you've got an acceptance in hand at a school because the odds of getting into any one specific school are already super low and you kind of just have to take what you get.
Related to that - if you know what type of research you're interested in doing, I'd highly recommend doing some digging on schools BEFORE you pay money to apply to them. Some schools are completely fine with Public Health PhDs but the only pubh research going on there is related to some obscure thing (smoking cessation, obesity, opioids, etc...). I applied to way too many schools that allowed a pubh PhD without realizing that I was completely uninterested in the TYPE of pubh research that was going on there. Save yourself some money and don't do what I did. 😛
Hopefully a current student can chime in and give you their perspective too. 🙂
I didn't talk to any PIs before applying. I did some basic research to confirm that a school had research I'd be okay with doing (didn't have to be a perfect fit, but at least ballpark). I made sure there were at least 2 or 3 PIs doing that kind of research there just in case one of them didn't work out. Then applied and waited to see where I got interviews. For interviews most schools have you pick PIs to talk with when you visit so I chose the ones I wanted and met them for the first time at the interview. IMO it doesn't make a lot of sense to get invested in a specific PI before you've got an acceptance in hand at a school because the odds of getting into any one specific school are already super low and you kind of just have to take what you get.
Related to that - if you know what type of research you're interested in doing, I'd highly recommend doing some digging on schools BEFORE you pay money to apply to them. Some schools are completely fine with Public Health PhDs but the only pubh research going on there is related to some obscure thing (smoking cessation, obesity, opioids, etc...). I applied to way too many schools that allowed a pubh PhD without realizing that I was completely uninterested in the TYPE of pubh research that was going on there. Save yourself some money and don't do what I did. 😛
Hopefully a current student can chime in and give you their perspective too. 🙂
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I'm a current 4th year MD/PhD student that is doing both PH and translational work with an appointment in each. I'm happy to share my personal experiences and thoughts on the training pathway, why I chose to do it, and how programs responded to it. PM works great if you're interested and best of luck!