Definitely not saying who's more deserving of what. Not even talking about the individual candidates.
My whole point has been that people should not be limited chances for a good education bc of their previous baggage (that dipped their GPA), and public health people should realize that school grades definitely present oppression in many ways. It's the same stream of thought when they waived GRE or any other standardized tests. They should do it more comprehensively by taking in the whole application for merit-based awards.
I mean, it's not that I can change the system at this minute. lol. Just seeing many of us who are in need and highly achieving in life are not awarded scholarships bc of GPA makes me feel weird.
I mean it is an academic program and institution first and foremost, it makes sense for them to seek out candidates who are academically accomplished to receive their scholarships?
I think that schools look holistically at applicants to gauge whether they are going to admit them or not, MPH programs seem to be pretty lenient when it comes to looking at GPA and everything else. The pot that financial aid and merit scholarships and awards comes out of is the same pot really, though I think why they have a gpa cut-off for some of these awards is:
1. Some schools require you to maintain a minimum graduate gpa.
2. A lot can affect the gpa, but in general probably higher gpa reflects more interest with academic coursework and intellectual curiosity than not, so they are kind of using a big fishing net type approach.
3. They want to encourage people to do well in college.
4. Some concentrations might require more math skills and better critical thinking and reading skills so they want students who have demonstrated ability to handle this stuff.
5. They want to attract students who, like you said, are more academically accomplished and so perhaps more likely to do the school good later on and do good work for public health.
I get what OnePotatoTwoBobs is saying, that people can be accomplished more with the "life" extracurricular stuff than with the academic stuff and it sucks to not be on an even plane with everybody with regards to having some merit award. I'm thinking this is sort of along the lines of a "Lifetime Achievement" merit award for public health school, maybe one day they'll do something like that, makes sense, though it would be hard to tell the difference between students who have many similar experiences, though it would go a long way to have other awards, maybe slightly less than academic merit awards, but something that could be given to other students who faced certain difficulties.
Probably important extracurriculars for public health (which isn't just pure science) would be:
1. Volunteer/service oriented work, public health needs people that want to work with diverse groups of people.
2. Variety/difficulty of coursework.
3. Public health related work experience, makes sense they want people who are sure they are interested in public health.
4. Research experience, many of the areas of public health require people to be able to interpret research.
5. Diverse backgrounds.
HOWEVER if public health is your dream then definitely applying yourself in graduate school will pay off big time, work and study hard and network. Go to a good school with student support and work hard, but have a great time as well, a lot of students who go to LSHTM say it was the best two years of their life, definitely worth it to make the most of everything and meet people and learn public health. Graduate school is a fresh slate opportunity so take advantage of it, you wouldn't be admitted if the school didn't think you could do a great job! Get a good gpa in graduate school and focus on developing contacts and work on good extracurricular projects.