Personal Statement and Writing Sample
Personal Statement
In your statement of purpose, please discuss the following in one to two single-spaced pages:
- Your professional, academic, and community experiences
- The area of research you wish to potentially pursue as a student in the program, the name of at least one member of the PHS PhD Program Faculty or Participating Faculty who shares this research interest, A brief statement regarding your proposed research area interests with the research of the identified faculty member(s),
- Your specific interest in UNC Charlotte’s program
- Your career and personal goals including how the program aligns with your career plans
- How you plan to actively participate in UNC Charlotte’s mission to advance health equity and well-being in an urbanizing world
Writing Sample
In addition to the statement of purpose, a writing sample is required for all applications to the PhD program. The writing sample should
- Demonstrate aptitude for scholarly writing, e.g., a literature review, a report of a needs assessment or evaluation project, a master’s thesis, or a published original research article on a public health topic where the applicant is the sole or first author.
- Demonstrate conceptual and analytic skills
- Use appropriate and consistent citation and reference formatting
- Applicants without existing examples of academic or scholarly writing should develop a 10-20 page paper on a public health topic of interest that demonstrates conceptual skills and writing ability, use appropriate and consistent citation and reference formatting