tmj143

Rejected from WWS. That makes the decision process easier.

CMU (EPP) is 22.5k, RAND is about the same pre-taxes your first year, drops the second year (but notes that if you work more than the required time, you can make more), and then is 26.5 after that. Maryland offered me 12.5k academic-year only, but told me if finances were really the deciding factor, that might be negotiable. GMU has not told me anything of use. I think private institutions can generally offer a lot more than public ones, and that pure policy programs offer less than ones that focus on disciplines with lots of governmental funding. Also, knowing whether you get health insurance is important, and something people often forget to ask about.

Congratulations on Delaware! They looked like a good program, but I wasn't incredibly interested in energy and didn't apply. Good luck with GA Tech! Yeah, CMU only guarantees funding for a year, but you can generally get some sort of guarantee from the people you're working with to fund you, from what it sounded like (though you may be restricted in what sort of project you can work on based on funding). I am really interested in the research Maryland is doing, but I think RAND may be more flexible and pays a lot more (about the same as CMU, but of course a much higher cost of living in LA). Trying to be open-minded with these visits, as I know from grad school visit season 1 of applying to astro PhD programs that visits can greatly affect your perception of a place, although I have a preliminary ranking now. I'd looked at the rankings before as well, but it seems like comparing apples and oranges for most of these programs; each seems to have its own emphasis, and it seems difficult to compare a place that's good in health policy to one that's good at national security policy. I feel like the best way to judge is to look at the level of funding for grad students and where grad students in your subfield end up...

Just heard from Maryland, but they 1.didn't say anything about a visit day and 2. If I understand the stipend correctly, it's about half the actual cost of living in MD, unless there's a way to make tons of money over the summer.

EPP? They definitely started reviewing files, as there were something like 8 other students there visiting with me; we had the option of two visit dates in their email (the other date was 3/22). I assume that travmatic applied to EPP and not Heinz as energy policy would fit better into EPP, and if not, that they would've forwarded the application to EPP. My topic was somewhat special, in that the primary project of interest required a strong physics background (also, I am female), but there were many students who had multiple options for research projects who visited with me.

It was for accepted students; they have another visit day at the end of this month.

I already visited CMU, so I'm guessing it's not good news if you haven't heard from them yet. I haven't heard anything from Maryland yet despite having had the phone interview last week (which sounded like an atypical request for an interview). I got an email from them. No clue if you can tell from the website... Congrats on the Evans acceptance though!

Today's been exciting... Rejected from Michigan PP & Polisci (I don't think it was a good fit anyway, so I'm not too disappointed), and waitlisted for Berkeley MPP (only MPP I applied for, as they require it before you do a PhD, and I'm here already). Hopefully the Berkeley PhD notifications arrive soon for everyone!

Thanks! It depends on how the visit goes, but they are very high on my list right now. It probably doesn't help people on the waitlist that their visit days aren't for another 3 weeks :/ I've heard fantastic things about RAND from people who have worked there, but did hear from a grad who was previously choosing between CMU and RAND (and chose CMU) that she was concerned about funding there, and that she knew of people who were barely scraping by and couldn't work on the projects that they wanted to because of funding issues.

From past visit experience (I'm not far into them this year, but also did them when I was applying to astrophysics PhD programs), visits can be very influential... I thought I'd hate Berkeley for some reason for astro, but ended up really liking it (and my previous top choice I really liked the faculty, but hated the atmosphere). You can also get the dirt on your future research advisor if you play your cards right; nothing like talking current grads over a few drinks to get true opinions. Plus it's good to get a feel for the general atmosphere-- are the grads friendly and happy? Can they survive in the location they're in? Do the faculty interact with the students? Maybe they'll let you visit at a different time other than the official weekend? It is nice to let places know if you definitely don't want to attend them though, perhaps help people out if there's a waitlist.

Into George Mason... though I'm under the impression that their PhD is more of a professional one, given the envelope of stuff they sent me.

Not sure if anyone else applied to Maryland, but they contacted me for an interview today (saying they wanted to make sure Maryland was the appropriate fit for me, so I don't know that they do this regularly). I'm guessing decisions will be out soon.

Rejected from Cornell's Science Technology and Society program. It sounded like they were too historical anyway for my tastes, and not very policy-focused

Just got the acceptance.

RAND just emailed me today to ask for verification of one of my degrees, and said they wanted it by tomorrow if possible, so I'm guessing their estimated decision date of Monday is accurate.

Thanks! I applied for the January deadline, so was quite surprised to hear back from them a week later. This may somehow be related to the fact that the department head of the Engineering and Public Policy program was a radio astronomer and looking for someone with an astronomy background to do a space weather project with him and a former astronaut, though I don't know for sure. Re: RAND interviews, I met with a RAND alum and current faculty member yesterday (he works offsite in Oakland most of the time). It sounds similar to waiting's experience, with him mostly talking about the program. It was pretty useful to get to know how the program worked, especially that you are hypothetically able to work with anyone at the institute who has money to pay you/time to advise you. As I am very unfamiliar with the entire policy grad school process, does anyone know whether that often happens in PhD programs (since at CMU it seemed like you were admitted to work with someone)?

Yeah, CMU seems good for science policy-- I ended up applying to their engineering and public policy department (it was really confusing, as it looked like there were 4 departments you could apply to science policy through), and got in last week. Also interviewing with RAND today, though that does seem like they contact everyone who's near an alum/current person working with RAND (my interviewer is RAND faculty who is off-site).

Sounds awesome! Was in rural Kenya four years ago; it wasn't too hard to get internet and/or phone through safaricom, though I don't know if they extend into Uganda. Have fun

Assuming you'll be in a place with internet access, I don't know that this is necessary. If you have Skype or Google voice credits, you can check your voicemail regularly, and call them back if they want an interview. Heck, in my current field everyone uses Skype, and an unsolicited phone call would be unheard of (granted, we're a tech-heavy group).

I'm applying to PhD programs this year with a strong emphasis on science policy and/or separate science policy programs: Princeton, RAND, Michigan, Maryland, Cornell (STS program, though they do some policy), GMU, CMU, and Berkeley. I'm currently an astrophysics grad student at Berkeley in a PhD program, but am planning on bailing with a masters and switching to policy (unfortunately this means I had to apply to Berkeley's masters program first, as I don't have an MPP, though everywhere else was PhD). I'd of course love to stay in something space-related in the long run, but am pretty open in terms of options, and have been writing in my applications that I'd like to do comparative science policy in China. I spent a month there as an undergrad doing a study abroad program in math, and as China is becoming our next big competitor in technology, it seemed like a good way to go. I have a bit of a strange background, in that I have undergrad degrees in astro, physics, International Studies, and German, and did two other study abroad programs that were sustainability-related in Kenya and Bulgaria. I'm mostly interested in the impact of the political structure of "communist" governments on technological innovation, and have already been accepted to be a policy intern at a summer statistics program in Pyongyang. That said, I have no idea how policy admissions work, and despite having a very extensive network of contacts in astrophysics, have not met anyone who has done a policy PhD (mostly people do a fellowship after their PhD via various societies to get into policy). I have a reasonable list of publications, and a lot of leadership experience, so hopefully those are assets...