Comp Exam

The MPH Comprehensive Exam is a required milestone for the Gillings MPH degree awarded by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The MPH Comprehensive Exam is designed to evaluate students’ ability to apply foundational public health knowledge and skills developed in the MPH Core courses to novel contexts, problems and populations. It also is designed to further the development of students’ integrative and critical thinking skills. The Comprehensive Exam (and the preparation for it) also provides students with the opportunity to practice and demonstrate skills communicating about public health issues and solutions with colleagues, other stakeholders and the general public.

Students will take the comp exam as part of their SPHG 722 course.  Therefore student may not register for and take SPHG 722 before taking SPHG 721.  The grading of the comp exam is separate from the grades for SPHG 722.  The topics of the comp exam will be the topic on which students are writing their SPHG 722 paper.

Students who do not pass the exam are provided remediation and may retake the exam after a minimum of 90 days.  Students must be registered for at least one credit in the term in which they take the exam and any retake of the exam.

The final administration of the oral comp exam for students who have already completed SPHG 722 (and not taken the exam) will be in August of 2022.