fenderpete

As the original author of the linked post (which was quite the blast from the past, so thanks heinz!) I would say you're definitely competitive. I would also encourage you to take a look at Princeton's SPIA - the program is fully funded (including a stipend), has unbelievable classmates and camaraderie, and has been immeasurably helpful professionally. It is no exaggeration to say that a very high number of my best friends are SPIA alums who I went to school with.

As did someone in my office. Good luck all.

Yup I wouldn't worry either. If things haven't been updated by early January I would follow up with an email. Good luck to everyone and have a great Christmas break - no point worrying now, it's out of your hands

WWS alum here... I would recommend writing from personal experience, on a topic you have professional experience with and most importantly, focus on the POLICY side. Basically here's a problem, here are the considerations, here's how we deal with it with these policy recommendations. Caveat if you have to, but you're arguing for a course of action, not writing an academic "all things considered" paper. I just pulled my policy memo from the application out and the formatting sucked, but it had decent structure and some linking problems to solutions. If you can, summarize your recs too and make the whole thing as tight and logically sound as possible. And for your personal statement, make sure you show a strong and demonstrated commitment to public service.

WWS cares about public service, not just grades or quant skills. I'm living proof you don't need to be an econ major to get in!

I currently have two papers to finish plus a take home final and my motivation is somewhere pretty far south of non-existent. The job question looms pretty large and has resulted in almost complete apathy now that I've finished my final qualifying exam. If only I could somehow enter a fugue-state and come out the other side with 15 pages written...

Good luck folks.

Hmmmm. It's only just been password protected, it wasn't when I originally posted that. I'm guessing they're working on updating it?

I would recommend submitting as a PDF and staying within the page limit at a reasonable/readable font size without insanely small margins. Length is apparent if you go ridiculously over while reading, otherwise I think content matters more than +/- 10% word limit.

Any of the above options are fine! I would say maybe speak from your own personal/work experience as much as possible as then you can try and bring your own unique perspective to bear. I would also recommend checking this out: http://wwsadmissionsblog.com/2013/11/12/are-you-a-competitive-applicant-for-graduate-study-at-the-woodrow-wilson-school/ Make sure you emphasize how you are committed to public service and can demonstrate that from your work/personal life.

WWS and American.

American University give out a couple of full scholarships, and GWU (while very picky) do also give nuts funding to some folks.

In the past people have just done school-specific threads, I think that's probably better than sub-forums. Very few questions are actually going to be school specific (fin-aid, class choice, professors, culture, living situation) and a lot can be found out from searching past-threads as well. I think actual sub-forums would dilute, rather than enhance discussion.

For WWS I know GRE scores are just part of the wider package, and if you're truly an outstanding admit GRE score matters less than other factors such as work experience and demonstrated commitment to public service.

Jobs for which government? US or foreign?

Just FYI for anyone planning to apply to both HKS and WWS... Annoyingly HKS and WWS reverse their program's names for their degrees. At WWS – the MPA is the regular 2yr masters program, MPP is the 1yr mid-career professional program. We had quite a few folks misapply with us for the MPP last year.

It really depends what you're doing. Having long written off iPads as useless toys for people with more money than sense I bought one this year after seeing other people use them in class to draw graphs etc. for econ. It's really handy being able to mark a document up with a stylus, and I also like that I now always have all my readings with me (no cumbersome printing). It's also lighter than a laptop and I can do everything I need to on it for most classes. An Air might be a good half-way house. Maybe also check that whatever stats program (Stata, SPSS) your school uses will run on whatever your new computer of choice is.

I would highly recommend emailing a few of the departments you are considering applying to and ask what topics their first year micro/macro/quant classes cover. This should help you target your study. There's no point spending ages on theory of the firm or price indices if they care more about insurance and utility etc.

What programs are you considering? In short I think you'll be fine on quant, most good schools will value functional experience that informs what you're into in terms of policy even if it's semi-unrelated. RPCV are highly prized and very much considered to have work experience. Good luck with the GRE and apps!

American definitely tends towards the lighter end of the spectrum of experience, so definitely apply there.

Which programs are you looking at? Most of the top-tier schools require 3-5yrs of work experience for you to be in with a shot.

Do you have work experience? That's just as important, if not more so, than quant experience.

Your profile looks great to me. You should definitely apply to Princeton WWS. We admit a good chunk of active/former military and I for one think it makes our program a lot stronger. Good luck.

Study really really hard for the GRE. It's eminently learnable for the quant portion. Then work damn hard on your quant skills. Both statistics and economics are pretty much essential for policy/development and while I hated every second of it at the beginning but by the end I'm really glad I was taught it. I really do think it's worthwhile pushing yourself out of your comfort zone with quant stuff, I feel like it's a very worthwhile skill to have in your toolbox.

If you want an accompanying book, I'd highly recommend Stock and Watson's "Introduction to Econometrics"