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Kraena Pre-Health
Career Library

Technical & Diagnostic

Public Health (MPH)

Works on the health of whole populations rather than one patient at a time.

Years after high school

6

Degree

MPH

Entrance exam

GRE (often optional now)

Median pay

An MPH is a graduate degree, not one occupation. Public-health graduates work across epidemiology, health education, policy, administration, research, biostatistics, and other roles, so one national wage figure would be misleading.

What the job is actually like

Analyzing disease data, designing prevention programs, evaluating policy, managing community health initiatives. You may never touch a patient and still affect more lives than any single clinician.

The path

  1. 014 years undergraduate in any field
  2. 022-year Master of Public Health, with a concentration such as epidemiology or health policy
  3. 03Optional: combine with a clinical degree (MD/MPH, PA/MPH)

Good fit if

  • You are drawn to root causes and prevention rather than individual treatment
  • You like data, policy, and systems thinking

Think twice if

  • You want direct patient contact — this path largely does not provide it

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All salary figures here are median annual wages from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2025 — the most recent full national dataset. 'Median' means half of workers earn more and half earn less. Three things to keep in mind: (1) pay varies enormously by state, city, setting, and experience — a nurse in California and a nurse in rural Alabama earn very different salaries; (2) training lengths are typical, not guaranteed, and programs differ; (3) these numbers change every year. Always verify current figures at bls.gov/ooh before making a decision. For context, the BLS median wage for all U.S. occupations was $50,980, while healthcare practitioner and technical occupations had a median of $86,530 — one of the reasons health care is such a stable field.