The Art of Applying

So @gradblues it sounds like you have a lot of concerns all wrapped up together! I'm going to try to untangle it a little. What it sounds like: You are interested in working in a large international organization like FHI 360 or maybe RTI International. (Mathematica and NORC are good orgs that do a lot of domestic research.) It also sounds like you're not enthusiastic about UIUC, and don't want to do agriculture, even though you're not sure what else you want to do. Some thoughts: I agree with @ExponentialDecay that you probably want a good network to work in an international organization, and it's much more likely that American University will get you there. It's all about how many alums have graduated, where they're working, and whether they had a good enough experience to help you out. Since they're all over DC, I bet you can use your two years to explore orgs and get a foot in the door in the orgs you're interested in. But I strongly disagree that you need a PhD to do research in a large org. I have had many friends who work mid-level in the kinds of organizations I mentioned above as research managers and senior analysts, etc. I suggest you check out the bios of people who sound like they're doing cool work at cool organizations, and see what kind of career paths they've had to confirm what I'm saying. Now if you work for a few years, and get to be sure that you want to do research, a PhD will probably help you smooth the way. But if you decide you want to work in program communications or something, a PhD might actually hinder you because you may be seen as too specialized/ too academic. What I would suggest: Wait for the rest of your acceptances, and then use your full-ride offer from UIUC to request more financial aid from American or any other university you're seriously considering attending. This process is called a financial aid appeal. 30K is NOT a gigantic or excessive amount to take out in loans. The rule of thumb is no more debt than your first year's salary afterwards, so 30K is well under that. So if you can get that down to like 10 or 20, even better. It doesn't sound like you're going to have fun at UIUC and get where you want to be, and life is really too short to get a degree that isn't going to help you, so don't take that just because of the money. If you only vaguely know the policy area you want to study, you won't be alone in graduate school. I had many classmates who felt that way. It's a good time to explore more policy areas or just gain generalist skills like quant analysis, evaluation, etc. As a last resort option, only if you're strongly undecided about going into policy at all, I would say go with the job offer that you have, take time to figure things out and understand where you want to go, study more for the GRE, and apply again with a stronger candidacy next year. Good luck! -- Connie, Admissions Consultant for The Art of Applying Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy, MPP'2016 --

@dwestlakeg: Thanks for reaching out! I hope I can help give some context to your recommendation. First of all, I think you check almost all the boxes for a really competitive applicant to the above schools. You've done your research well, and your interests are very well-suited for those schools. I'll address your concerns one by one: You do not need a strong quant background to perform well, although it can help with funding. Many classmates will not have had any statistics or economics in undergrad, and the first semester or two of both subjects is designed for pure novices. You usually need to take a pre-requisite, but it's simply because the courses move so fast and cover so much material. They still start at the very beginning by introducing basic supply and demand curves/ defining mean, median, mode. Your GRE quant score is also better than middling! Your undergraduate record matters less the further you are from it, and you have 5.5 strong years of work experience to back it up. Not that a 3.54 counts as a low-ish GPA. I'd be more worried if you had below a 3. If you're interested in domestic policy, you probably don't need a competency in a foreign language. It can only be a plus, but no adcom will ding you for it. No academic letters is probably something I would counsel you to remedy if you had a Time-Turner. When I applied, I decided to take two grad-level MPA classes at the university I was working at, and garnered a rec from that professor. Many people take that same route. However, the academic letters mostly speak to your academic performance, and if it's strong otherwise (looks like it from your GPA and your GRE scores), this won't detract very much. If you had a low GPA, though, then it'd be essential to get a professor to speak to how hard you tried or how far you progressed. So you don't have experience beyond education but want to study policy for other related fields like inequality and social policy. This is not really a problem, as you'll find out, because that's the case for everyone. Many of my classmates were in fact looking to transition/pivot to another field or area after a few years working in one field. It's a super common misconception that if you don't have the direct service or policy experience in a particular field, you won't be qualified to study this in policy school. I wrote something similar in another response you should read, but essentially, you'll be fine. I myself wrote an SOP very similar to yours, and it all worked out. =) Final tip: you should be very competitive for most of these schools, and when you get the offers, make sure to identify your favorites and leverage those financial aid packages to get more money! -- Connie, Admissions Consultant for The Art of Applying Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy, MPP'2016 --