HKS hopeful

I don't mind reading the wild speculations.. They are quite entertaining .. Many smart cookies and detectives applied to HKS this year. lol :-)

Interesting. No? Regardless, Hoping for lots of celebrations next week when decisions are released. Start polishing those dancing shoes.. :-)

For those of you wanting something to read..again...rather than refreshing your email.. . :-) Best wishes to all of you next week (8th or 9th-- likely release dates.) From the blog: "I wrote about the not admitted category of admission decision in a recent post, and the second category I will cover is waitlisted. Each year we place some candidates on a waitlist. There are a number of qualified candidates each year who we would admit if more seats were available. Candidates placed on the waitlist will receive digital notification, but no paper letter will be mailed out. We will only mail a paper letter to a waitlist candidate if s/he is admitted from the waitlist.I understand that candidates placed on the waitlist may feel a certain level of anxiety and this is completely understandable. I would like to do whatever I can as the Director of Admissions to reduce the anxiety; however the nature of the waitlist makes specific information hard to provide. I will try to provide as much insight as possible with these few points. First, we have no control over how many admitted applicants will accept our offer of admission. This makes it impossible to provide any information on if we will be able to admit candidates who are placed on the waitlist. Those placed on the waitlist can let us know if they wish to remain on the waitlist, but we can provide no specific information on the probability of being admitted. Yes we have admitted candidates from the waitlist in previous years, but each year is different and predictions are not possible. Second, as far as timing is concerned, we generally are unable to determine if we will be able to make waitlist offers until late April or early May. We will provide updates as we make progress, however prior to this time period we will not be able to provide specific details. The timeline is a bit more advanced for our MC/MPA Mason program because of the early start date for the MC/MPA Mason Program. MC/MPA Mason waitlist decisions will likely be made in mid-April.Third, we do not rank the waitlist and the Admissions Committee will not accept any additional documents from those placed on the waitlist. The Admissions Committee does not conduct interviews or take appointments with those on the waitlist. Waitlist candidates are reviewed based upon the information provided by the admission deadline. Thus we cannot provide information on one’s “place” or “rank” on the waitlist as there is no ranking system. The list is reviewed as a whole if and when we have seats available."

One of the sad realities of the process-- not every outstanding person can be admitted. :-( Best wishes to all of you. From its admission blog: "HKS has three admission decision categories: Not Admitted Waitlisted Admitted I will break these three categories down in upcoming posts in this series, starting with the toughest - not admitted. Admission to HKS is competitive. We receive applications from all over the world (148 countries this year - shown in red below) from individuals with impressive academic, personal, and professional backgrounds who posses a strong commitment to public service. The admission application review process is very thorough and we put a lot of thought and energy into selecting an incoming class. Many candidates have the qualifications and background to be an excellent HKS student; however we have a limited number of spaces available. Please note that the vast number of applications we receive prohibits us from providing personalized feedback to applicants who are not admitted to our programs. We do welcome applicants who are not admitted to reapply in the future. Additional experience, the completion of additional coursework and improved test scores are a few of the things that may bode well for a future application cycle. I have had to sign off on thousands of rejection letters during my long history in admissions and it is never easy. The solace I take is that I too have received many rejections in my lifetime, but each rejection opened another door of opportunity. Perhaps the best example of this is when I was rejected by the Peace Corps over two decades ago. I remember holding the decision envelop in my hand (there was no Internet or email then), slowly opening it, and upon reading the first line of the letter my heart sank. I had my heart set on the Peace Corps and the rejection was tough to take. However, that rejection opened a door to teach English in South Korea, and it was there that I met my wife. Looking back, I now am quite thankful the Peace Corps door closed so another could open. I am confident that those not admitted to our programs will walk through other doors and make tremendous contributions to the world and achieve great success. One final note, we do put a lot of thought into our waiting list as well (the topic of the next entry in this series) and unfortunately, we cannot place applicants who are not admitted on our waiting list. The Admissions Committee also does not consider appeals from candidates not admitted to our programs."

A post from a 2015 thread by David King (Chair of the MPA admission committee): "A few other comments, responding to the thread. Yes, admission rates for the MCMPA are higher than for the MPPs, but they're nowhere near what people have speculated. We don't publicize our admission rates, largely because we don't think they're very meaningful. For this year's class of Mason Fellows (MCMPAs) for example, we will offer admission to less than a third of the applicants. We would love to admit a far higher percentage, but we just don't have the capacity, and our applicant pool is so strong. It takes a tremendous amount of focus and attention for us to read mid-career files, because test scores don't tell us very much about applicants who are in their 30s or above. And as many of you know, a lot of what we end up doing when folks look at HKS is to *discourage* people from applying if they're not a fit for the school. I think it's crazy that other schools work to encourage applications from folks who won't get in - just to boost their selectivity ratings. We're not playing that game, and we'd love to have a higher admission rate from a terrific pool than a lower admission rate from a less terrific pool. Please also notice, as Matt has discussed so well on the admissions blog, that we have different criteria and expectations for the different programs. Of course, test scores matter for the MPP and MPA/ID programs. The average test scores for MPA2 applicants are virtually the same as for MPP applicants, but the MPA2 committee is looking for substantially more graduate-level experience that's consistent with our MPP and MPA/ID "core requirements." That's why we tend to think of the MPP and MPA/ID programs as places to "tool up" for a life in public policy, and we tend to think of the MPA2 program as a place to "integrate across professions." That said, test scores are *not* the be-all-and-end-all. We routinely turn down applicants with perfect test scores, and we routinely take applicants with far from perfect test scores. Not everybody tests well. We understand that, and we view files more holistically than you may expect. Letters and essays really *do* matter."

Issue resolved? If not, contact (call or email) financial aid letting them know. Best wishes!

If HKS accepts both, then you're okay. Besides, nothing you can do now so don't worry about it. Best wishes with your application. :-)

Last year thread traffic didn't pick up until mid Feb. I expect increased activity towards the end of the month as release date approaches and panic sets in. lol Last year on Feb 14th, traffic picked up after David King (from HKS Admissions Committee ) posted this in the HKS 2016 thread. See below. Best wishes to all who applied this year. Fingers and toes crossed for all of you. From David King on Feb 14 2016 in the "HKS 2016" thread: "Hi there, HKS hopeful. I haven't been on this site in many many months, and I'm glad that I checked in now to see your post. I don't know anything about where the MPP or MPA/ID committees are - but I want you to know that the MPA committees (for MPA2 and MCMPA) are on track. Every file has been read independently by two committee members. Written comments have been entered for each applicant, and we've had several full committee meetings to make sure that we're all looking out for the same sorts of things. We are now in the "in review" process - during which every file with substantially differing scores are discussed by the two initial readers. Some of those cases will soon come to the full committee for discussion. We meet as a group on Tuesdays and Thursdays - and we're making good progress. As in years past, I'm sorry to say, the overwhelming majority of applicants will not be offered admission. And as in years past, I want to underscore that we're not mesmerized by GREs and GPAs. HKS will almost certainly end up saying "no" to applicants with perfect board scores and "yes" to applicants who struggled at times. We look for an applicant's clear fit to our mission. Bottom line.. keep your hopes alive... and chill (if you're the kind of person who can) until mid-March. Everyone will find out, one way or the other, on the same day. You - and I - are both looking forward to that day."

It seems you're doing exciting stuff. Best wishes with your application. :-)

A 2013 post from David King: "Hi. I think I can help answer some of these questions -- though my answers won't make it any easier for prospective students who aren't getting financial aid. The Kennedy School is very expensive; Cambridge housing costs are crazy; and reasonably-priced daycare is especially hard to find. I wish we could make things less expensive. It's distressing to recruit students to HKS only to have us fall short on financial aid. I chair the MPA admissions committees, and I'm sure that the MPP admissions committee operates this way, too: we have a need-blind admissions policy. Applicants whom we think have money have *no* advantage over applicants whom we suspect will need a lot of aid. (And if anyone -- ever -- raised the question of letting someone in because they have the ability to pay... that person would be shunned in the admissions committee and then drummed out.) Our ethic in favor of need-blind admissions sometimes puts us in the uncomfortable position of turning down applicants who *would* have been funded by an employer/agency/non-profit. For example, imagine that an agency guarantees the tuition for any state employee who is admitted to one of our MPA programs. That guarantee would not come up in our discussions about an applicant's "fit to the program." The bar for admission cannot be moved by a pre-existing grant or scholarship. We leave scholarship money on the table, unspent. It happened with several scholarships this year alone. Because those pots of money were given to HKS to fund students from specific countries/states/agencies (and so on), we cannot spend the money elsewhere. Harvard's endowment is huge, yes. But it's useful to remember that each school has only a slice of the endowment. HKS has had to raise its own endowment. We (and the Divinity School, and the Ed School) would *love* to have even a slice of the Law School or Business School endowments. Since we are a young school, and since we don't spin out millionare alumni, our endowment can't support the kinds of scholarships we'd like to see. You shouldn't be surprised that many of us at HKS (and especially on the Admissions Committee) look at the Wilson School with envy. Of course... we'd rather teach here... but we wish we could fund our students as they do. The Wilson School received a remarkable gift that set up their tuition endowment. Tufts, too, has some good financial aid packages. We're envious. David Ellwood made financial aid his top priority when he became dean, and we have more of it than we used to have. Much of it, though, has been given for candidates from specific places or backgrounds. There is more "general aid" available than there used to be, too -- but not enough to make anyone especially happy. I *am* sorry. You-all can leave, for another time, discussions about whether the money "should" be spent on an MPA. We can leave conversations about Placement and Career Services to another time, too. Today, though, with many of you deciding whether to go to HKS or elsewhere, I only wish that we (and they) had more resources to help folks out."

Update from HKS: "We are still in the early stages of application processing, but this entry kicks off a series meant to provide information to applicants on the reading and decision process. First up, to give applicants an idea of where we are in terms of processing, as of the close of business on December 7 we have processed 35.9% of the applications submitted (4 days of processing). As noted in previous posts, we review every single page of every application prior to certifying a file as ready for committee review. Some files take longer to process than others and we likely will not be able to process around 10% of the pool each day, but the team is doing an outstanding job. To this point in time roughly 57% of the files reviewed were marked as complete on our first pass. More than 40% of the files reviewed thus far need a second set of eyes or we need some clarification from the applicant. When we need clarification of some sort we will send an email to the email address used on the admission application. When an application is complete we will also send an email notification out. If you have not received an email yet do not worry, we still have lots of work ahead of us. And if you have received an email and responded to it, please be patient as it may take us some time to respond. We want to get through our first sweep of all files as quickly as we can so everyone can hear from us and then we will double back and start checking all of the email responses from applicants. As a reminder, the order in which files are certified as complete has no bearing upon the final admission decision. Speaking of reading, although we will not commence with admission file reading until later this month, Admissions Committee training meetings for readers are underway. We had one of our Admissions Committee training meetings today and this meant putting together manuals and test cases - "

Best wishes to those submitting applications this year!

I was recently advised that I should wait a year before reapplying. I was waitlisted last year. Bummed, but makes sense. You all have fun.

Let the fun begin

"Thank you for your patience while you remained on the waiting list at Harvard Kennedy School. As you know, we were hoping that a few places would become available for the class entering this year. Unfortunately, we regret that we are unable to extend any additional offers of admission." --this is for the Masons MC/MPA. They accept fewer persons to this program. So others still waiting, there's still a possibility. Especially for you MPP folks. Best wishes.