About MPH degree

[mooong]

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Currently, I am in MPH program focusing on biostatistics. I chose this major because I thought it would be helpful for medical school applications and always wanted to learn applied statistics.

I majored in statistics for my undergraduate degree. I thought biostatistics in public health would be like real 'Statistics' but it is acutally more like explanations about public health with freshman level statistics. I got frustrated and stressed about major all the time.

I'm wondering if I should change my major to statistics under math department. I know that state professors in math department do research about genetics, immunology, or microbiology combined with statistics.

I have been thinking and getting stressed about this issue because I am not really into this public health major. (I still respect biostatisticians in public health, please don't take it wrong)

*I will delete this post if it does not fit in this category.*

 

[LizzyM]

I'm going to answer this as a med school faculty member who works with biostatisticians.

You are in your first term of a two year degree program. It should ramp up after the first 4 months as you get the basic public health courses out of the way.

You are going to learn to work collaboratively with students in other topic areas which is a useful experience. You are likely to have some opportunity to apply your skills in a community setting which is also useful experience and something that can go on your AMCAS application. Knowing how research studies are designed and conducted (not basic science research in immunology and microbiology but infectious disease epidemiology, cancer epidemiology, etc) is going to help in your own research and give you confidence in discussing research findings that are brought to bear in clinical care when you are making rounds as a M3 and beyond.