Applying
for a graduate degree in public health in the US: My few cents on the
application process.
The application process for a PhD in public
health has changed considerably since I applied last, about 8 years ago. If
this is how arduous it was when I applied, I don’t think that I’d have had the
energy or the money to apply then.
Back
then
·
You went
through school websites and made a list of schools you wanted to apply to,
based on the fit between the school and your research interests.
·
You took
the standardized exams (GRE and TOEFL).
·
You paid
an application fee for each school, that varied anywhere between $30-$60.
·
You applied
separately to each school. Wrote a customized statement of purpose (SOP) for
each school. You sent them your standardized scores and transcripts. You sent
them the letters of recommendations from your professors. You prayed for a few months
that you made it to the school of your choice, with financial support, of
course.
And now
Most of the schools of public health (SPH) have
a central application system now- The Schools of Public Health Application
Service (SOPHAS). Theoretically, it means that instead of making six separate applications
to the six schools you apply to (six being a fictitious number), you make one
central application and specify the names of the schools you want your
applications to be sent to. You apply once, you pay once (the application fee depending
on the number of schools), and you are done. Ideally, this is supposed to make your
life easier. But there are several reasons this is not the case.
Why SOPHAS
does not always make your life easy?
1.
Not all institutions are a part of SOPHAS
For example, if you apply for a DrPH degree at
Johns Hopkins, you need to make a separate application, pay the fee separately,
and send in the documents (transcripts, recommendation letters, etc.) separately.
So if you are applying to six schools, five out of which do not participate in
SOPHAS and one does, SOPHAS will not help you much. Note that if a particular
school goes the SOPAHS way, you have to apply through SOPHAS. It is compulsory.
2.
Application
fee
Just because you apply once does not mean that
you pay once. There is a two-pronged challenge to this situation. First, your
application fee increases non-linearly based on the number of schools you apply
to. You pay $120 for the first school, and then pay an additional $45 per
school (Link).
Again, from the previous logic, if
you are applying to six schools, five out of which do not participate in SOPHAS
and one does, you will incur a financial loss. Second, just because you pay a
SOPHAS fee does not mean you are exempt from the application fee. Many schools
will charge you a separate application fee, although you have paid the SOPHAS
fee. For example, University of California at Berkeley mandates you to pay an
additional $80 application fee along with the SOPHAS application fee.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has an additional $85 application
fee. If I am making a centralized application system, I do not see why I need
to pay additional money to schools individually. Of course not all schools do
that. For example, the University of Texas at Houston requires you to pay no
additional fee.
3.
Dual application
In addition to the SOPHAS application, many
schools require you to fill out an additional application form. This means that
you go through the same process of filling out the application form, twice per
school. Many of us who have gone through the process are aware of the huge
amount of time and patience this requires, filling out mundane information like
name and address, courses taken, GPAs, etc. Each school requires a separate SOP
customized for it. Doing an application twice isn’t remotely funny. It beats
the purpose of applying through a centralized application system.
4.
Timeline
The way things work is, you apply to SOPHAS.
SOPHAS verifies all your information and mails your application to the
respective schools. In the meantime, you make separate applications to schools
(if required). Now here is the catch. SOPHAS will not mail your applications
unless they are complete. For example, SOPHAS has to receive ALL the official
transcripts and at least two out of three recommendation letters, and your
application needs to be complete before it will mail your application. So if
your school has an application deadline of December 1, you cannot proceed based
on a December 1 timeframe. SOPHAS will have to receive the complete
application, application fee, and supporting documents (transcripts, 2
recommendation letters, etc.) weeks in advance to be able to process it and make
it on time for the December 1 deadline. What this means is, a December 1 deadline
does not mean that you have until November 30 to make an application. What it
means is, to be on the safer side, you must finish the application by October,
and then SOPHAS will take a few weeks to determine that your application is
complete before it will mail your applications by the December 1 deadline.
5.
International transcripts
If you are an international student, you need
your transcripts evaluated by the World Education Services. It is mandatory. What
this means is, you send a sealed, official copy of your transcript to WES weeks
in advance, pay an application fee, and wait. WES evaluates your transcripts,
converts it into American grades, and mails them to SOPHAS or the non-SOPHAS-participating
universities. The good news is, you do not individually need to mail your
transcripts to separate institutions (unless you get admitted to a school,
which is when you send that school an official copy of your transcript again).
The bad news is, transcript evaluation takes time and money, and is mandatory,
no matter how many additional US degrees you have piled on. For example, if you
have two master’s degrees, one from a foreign institution and one from the US,
you have to get the foreign transcript evaluated. You cannot say that since I have
a master degree from the US as well, I want them to consider my US transcript
and not my international transcript. Also, you pay $160 for the application,
and then for each institution to want these transcripts sent to, you pay an
additional $30/school and $7/school postage. If you want to expedite the
process, you pay more. Then there is Fedex/postage fees. If you want to add
more schools after you initiated your $160 application process, you pay more. WES
takes a few weeks to evaluate your transcripts, after which, it sends the
evaluation report to SOPHAS, after which, SOPHAS sends it to the respective
schools. If I were to show this process diagrammatically, it will look like:
Applicant à WES à SOPHAS à School
With each extra arrow, you add a few weeks of
processing time, and a few hundred dollars to the application process.
Why SOPHAS
works?
I feel that SOPHAS complicates your application
process. Despite this, the only advantage to this system is- The recommendation
letters need to be sent just once. Even if a school wants you to make another
application in addition to SOPHAS, it does not require those recommendation
letters to be sent again. But then, if you have a lot of
non-SOPHAS-participating institutions in your kitty, the recommendation letter
advantage does not work in your favor.
What
it should be ideally?
A centralized application system should mean
applying once, and paying once. Either all schools use SOPHAS, or none of them
use it.
My two
cents:
Cent
one: Start early.
With the number of steps it will require to
complete your application, and the amount of jumping through the hoops, I’d
strongly recommend that you start applying at least 2-3 months before the
deadline.
Cent
two: Be prepared to spend a lot of money.
SOPHAS needs its application fees, which
increases with the number of schools you apply to. Then, many schools require
you to pay additional application fee. WES will require additional fees to
evaluate your international transcripts. Then there are costs for postage,
fedex, and other miscellany. If you are applying to six schools, be prepared to
be staring at a ballpark figure of $1000 dollars, give or take a few hundred.
Note: I do not vouch for the factual accuracy of the
information presented in this article. The views and opinions expressed here
are solely mine, based on my examination of the SPH application process for
professional interests. I have no professional affiliation with any of the organizations
or institutions mentioned in this post. This article should only be used as a
guideline to time your application.
sunshine
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