I would be especially honored if selected to your distinguished Master’s in Public Health Program at XXXX because of your low student-to-faculty ratio and the subsequent attention from and ability to interact with the faculty that results. I also very much appreciate the way in which students are encouraged to contribute to the design of their curriculum. I love XXXX’s interdisciplinary nature, collaboration with other XXXX schools, especially the XXXX Medical School and the XXXX School of Design. Conducting a thesis project and/or internship in association with the XXXX Department of Health or another public-health-related organization represents a singularly valuable opportunity.
A Japanese student, I have a close friend in the MPH Program at XXXX, XXXX, who is a Siddha doctor, specializing in the traditional medicine of India. I am impressed with the fact that XXXX has the foundations to guide and assist her unique research on preventive medicine for Alzheimer's and diabetes patients using traditional Indian medical knowledge and technique. On her blog, she describes in detail her vast appreciation for XXXX and how thoughtfully the faculty caters to each student. Learning all about your system, resources, environment and people through her and her experiences, I have fallen in love with the idea of myself attending your program.
Your MPH Program at XXXX is my first choice for graduate study for a variety of reasons, most of all the simple fact that it is one of the leading public health programs in the world. I also appreciate the fact that you have a large and extremely diverse student body from all over the planet, since I very much look forward to learning a great deal from my peers as well as my professors. While I keenly look forward to learning as much as I can about innovative theory and challenges in all areas of Public Health, I plan to develop my own special focus on mental health, epidemiology, public policy challenges, treatments, etc. I especially appreciate the efforts being made at Brown in global mental health, and the study of public mental health in the wake of natural disasters such as the Tsunami that hit Japan in March if 2011, programs to help manage stress after these kinds of events, etc.
A Japanese man who is 25 years old, for years now I have been developing a special passion for epidemiology and public health. Completing your rigorous program at XXXX will enable me to acquire precisely the kind of professional skills and knowledge base that I will need in the future to excel, learning to better analyze and understand the genesis and propagation of disease, to know how to best prevent it. I am especially interested in mental health and want to use epidemiological skills to study and address global mental health issues. Japan is infamous for its high suicide rate (Karoshi). I want to thoroughly investigate the environmental/social-risk factors for mental health diseases, how to effectively treat if not prevent them from occurring. Japan is also unparalleled as an aging society. Soon, public health resources in Japan will continue to be stretched increasingly thin; and other countries face similar problems related to aging populations.
After completing my MPH Degree and within time my PHD, I want to work for a health organization such as the WHO. I look forward to publishing in the future concerning what I see as the Japanese fear of failure and how it is related to suicide. I look forward to better understanding why Japanese people are so susceptible to mental illness especially in the young, and how it is related to problems at school.
With frequency, growing up over the years, my family has gone to the US to visit our relatives in Denver, Colorado where I learned to speak English at play with my cousins. I also studied my cousins, their assimilation issues, how they compared to children growing up in Japan. I have also traveled, learned, and reflected a great deal about mental health across cultures, especially India, where I have spent significant periods of time. Despite enormous challenges resulting from poverty and poor sanitation, I suspect that the Indian people have fewer mental health issues than the Japanese, and this intrigues me.
Thank you for considering my application to XXXX.
MPH Program Statement of Purpose Sample Japanese Applicant