MPH

[Gracie_1984]

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Hi all,

I am a 2nd year MD student at a university with a good School of Public Health. I've been told recently that I should take a year off to do the MPH degree.

I don't have a ton of professional interest in population health research, but there are some biostats courses that could help with my more clinical research goals. Getting some population health perspective can't hurt me by any means and I am in no rush to graduate. My mentors have been telling me that the MPH opens doors during the match and is generally well-regarded by Internal Medicine residency programs.

Any thoughts from the peanut gallery?

 

[mcloaf]

Would you have to pay for it?

 

[Gracie_1984]

Yes, but the cost of staying for MPH is not huge. Very reduced tuition and my living expenses are low.

 

[libertyyne]

Looking at raw match numbers generally speaking graduate degrees seem to hurt on average. The issue is the confounding factor of weaker students getting graduate degrees before being accepted to medical school. You might be better served in taking a research year if the match is your only concern. Graduate degrees are literally not even in the top 20 things people look at in the PD survey.
Get the degree if you want to. If you want the epi /biostat stuff why not just do some Coursera or take a night class or take the class during research year.

 

[wholeheartedly]

Yes, but the cost of staying for MPH is not huge. Very reduced tuition and my living expenses are low.

Courses in Epidemiology and biostats are great for clinical research (which is still population health technically), but I always encourage folks to hold off until later unless circumstances really make it beneficial to do it before or during medical school. I'm doing it before med school because my employer was helping pay for it.

It's often possible to get the MPH paid for during certain fellowships (esp prev. med or ID, but I had classmates who were surgery residents, hem/onc fellows, cards, etc) or get it paid by your employer as an attending at a med center assoc. with a school of public health.

I think how residency programs view the MPH is probably going to be very program specific based on what I've read here.

 

[Dwan]

Hi all,

I am a 2nd year MD student at a university with a pretty great School of Public Health. I've been told recently that I should *definitely* take a year off to do the MPH degree.

I don't have a ton of professional interest in population health research, but there are some biostats courses that could help with my more clinical research goals. Getting some population health perspective can't hurt me by any means and I am in no rush to graduate. My mentors have been telling me that the MPH opens doors during the match and is generally well-regarded by Internal Medicine residency programs.

Any thoughts from the peanut gallery?

I'm doing an MPH in biostatistics in a gap year. Our department chair who advises the MD/MPH students (who's also worked on IM admissions here) says that residency directors almost unanimously agree that the MPH in itself doesn't do anything for your application, but what you do with the MPH can (you will be questioned on why you did the MPH). So far the MPH has been a great experience that will definitely help improve your research skills. However, note that it is challenging to do both research and a quantitative curriculum, and you'll need to be proactive with research involvement and learning, possibly having to read up on things you haven't covered yet (to be productive prior to residency apps).