Been sitting on this, but since I've heard back from several schools, I want to offer encouragement to any future students with a less than stellar GPA. Identifying exactly what I wanted to do with an MPH, working hard for a couple of years, and having the luck of knowing some great people for my letters of recommendation helped me get into some good programs. If you don't have the best GPA, don't give up! Time and experience can help
Undergrad School: Big 10 University
Undergrad GPA: 3.3 (SOPHAS verified - took some community college classes, so undergrad GPA is closer to 3.25)
Major: Double major in Zoology/Psychology
GRE: V: 163 (93%), Q: 158 (68%), W: 5.0 (November 2018)
Experience/Research (please, be brief):
- 1 year experience working as a clinical research coordinator at a rural hospital running oncology clinical trials and a large precision medicine trial.
- (almost) 1 year experience as a clinical research coordinator at a university hospital running health services research clinical trials (current position).
- Was involved in student governance in undergrad and worked on projects such as balancing the health services budget and assessing the availability of gender-neutral bathrooms for gender nonconforming students on campus. Also took several infectious disease classes, some of which were part of the MPH program.
LOR: One from former professor in infectious disease class who worked for CDC, one from coworker at first job, one from my PI at current job who is also chief of our department.
Interests: MPH in infectious disease epidemiology. My dream is to work for the state department as an epidemiologist in a very niche field (despite scrolling through all the posts in this forum since...2013? I still haven't seen anyone else show an interest in it, which makes me hesitant to identify it while still waiting on admissions).
Applied: Boston U, Tufts, UMass Amherst, Yale, Minnesota, Wisconsin-Madison (all epi)
Accepted: Boston U + $ (12/17), Tufts (01/11), Minnesota (01/14)
I didn't get the video interview from Yale, so I imagine I am not being considered. Ah well, glad to have gotten into the ones I have. Is anyone else starting to get nervous about finances though? I was told not to take out more than my first year's salary in loans (so approximately $50k), but yikes, all the schools so far seem so expensive, even with having saved up for the last two years