Having been the chair of the admissions committee for our joint university masters of public health program I can probably give some good insight. When we review applicants we look for several things. First, is that they will be able to do graduate work. This means that we look at overall gpa, gpa in the last 60 hours, and GRE scores. We then look at the transcript to see whether the grades in individual courses are consistent with the GRE scores. We also look at the references from professors. Second, we want to know that the applicant is not just applying to our program because they do not know what they want to be when they grow up and mommy and daddy will keep paying as long as they are in school. We also want to know since our other university is the medical school of that university, we want to know that they are not trying to back door their way into medical school. For this we look at their personal essay, what courses they have taken, their references, and the activities on their resume. Lastly we evaluate them based on what they state their interest is. So if they state they are interested in epidemiology we look for courses that heavy on quantitative and analytical methods as well as biology and chemistry. If they say they are interested in health policy and administration we look more closely at courses where they will have learned interpersonal and verbal communication and provide an understanding of groups and organizations [eg, social psych and/or political science]. If they state they are interested in health education we would want to see that they have taken and done well in social/behavioral science courses. We would prefer that they have intro courses in more than one field - that is not all of their courses should have been psych; they should have had intro sociology and anthropology. We also would want them to have had intro biology and chemistry and at least a personal health or similar course. If they are interested in the people-oriented specialities such as administration and health education, we would like to see that they either have internship or work experience. We actually prefer that they work for at least two years in a health setting after getting their BS/BA. If they are interested in the non-people-oriented specialities such as epidemiology or biostatistics, we would want to see research although we prefer that it was applied research rather than theoretical research experience. We also would prefer that they work for at least two years post-BA/BS before entering our program. For all of our applicants we want to see that they took courses outside of their major. So we do not want to see someone applying who says they want to specialize in environmental health who had only taken biology and chemistry courses. We would want to see electives such as literature, psychology, or political science. We do consider persons who are changing fields but we want to know why they want to change fields. This would be the case with your advisee who wants to major in geology. The student should think about whether they are actually changing fields. For instance, a student who majored in psychology and had the correct electives could make the case that they chose psychology because of the understanding it would provide them as an attorney. One thing you should do is to advise students early on to gather information from graduate programs in the field in which they are interested. In the initial gathering of information they should not limit themselves to just those schools which they are interested in attending. They are looking for what the expectations are and a good understanding of graduate work in that field. Then when they apply they should have a good understanding of that particular program. We get applications from persons who do want to enter public health but show they have no knowledge of our program and what it has to offer. Joyce Morris Public Health Sciences Wichita State University
