 The third cycle of SOPHAS opened in August and is now in full swing. This year, 30 out of the 40 schools of public health are participating in SOPHAS.
One of the most useful outcomes of the SOPHAS process is the availability of comprehensive on applicants to our schools. In the spring 2008, a partial analysis of cycle two data was published and similar information will be published in the spring 2009 newsletter for cycle three.
A full analysis of cycle two data will be analyzed shortly after the annual meeting. Preliminary data includes:
- A total of 9,192 applicants submitted applications, which is a 27% increase in the number of applicants over cycle one.
- The average number of schools designated by applicants was 2.22
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During this cycle, the SOPHAS advisory committee is working with Liaison International, to develop a online review portal. This portal will give admissions offices the ability to assign applications to both individual faculty and review committees and will facilitate an on-line review process. This is an important step towards a paperless admissions process, a goal shared by many schools of public health.
The ASPH staff have also been hard at work developing a new and improved program search feature, which will allow applicants to search for degree programs by start term, degree, and area of study. This search will include both SOPHAS and non-SOPHAS programs, and is likely to be launched in October 2008. ASPH is still collecting degree information from each school, but at the time of publication, there were already nearly 3,000 options in the search database. This new search engine will surely be a very useful feature for applicants.
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