ADMISSIONS

Not quite ready to apply for a PhD, but curious?

Welcome! You may still benefit from reviewing the information the resources listed here and in the PhD Admissions section. 

A helpful exercise you can engage in is to review the CV/work history of researchers you admire to see what their training path looked like. This can give you insight into the pre-doctoral training expectations and training programs that could prepare you for the work that you eventually want to pursue.

Casey Fiesler's YouTube channel is a great resource for demystifying the PhD admissions process, from deciding whether to do a PhD at all to choosing programs to writing a strong statement. 

Getting a pre-doctoral research position or internship

Dr. Sherri Rose maintains a list of summer programs that introduce undergraduate students to biostatistics and health services research.

Pathways to Research and Doctoral Careers (PREDOC.org) provides resources and guidance regarding preparing for a doctoral program. 

All hiring opportunities will be posted on the Department of Population Medicine's careers page and LinkedIn profile.

This section is for prospective students of the Harvard PhD Program in Health Policy.

I am affiliated with the Harvard PhD Program in Health Policy. I am a member of the program's Committee on Higher Degrees in Health Policy and I am core faculty in the Decision Sciences concentration. 

My research focuses on specific questions related to obesity and diabetes care — for example, whether patient-centered financial incentives improve adolescent diabetes care; how patients with diabetes choose health plans and how those choices affect health and utilization outcomes; how to encourage families to engage in early childhood obesity treatment; and how to design and evaluate interventions and policies that improve health outcomes while remaining cost-effective. My trainees' research follows the same pattern, applied to specific topics related to child health (e.g., prenatal genetic testing, adolescent depression screening, food insecurity, patient-centered value assessment frameworks, diagnostic imaging, vaccination uptake, adolescent tobacco policy). 

The hidden curriculum

There is a hidden curriculum to graduate school admissions that can negatively impact equity in the admissions process. I believe that all applicants should have access to the same information to level the playing field, so to speak. Given the resources that have been provided to demystify the admissions process for our program, my personal policy is that I will not take individual meetings or review CVs of prospective students. This website intentionally includes the same information I would otherwise share in a meeting, so you're not missing out on anything by not meeting with me.

This approach isn't unique to me. For more on transparency in PhD admissions, see work by Julie Posselt and Casey Fiesler.

Harvard has over 12,000 faculty across its schools and affiliated teaching hospitals. If you still have questions after reviewing the resources below, I'm happy to try to point you toward faculty working in a particular area. I'm best able to answer questions related to decision sciences and child health, and less able to speak to Harvard's research landscape further afield. What's useful for me to receive is a specific question, not a general statement of interest. "I'm interested in the intersection of X and Y" doesn't give me enough to respond to meaningfully, even if it's a genuine interest. Please reach out by email rather than a LinkedIn connection request.

Resources to learn more about the program and admissions process

• The program's website has information about faculty, our curricula, student dissertation topics, the jobs alumni currently hold, and more information about the admissions process. Note that our doctoral program is an interfaculty program that spans six Harvard schools (Medicine, Business, Public Health, etc.) and it is therefore not affiliated with a single department. 

• We host info sessions during each admissions cycle. Info sessions help to ensure that all prospective applicants have access to the same information so that they can prepare the best application possible. We encourage all applicants to attend a live virtual info session or watch the recordings to verify that our program is a good fit for your goals. [2023-2024 recording] [2024-2025 recording] 

• The Decision Sciences concentration has hosted a track-specific info session in 2022. Our admissions priorities have not changed since this date. We encourage all applicants to watch the recordings to verify that this track is a good fit for your goals. [2022-2023 recording] 

• Wondering what you should write in your research statement? We outline this in our recorded info sessions. This guide ("PhD applications: A peek behind the admissions committee curtain" by Jaimie Gradus and Maria Glymour), is written for a different program, but it's a strong model of what an effective, specific research statement actually looks like. Casey Fiesler's "PhD Admissions Advice" is another good one, especially on how to talk about specific faculty and research fit.

• Following faculty on social media, and looking at their grants on NIH RePORTER to see what they're actively producing (and citing) beyond published papers, can offer insight into current interests that may not show up in a CV yet. 

• Former program faculty member Dr. Laura Hatfield has compiled a webpage with tips for prospective students considering our program. Her page is another way to learn about how our doctoral program operates.

• The GRE is optional for every concentration except the Management track. The Health Policy PhD program does not screen or rank applications based on GRE scores. See the program website for more information.

• The Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences offers an application fee waiver to those for whom payment of the application fee would be financially challenging. 

• Prospective students frequently ask about scholarships and funding. This information can be found on the FAQ and is discussed during the info sessions. 

How to find a faculty advisors

Faculty advisors in our program are determined after admission to the program and we do not admit students to sit in a particular "lab" or to work with a specific faculty member. Collaborations between faculty and students develop during the first two years of study based on mutual areas of interest. Where can you find us? While many Decision Sciences faculty, research scientists, and students sit in the Center for Health Decision Science at the Harvard T.H, Chan School of Public Health, decision scientists can be found across the University including at the Harvard Kennedy School, Massachusetts General Hospital (e.g. Health Decision Sciences Center, Institute for Technology Assessment), the Department of Population Medicine, the School of Dental Medicine, and many of Harvard Medical School's other affiliate hospitals. Finally, students in our concentration are not limited to working with Decision Sciences faculty for their dissertations or as a research assistant. 

You can get a sense of which faculty are actively working with trainees and the topics where they have expertise by reviewing the list of dissertation committee members on the program website. This is not comprehensive, but is a start.

Other graduate programs

There are many excellent programs beyond Harvard at other universities that offer comprehensive training in Health Policy, Decision Sciences, Health Economics, Health Services Research, Population Health, and adjacent fields. Each program has different attributes, and whether a particular attribute of a program is a strength or weakness can be subjective and may vary from candidate to candidate.  I would encourage you to explore multiple programs so that you can identify which program attributes you value. This AcademyHealth list of health services research training programs may offer insight into other programs that might be a good fit for your research interests. That list is not comprehensive, however, and may exclude programs based in schools of Pharmacy (e.g., Pharmaceutical Policy, Pharmaceutical Economics, Pharmacoeconomics), Population Health programs, and schools outside of the US.

I hope these resources answer your questions. If you still have outstanding questions, feel free to reach out to our program staff.

If you decide to pursue further graduate training, I hope you find the option that is the best fit for you personally and professionally. If you feel like the Harvard program is a good fit for you, we hope you apply!

Good luck with your professional journey!

I'm affiliated with several of Harvard's post-doctoral fellowship programs. I currently serve as Associate Director of the Harvard-wide Pediatric Health Services Research Fellowship, and I'm also affiliated with the Harvard Cancer Prevention Fellowship and the Harvard Medical School Fellowship in General Medicine and Primary Care.

The Thomas O. Pyle Fellowship is based at the Department of Population Medicine, and requires applicants to have a named mentor within the department before applying.

If you're interested in working with me through one of these programs, please email me your CV and a short paragraph describing your specific research interests and how they connect to my work. If it seems like a good fit, I'm happy to follow up by phone to walk through the details.