-
CycleTrack and SDN are teaming up to make medical school admissions more transparent and accessible! Read the announcement to learn how we’re supporting the future of CycleTrack’s free application-tracking tools .
Tufts vs BU?
Started by asingh
Get help with your application
Use all the free resources available to you from SDN: articles, guides, expert advising, forums discussions, and school research.
Almost everyone is going to tell you: Going to a school of public health offers you more resources than going to a program of public health within a school of medicne.
That being said, both the programs and schools of public health are held to the same academic standards in order to be accredited, and only schools of public health are ranked, not programs, so it will be hard for you to find any rankings (if you're into that sort of thing) on programs.
That being said: I applied to Tufts dual degree program (MPH Global health/MS Nutritional Epi) and went to their open house. I did not apply or consider BU. I found Tufts to be a VERY intimate program, where the school of nutrition is split between policy students and science students - the incoming class of science students is expected to be around 14. They definitely gave the impression at open house that you'll have an advisor to work closely with you, and who only advises you and maybe another student - not dozens of students.
I've heard different view points on the dual degree idea, some think having the M.S. in Nutrition in addition to the MPH can really strengthen your degree, others believe nutrition is more of icing on the cake, and that it would be more important to hone a public health skillset.
I did go to Visit Emory (which, btw, did not seem to have much emphasis on nutrition.) and met with a guy who had gone to BU for his MPH and his wife was going to Emory for her MPH. The guy had felt he left BU without very many skills, and mostly thought about public health, critiqued it, analyzed it, but lacked the skills to work within the field. He also did not feel their career center was terribly good.
I don't know what Tufts has in terms of connections with companies or agencies (aside from the USDA Human Nutrition research center on aging.) or what their career center can offer in terms of working after the degree.
That being said, both the programs and schools of public health are held to the same academic standards in order to be accredited, and only schools of public health are ranked, not programs, so it will be hard for you to find any rankings (if you're into that sort of thing) on programs.
That being said: I applied to Tufts dual degree program (MPH Global health/MS Nutritional Epi) and went to their open house. I did not apply or consider BU. I found Tufts to be a VERY intimate program, where the school of nutrition is split between policy students and science students - the incoming class of science students is expected to be around 14. They definitely gave the impression at open house that you'll have an advisor to work closely with you, and who only advises you and maybe another student - not dozens of students.
I've heard different view points on the dual degree idea, some think having the M.S. in Nutrition in addition to the MPH can really strengthen your degree, others believe nutrition is more of icing on the cake, and that it would be more important to hone a public health skillset.
I did go to Visit Emory (which, btw, did not seem to have much emphasis on nutrition.) and met with a guy who had gone to BU for his MPH and his wife was going to Emory for her MPH. The guy had felt he left BU without very many skills, and mostly thought about public health, critiqued it, analyzed it, but lacked the skills to work within the field. He also did not feel their career center was terribly good.
I don't know what Tufts has in terms of connections with companies or agencies (aside from the USDA Human Nutrition research center on aging.) or what their career center can offer in terms of working after the degree.
If nutrition is a big interest of yours, Tufts sounds like a good place to be. I've heard lots of wonderful things about their nutrition work. Although I think the "two degrees" thing is kind of superfluous since the two degrees aren't in drastically different areas. Is this a two-year thing? If it's more than two (eg. 3), I think it'd be extraneous to get both and just go for the Nutritional Epi MS.
Tufts dual degree program is aiming for 5 semesters, though they encourage summer classes so you can end up with only one class left your 5th semester.
You pay 3 semesters tuition at the school of nutrition, 2 at the school of medicine, regardless of units taken or time necessary (dont know how far you can stretch that.)
And while i'm doing nutritional epi, there's also nutritional biochem, and policy options like Food Policy and Applied Nutrition, and AFE (Agriculture Farm Environment??? I dont know...) etc etc.
But yes, two epi's would be redundant, though I'm considering changing (and they're very flexible with changing once you're in) from Global Health to Health Communication on the public health side.
You pay 3 semesters tuition at the school of nutrition, 2 at the school of medicine, regardless of units taken or time necessary (dont know how far you can stretch that.)
And while i'm doing nutritional epi, there's also nutritional biochem, and policy options like Food Policy and Applied Nutrition, and AFE (Agriculture Farm Environment??? I dont know...) etc etc.
But yes, two epi's would be redundant, though I'm considering changing (and they're very flexible with changing once you're in) from Global Health to Health Communication on the public health side.
