Accommodations for PhDs?

[xscpx]

So....I'm a perinatal epi gal. I would give a kidney to go to Emory for my PhD, but I figure I should probably look into more than one school.

Looking at Johns Hopkins, I see they do not have a perinatal epi concentration. They do have a Reproductive, Perinatal and Women's Health Track in the dept of family and reproductive health. Would they allow me to someone combine the two degrees since that is my goal? Would I be able to work as an epidemiologist with a PhD in family and repro health?

If anyone knows anything about this that would be awesome. I would think there must be some level of accommodation in PhD programs since they are so specialized, but I wasn't sure if they would allow combining of separate departments.

I'm gonna give them a call Monday and see what they say, I was just being impatient.

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[Stories]

Aiming high, eh? Emory then "branching out" to Hopkins, heh.

Your PhD doesn't say "XXX department" on it when you graduate. It just says, "Doctor of Philosophy". What you write in your dissertation is what matters. What department you are dictates what coursework you have to do, however.

If your ultimate goal is to be an epidemiologist, be sure to be in a program where you get sufficient epidemiology and biostatistics methodology courses. You shouldn't veer too much from the epidemiology department, but at Hopkins, the school is just so damn big, I don't think it matters where you're classified (they have over 600+ PhD students). You're going to have at least two advisers outside your department and on your committee.

For instance, my department is officially classified as "Environmental Health Sciences". My concentration is Environmental Epidemiology. My qualifying exam consists of three sections: (1) epidemiology methods, (2) biostatistics, (3) environmental epidemiology.