laurbee

A lot of people on here always say the "no debt" or "go where the money is" mantra, and I cannot knock any of them for prioritizing that. The fact of the matter is, everyone's priorities will be different, and finances will play a role in what you can act on. Personally, if I were able to make it work financially, I would choose the school whose program I liked the best and whose curriculum seemed most intriguing. In my opinion there's no point in wasting my time at a school in classes with material that just aren't as interesting to me. But those are my own priorities. So if there isn't a huge difference in funding between the two, I say go with the one you think you will be happiest in while you are there studying. You could go to the most prestigious school in the world but if you aren't passionate about what you are learning and enthusiastic about the overall climate while you are there, your confidence in everything else is going to get knocked down a peg. I firmly believe that your options post-grad are what you make of them, regardless of your school's prestige. My undergrad is practically unheard of (except now with the recent news of its attempt at closing...) but that hasn't stopped me in being successful, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. If I had to do it all over again, I'd choose it in a heartbeat against other more "prestigious" schools, no contest. Anyway, my point being, I think you should go where you think will be the best fit for you and where you will be happiest, especially if the financial situations are comparable! If that is American, then fantastic, more power to you, and get going!

I was rejected as well and feel the same. Luckily I've felt this way about all my rejections so far. GWU was my top choice and luckily I got into that one... Congrats to everyone who got in!

I got that as well, and also assumed it was $5k each semester, so $10k each year. That would be phenomenal but we could very well be wrong

Got in! So pumped but no word on funding

So happy for and proud of everyone who was admitted! I was rejected, but that's ok by me as I knew it was a reach school for me anyway and wasn't my top choice. Congrats to everyone and best of luck making the final decisions!

I have a potential back-up professor on hand, I just 1) don't know if the recommendation would be as glowing as it would be from this one and 2) don't want the professor to know she was a B-List request (you know how people can find out they're the B-List for a wedding? Yeah that...) I honestly don't understand why some schools are such hardliners about these deadlines when it comes to supplementary materials like the letters. From a simple search of this forum or Google, late letters is apparently a very common problem, and it's 99% of the time out of our hands. So frustrating. I will definitely be sending some crafty emails to the adcoms soon. It's worth a shot at least

I've run into this problem but with my LORs. Apparently it's put me out of fellowship consideration at SIPA (I know they're stingy, but I at least wanted the chance) and potentially Fordham (haven't had responses from their adcom this whole cycle, btw) since they weren't submitted by the deadline. One of the writers I haven't even heard from since her initial agreement to write it for me. At this point, I'm at a loss of what to do. I was really hoping for fellowships etc from schools since all the other outside fellowships (Rangel, etc.) seem to be for the Foreign Service, which I absolutely am not interested in.

To everyone on here who has like 169 V, 165 Q, and 5.0 AW with 3.99 GPAs and like 5 years of work experience... I'm way jealous. Schools: NYU MA-IA, Fordham IPED, New School MA IR, Columbia SIPA MIA, Seton Hall Whitehead, GWU Elliot, Georgetown MSFS (I know, a lot of these are top schools) Career Goals: American foreign/economic policy towards Europe/Russia or anything relevant to that sort of work Undergrad Institution: Small private liberal arts school in Virginia Major: Government, minor in History GPA: 3.31 Years out of undergrad: 3 GRE: 159 V, 156 Q, 5.0 AW Work experience: Career changer; did a lot of hospitality work especially event coordination (kind of fell into it during college with my campus job) Campus/Community Involvement: Volunteering with my local International House as well as a refugee resettlement agency; Model UN in College Coursework: Intro to Micro & Macro postgrad (As in both), Statistics , Intermediate French, various courses on IR and Europe throughout my major and minor coursework Language Skills: Decent French, am interested in studying Russian as well SOP: Not too worried about it as the easiest thing to talk about is usually yourself, but there's a lot I need to address/say in (usually) short spaces, like my GRE debacle (mentioned later), my reason for a career change, and being a first-generation student LORs: All 3 are from professors because my place of employment has some dumb policy that they can't write recommendations. But these professors I was very close to during undergrad (found out that one of them publicly told an academic committee I was his favorite student ) and I know the LORs are going to be glowing. They all thought I was brilliant and should have been going to grad school from the outset. Concerns: I'm a career changer, so even though my degree is very relevant, none of my experience really is. And I never did study abroad for rather unique reasons (my undergrad school has many experiences that students can only experience at a certain point in their time there, and I didn't want to miss any of them). And my GRE score was SO DISAPPOINTING. I studied for ages and was hoping for high scores like all my practice tests were saying and of course three days before test day I get the flu (and in the test room it certainly didn't sound like I was the only one in this situation, lots of sniffles). Worst luck ever, and I seriously doubt I can take it again. I'm wondering if I can mention that in my SOP? So basically in sum, my concerns are my GRE score (though I'm hoping explaining to them the flu situation can help offset that) and my lack of international/100% relevant work experience.