Sunday, March 25, 2012

Dealing with A Master of Public Health


Are you confused when it comes to viable options for a public health graduate degree? There are many public health masters programs available, both professional and academic, at master and doctoral levels. You might encounter an MS or a master of public health but these two degree programs are not the same.

For people who are interested in learning about the basic concepts in public health, they should consider engaging in a Master of Public Health. Public health is an industry that can be delved into by people who are able to graduate from MPH programs as these focus mainly on this industry. Depending on what you like, there are different focuses that you can delve into here from health policy and administration to environmental health.

There is more than one major area in public health and core courses in these areas need to be completed by someone taking an MPH. MPH students should also complete an internship, fieldwork or practicum of some sort and a culminating requirement, be it comprehensive exam, presentation or thesis. It is the Graduate School of Public Health that is in charge of granting a Master of Public Health degree to a student.

Even if your undergraduate discipline is not related to public health, you can enroll in this master's course. Many students directly come from undergraduate studies. Having a doctorate degree can ensure that you will get to participate in an MPH degree program.

Admission procedures and rates are not standard across all educational facilities. Some schools have an acceptance rate of eighty percent. It is tremendously important for a 50th-percentile on every GRE section to be obtained by all MPH students and a 3.0 GPA is also mandatory.

If you will be studying as a full time student, you can complete a Master of Public Health degree in two years. For those who have PhDs, they can engage in this type of program through various accelerated programs that only call for 12 months of studying. If you will be pursuing further education, financial assistance might not be readily available.

As a professional, if you are considering research efforts, you should think about an MS, MSc, ScM, or MSPH which are all master's of science degrees. Here is where you need to select a particular discipline but you have the option of doing coursework that is outside of your chosen discipline. PH subjects are made available to students in the Master of Science in Public Health degree but these are mainly centered on academic research.

If you take the Master of Science, this will not really prepare you for a career in the public health industry. Something that will be required from individuals is interdisciplinary education if they want to make a career out of this. Dissertations are always part of the game when it comes to this.

If you are really interested in taking an MS program, you can pursue higher learning in the form of academic doctoral programs such as PhD or ScD as the requirements will be the same across the board. Usually capped off with a dissertation, the coursework will take about 2 years to complete. The MS is often conferred by the School of Art and Sciences or any applicable name at universities rather than School of Public Health and hence, the admission requirement will vary than a MPH applicant.

Although these programs are of the same caliber in a way, admission rates are lower for MS than Master of Public Health programs and this is because of the course difficulty. Admission is not something that is consistent across the board though. When it comes to MS degrees, a student can get the necessary funding from his or her home company under what is called a training grant.