Medical Phyiscs master's program at OSU/OHSU vs. SDSU

[pdm0118]

Hello forum,

I am a soon-to-be-graduated Radiation Health Physics student who plans to study medical physics in the future. I have applied for a few schools and I have been admitted to San Diego State's medical physics masters so far. And I am still waiting to hear from Oregon State/Oregon Health and Science University.

I would like to ask you about their quality of education, please. Being CAMPEP accreditted schools, both programs should provide solid MP education. However, according to an acquaintance of mine who is finishing a medical physics PhD at OHSU, the program at OSU/OHSU is relatively less organized and provides fewer courses/research opportunities. He suggested me to go to SDSU.

However, I would like to hear from more people who have experienced either OSU/OHSU or SDSU's medical physics program before making a decision.Thank you!

 

[Choppy]

I can't say too much about the specifics of those programs.

In our discussion thread on Becoming a Medical Physicist I've listed a number of things that I would look for in a program if I were a student starting out today with an interest in the profession, and maybe that can be of some help to you in deciding which direction to go.

It's good that you're talking to current students.

Rather than breadth of research opportunities, I would try to concentrate a little more on the particular research that's going on in the program. If they only do two things, but one of those is very appealing then the overall breadth of opportunities shouldn't matter too much.

Program organisation is another big thing to look at too. One issue that comes up frequently is the amount of time the faculty have to dedicate towards teaching. You can only do so much teaching if you have spend most of your time tending to a clinic and I suspect a lot of programs wrestle with this - particularly the smaller ones.