London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Coming to the final stages of my undergraduate degree, I spoke to my personal tutor about my master’s applications, where to apply and what degrees to apply for. She kept recommending LSHTM, which at first I was hesitant to consider as a place for my master’s degree. No one outside of my department had heard of the school, so I was worried that its small size and niche specialism wouldn’t provide me with a strong and well-rounded education at a world-class level like I have heard from other universities, within and beyond London. 

Then I realised that if it is an excellent school within my field of interest, it doesn’t matter whether my friends in engineering have heard of it, and now I know that LSHTM certainly is providing me with a strong and well-rounded education at a world-class level. Multiple respected and international academics at my undergraduate university spoke highly of LSHTM, so I attended an open day, and then took the leap to apply for the intensive MSc Epidemiology.

Navigating the endless choices for master’s degrees

During my undergraduate studies, I knew that I wanted to do a master’s degree straight after graduating. I learnt about so many different health problems, social theories and diseases in my BSc Global Health and Social Medicine, that I wanted to deep dive into further, so I had to decide which master’s degree would give me that opportunity. I considered degrees in medical anthropology, global and public health, and eventually landed on epidemiology and/or population health, which was a degree I applied for at other unis. 

The hardest decision was to choose between epidemiology and public/global health. Epidemiology would provide me with an opportunity to deep-dive into researching the how and the why, learning about different studies for different health problems, and understanding how we can draw conclusions on topics that impact thousands and millions of people’s health. 

On the other hand, public or global health would give me a bit of a broader education on how to implement the findings of these epidemiological studies, take into account policy, political and financial considerations, and think about the feasibility and logistics of implementing health recommendations. I went back and forth about this: do I want to be the person conducting and understanding the studies, or do I want to be a person who uses the studies for public health? 

Eventually, I realised that I want to pursue a research career and wanted quantitative and quantifiable skills out of my master’s degree, so I chose epidemiology.

Master’s degree chosen, but at which university?

Once I decided on what master’s degree I wanted to apply to, I faced the decision of which universities to apply to, and there are many! It did help that I wanted to stay in London, partially because the interconnectedness of the London universities is quite unique in the UK and could benefit me for pursuing a PhD or building other connections. 

However, there are still many London unis to choose from. Some offered an MSc Epidemiology, like LSHTM, whilst others offered slightly more niche or broader degrees, such as Social Epidemiology or Population Health in general. I chose this specific MSc Epidemiology at LSHTM, partially as other population health degrees weren’t as rigorous in quantitative aspects and took a more surface level approach to epi, placing epi in the context of public and global health, and mixing in health policy and financing. On the other hand, other unis offering an MSc Epidemiology sometimes had modules that didn’t quite interest me or were a bit too statistics- and maths-heavy for what I wanted to get out of my degree.

My choice was made a bit easier, as I wanted a well-rounded education, which LSHTM provides in a unique way. Studying at LSHTM means that you get university-level resources in a field that normally only gets department-level funding at other universities, because of LSHTM’s specialism in health. Coming here meant that I was getting a more interdisciplinary education than I otherwise would have gotten at other universities. 

Lecturers at LSHTM are working on a large variety of topics, but all with a focus on their application to health, meaning that their work is always in some way relevant to our degree, no matter which degree you enrolled in. At other universities, the academics who are working on something that is relevant to epidemiology or population health tend to be in smaller numbers and with slightly less diverse backgrounds, as otherwise they would be in a different non-population health department. Despite having committed to one master’s degree, you will get such an interdisciplinary education because of the large overlap with other degrees, which you wouldn’t get to the same extent at other non-specialised universities. So, since starting at LSHTM, my initial worries that the school’s specialism was a drawback have been proven completely false.

• Read Shereen's experience and the transferable skills she gained from workshops and services at LSHTM.
• Discover MSc Epidemiology.
• Elbethel’s story: 4 things that make the learning experience at LSHTM special

Read Part 2