I’m finally getting off my ass and writing my essay for grad school this weekend, and I’m wondering what I should include. I’m applying to the School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine at Tulane for their MSPH program in parasitology, and I have a BS in microbiology from Michigan State and have been working as a microbiologist for a year and a half.
I had pretty good GRE scores and I have enough experience in the field that I shouldn’t have a problem getting in… however, one of the requirements for admission is a GPA of 3.0 in the undergraduate major, and my GPA in my microbiology classes is not so great because I completely slacked off senior year, and is around 2.6 . (My cumulative GPA was 3.35, but that’s because I had an additional major in German that I did really well in). I don’t really have a compelling reason why I did so shitty that year, other than that the classes were more geared toward memorization and that the subject matter was more focused on genetics and cell structure than on epidemiology and public health, which is what I’m interested in. (Not to mention that there was a lot going on in the world when I was a senior, and there was a lot of NY Times articles and blogs to read.) :smack:
So should I mention my shitty grades in the essay and give the reasons as “I just wasn’t interested in the material, but I’ll do really well at Tulane because your program focuses more on public/ international health and that’s what I AM interested in”, or should I just not call attention to it?
I’d leave it out. You’ve been out of the school for awhile, it should be okay. They’ll have your transcript and the like, not to mention your total GPA is fine.
I’m in a similar position. In May I’ll be finishing my second Bachelor’s degree and I’m applying for a Master’s for next year. I need to send the transcript from my first BA. So here’s the thing: in my first undergrad career, my overall GPA was a 2.8 but my major GPA was a 3.6. My GPA so far at my current school is a 3.64.
I met with an advisor this week to go over what I have in my essay so far, and I brought up the issue of the lousy cumulative GPA from degree #1. She said I should acknowledge it in the essay to explain the difference in the grades. In my case, it was always the general education requirements that brought my GPA down. The advisor said I could mention something like that. Better to say something about it than have them just look at it and wonder what was going on. Beat them to the punch and all that jazz.
Don’t call attention to it. They’ll ask if they want to know, and the essay is a great opportunity to focus attention on your strengths. In this case, it sounds like your experience in the field is more recent than your last set of grades anyway, so I’d really play up that work experience and what you’ve learned from it (with the subtle, between-the-lines implication that you’re now more prepared for advanced academic work than you were when you graduated).
I disagree - and as someone who has experience with the Public Health application procedure, I wanted to chime in.
You said that one of the requirements is a 3.0 in your major. That means that the admissions committee will be checking your transcript to see if you have a 3.0 in your major. If you don’t, they will want to know why. If you don’t have a good answer, your file is more likely to be put in the maybe pile than the yes pile.
So you need to talk about why your grades in your major slipped your senior year, but talk about it in a positive way and don’t spend too much time on it.
Rather than saying (not that you would) - the classes were boring and involved too much memorization - talk about your developing interest in public health research and the (volunteer work or side job or extra reading) that you were doing that was related to (some specific aspect of public health, preferably) and how that took time away from your course work. In other words, talk about what you did do, and how it was related to public health. When you’re applying to school, everything is related to public health.
Then go on and talk about your job as a microbiologist and how it rocks your world and how you just can’t wait to be looking at little international buggies under the scope and talking with refugees about where they are getting their drinking water. Or whatever else you were going to way in your essay.
If you’d like to talk more about MPHs and applications, feel free to email me at my username at gmail dot com.
