Advice for grad school

[YummyOstrich]

Hello all.

I was hoping I could receive some input for my personal situation. I am set to graduate this May with a BS in Clinical Public Health. I Had planned on going to an osteopathic medical school and wanted to study physical medicine and do chronic disease research while hopefully teaching at a university. Because of the grade replacement policy that has changed that has recently happened with DO schools it would take me years and a lot of money to reach this goal.

My interests still surround chronic disease and I am considering just attending graduate school and then finding a doctoral program that I would like to attend. This late in the year and considering I haven't taken the GRE I am planning to attend graduate school at my university. I have the opportunity to get a MPH or a thesis based MS in clinical exercise science. Which would be better if I would like to shoot for a top Epi doctoral program? I would love to have an opportunity to study at UNC or Yale and I feel that it would help me in finding a teaching job in the future. Can anyone offer me some advice on what I would need to do to better my chances? I have found that looking for advice on getting into these programs isn't as readily available as it is in comparison to getting advice for medical school.

Some more information about myself: I received an associated degree from a community college with a 2.4 gpa, I will graduate with my BSPH with a 3.5 gpa. I have taken additional science coursework at the local community college and I have done very well. I haven't received a C in two years and I have done very well in my Public Health classes ( Mostly As and a few Bs) I have strong volunteer experiences and will have 20+ hours of research on tobacco prevention.

Thank you all for your input.

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[URMfemaleMPH]

Hello all.

I was hoping I could receive some input for my personal situation. I am set to graduate this May with a BS in Clinical Public Health. I Had planned on going to an osteopathic medical school and wanted to study physical medicine and do chronic disease research while hopefully teaching at a university. Because of the grade replacement policy that has changed that has recently happened with DO schools it would take me years and a lot of money to reach this goal.

My interests still surround chronic disease and I am considering just attending graduate school and then finding a doctoral program that I would like to attend. This late in the year and considering I haven't taken the GRE I am planning to attend graduate school at my university. I have the opportunity to get a MPH or a thesis based MS in clinical exercise science. Which would be better if I would like to shoot for a top Epi doctoral program? I would love to have an opportunity to study at UNC or Yale and I feel that it would help me in finding a teaching job in the future. Can anyone offer me some advice on what I would need to do to better my chances? I have found that looking for advice on getting into these programs isn't as readily available as it is in comparison to getting advice for medical school.

Some more information about myself: I received an associated degree from a community college with a 2.4 gpa, I will graduate with my BSPH with a 3.5 gpa. I have taken additional science coursework at the local community college and I have done very well. I haven't received a C in two years and I have done very well in my Public Health classes ( Mostly As and a few Bs) I have strong volunteer experiences and will have 20+ hours of research on tobacco prevention.

Thank you all for your input.

I am a current MPH student in epidemiology-hopefully I can provide some help to you. You can certainly get into a PhD program in epi with either degree choice (MPH or MS), but even a thesis based MS in clinical exercise science may not provide you with the skills needed to start your PhD smooth sailing. If you choose to get the MS, I'd advise that you support that degree with ample participation in research, maybe a publication and a couple of posters if you can, and I'd take as many epi methods and biostatistics courses as you can during your program. You're expected to come into a PhD program having had considerable exposure to biostatistical modeling and epidemiological concepts.

A big question for you is: are you looking for a clinically-focused career, or a career doing research and academics? If you want to do clinical research AND still provide care for patients, I recommend not getting the PhD. Epidemiology is not really a work-directly-with-patients type of field, although you can certainly get some exposure; a lot of it is running statistical software and thinking about data 24/7. Still really awesome imo, but I'm clinically focused so I won't be getting my PhD.

Seeing as your GPA is reasonable, have you considered doing a post-bacc and then linking to an MD program? Yes it's expensive, but so is getting an MS or MPH. If you want to be a doctor, don't waste money on degrees that won't really get you to your end goal.

My advice to you is to consider getting an MPH in epidemiology, if you want a PhD in epidemiology. Many people at my program study chronic diseases (myself included), and you'll find yourself interested more in applying research methodologies to studying chronic disease, which is essentially what epi is all about. My program also offers several courses pertaining to the epidemiology of chronic diseases, as well.

 

[wholeheartedly]

I'd suggest the MPH Epi route if you want to get the PhD in Epidemiology and for what you're interrsted in from a research standpoint, that should get you what you need.

For the clinical medicine side of things, have you tried posting your info in the What are my chances thread in pre-med?

there are quite a few posts around there on how to recover from low gpa starts.

 

[JDGBruin1317]

I'm having trouble picking a concentration as well. For the longest time I had my mind set on epidemiology, but now I'm having second thoughts. I'm applying to grad school this fall and taking the GRE in a couple of months.