enox,
Well, it has been a love and hate relationship so far. I am an international student, so price definitely was the deciding factor. I had even accepted Emory for epidemiology, but couldn't secure a student loan and decided to attend UT at the last moment. There are many pros and cons for UT, let me list a few:
Pros:
1. The cost of education - THE MOST important factor to be considered. I personally believe that no one should pay so much money for an MPH degree, as the returns are not much in the field of public health. Tuition fees for international students were really low at around $7000/semester for 10 credits. If you get 50% assistantship (GA/GRA/TA), you are eligible for in-state tuition which cuts that number for around $2200 for the same number of credits. The in-state criteria also works if you get the scholarship.
2. Opportunities galore - Besides various schools in UT (SPH, Medical school, dental school, school of bioinformatics, graduate school of biomedical sciences, nursing school), you have institutions like MD Anderson, Baylor, methodist, Texas children's hospital, Texas A&M HSC, VA Medical center, blah blah blah... (so many opportunities that I cant even mention all the names of the institutions). Also, you have the government health agencies. MD Anderson is ever expanding and there are two new major multi-million dollar towers for targeted cancer therapy for pancreatic cancer are going to be built in the next few years. If you interested in health management/hospital management, I am pretty sure you can get experience here. It is a heaven for the cancer and molecular epidemiologists and biostatisticians for sure.
3. Cost of living - I realized how cheap Houston is after I traveled through many states, California, Washington, and East coast. Rent of apartment is much lower than other states, also gas is the cheapest you will get over here as compared to other major metropolitan cities.
4. Faculty - I personally know some of the HPM faculty , and even though I was an EPI major, I enjoyed taking classes in health management.
Cons:
1. Education standard/Class size - In 2009, there were total 120 (approx) students in the entire school in the Fall 2009 batch, including MPH, MS, PhD and DrPH students. That number shot to around 400 in Fall 2010. Ever since then, the number of students admitted have been too high. Class sizes are big (smallest I took was with 35 students). With a skewed teacher-student ratio, the school hired many new faculty, but most of them were newly graduated PhD students, and were inexperienced. Learning was not fun anymore, baring a few really good teachers. I hope they reduce the class size again. Many teachers personally expressed their stress/frustration cause the class sizes were as high as 120 students (split in two classrooms and taught via ITV in one classroom with the teacher in the neighboring classroom). That I think was the main factor due to which the school ranking went down to 15 from 11 in 2009.
2. City of Houston - BORING! I am an outdoor person and I love hiking. Its flat as it could ever be in Houston and the only thing you can do on weekends is eat and drink in the bars/pubs. There are many outdoor groups over here like Bayou city outdoors etc. I make it a point to go biking on the weekends. Many good restaurants though. You will get to eat a lot of ethnic food in Houston due to its international presence (Read: China, Vietnam, India, Nigeria, Mexico). But thats just my personal opinion, if you are a workaholic, then you are fine.. There is always some stuff happening, like its rodeo time now. It has a theater district in downtown with some good plays... Memorial park if you like to run/bike.. and you can always support Houston teams in NFL/Baseball or wait for your fav team to visit Houston and thrash them 😉
3. Houston weather: SUCKS! Its winter right now and its supposed to be cold, but Houston seems to have been stuck in this cycle of Torrential rain/thunderstorms --> cold --> warm --> hot and humid --> Rains.
Houston summers are horrible. Summer of 2011 was the worst, it barely rained, there was a major drought and temperatures soared to 110 F (Felt like 120) !!! Your skin literally burns... but thankfully every place has an a/c which takes care of the heat.
I hope that helps 😉
I hate the waiting game! lol
