lacanadiense

Totally. Making us log into our online account to see the decision was cruel, as is delayed funding information. I guess the latter is standard, sadly.

I just logged in to post the same thing, MPPgal. Funny that they sent the emails out on a Sunday.

Well I'm out. Congrats to those who made it.

No email yet - I just checked the website randomly. Not that I'm obsessing or anything.

I'm just hoping that if they reject us, they do it today. It's only 2 p.m. PST. It would be cruel to make us wait a whole weekend just to be dinged. Right? RIGHT?

Crap. It's not looking good.

Alf10087 and KLD3: you wouldn't mind sharing where your last names fall in the alphabet, perchance?

SAME AS ALF10087!!!!! 2/2! Your post about Berkeley has freaked me out though. At this point I'm not holding my breath.

Hmm, that's strange. I applied for Bologna, but about two weeks after the deadline, I got this email:

I'm sure there are some applicants who are already on a list of admits, so maybe the fellowship committees could start evaluating their applications before official decisions go out. But I would agree with soapwater in that anyone in the running for a fellowship is at the top of the HKS applicant heap, so I don't think that would give them any kind of boost.

Heard from their email, or from another source?

OK, potentially stupid question: what time tomorrow are all the materials due? Anyone know? I am still editing two of my essays. Normally I would assume 11:59EST, but since Harvard's actual application was due at 5 p.m. if I remember correctly, I suddenly started to freak out - I could use the extra time tomorrow!

OK, I think I'm going to go for it. Such a long shot, but I guess I have nothing to lose (except my time and sanity).

I wasn't sure if I should post this at the Bank, but seeing as these fellowships are HKS-specific, I thought I'd get more valuable feedback here. The Center For Public Leadership at HKS offers two very similar fellowships: the Gleitsman Program in Leadership for Social Change, and the Dubin Fellows Program for Emerging Leaders. Both offer similar financial rewards and programs, and are both run through CPL. I figured I'd apply for both, but then I noticed this: So they're saying you can apply for more than one fellowship, but that they discourage it. Also, each of these fellowships requires two letters of rec, and I'm starting to feel bad in terms of how much I've made my letter writers do. So I've essentially decided I should apply to one, but I can't decide between the two! Does anyone have concrete ideas about substantive differences between the two fellowships? Based on the CPL website, the Gleitsman fellows seem a little bit older and more experienced, which is making me lean towards Dubin, but that's about all I can glean from the materials they've posted. Any insights to the differences between these fellowships or the HKS FinAid process in general are welcome! Those are all my questions, but continue reading if you'd like to indulge a quick rant. Basically, I'm feeling very stressed about having to apply to all these HKS fellowships before I even know whether or not I've been accepted. I understand that they want us to be able to know our financial offers in time to make a decision for April 15th, but seeing as they've had our apps since Nov. 30th, maybe they could have done like Georgetown, admit us in February, and then have us apply for funding separately. I wouldn't mind doing all this work if I knew I had an admit. HKS's admissions process has seemed finely orchestrated from start to finish, so they must have some reason for doing it this way, but it seems very unfair to us applicants. It's one more thing to stress over, and it might be all for nothing if our name is already on the list of those to be dinged. OK that felt good.

That was sloppy wording on my part. I applied for Bologna, so I don't actually know what they do for the DC-only applicants. If I correctly remember from the Bologna's admissions director's blog, admissions decisions are actually made separately by each campus, and so procedure could vary. For example, this is either the first or second year that Bologna applicants have even been required to do an analytical essay, whereas I guess that's been standard for DC applicants for some time. Hope that clarifies!

Yes, they only interview non-USC applicants, even for Bologna. I think it might be partially to assess English abilites (although of course that wouldn't make sense for applicants from the UK or Australia, for example).

Has anyone who applied for the first round of scholarship consideration heard anything back? I'm dying over here!

They've said from the beginning that decisions will be released in March, so I'm not sure what you'd get from contacting them before then.

General comment: does anyone find it a little annoying that we have to apply to school-specific fellowships before finding out if we are even accepted? Why make us expend the effort if we are just going to be dinged anyways?

Waiting...the hardest part. Now that I have my first acceptance, and apparently a chance at some funding (!), the reality of the DEBT I may have to incur is finally setting in. Looking at GPPI threads from previous years, the most anyone was awarded was about 20k, and most people only got 10-12k, and some as low as 5k! GPPI's tuition is now listed as 42k including fees, so even if you got the big 20k award (unlikely in and of itself), that would still mean 44k in tuition over two years, PLUS living expenses in a very expensive city. Figuring with a spartan lifestyle you could keep living expenses down to 15k/year (this would mean living far from campus, taking the bus or biking, packing your lunch 80% of the time...), that would STILL put me about 75k in the hole. Holy crap.

I am really worried about this also. I got an email from Georgetown Public Policy Institute saying that my admission has been "recommended" to the Graduate School at large, and that I should be expecting a formal offer in a few weeks. The subject of the email was "Welcome to GPPI," and I got an email the next day congratulating me again and asking me to write an essay for scholarship consideration. I read through previous year's threads about GPPI, and this seems to be their MO. Nobody posted (as far as I could tell) that the Graduate School rejected them after this provisional acceptance. I have a GPA above 3.0, good GRE scores, and no criminal record or anything shady like that. But I am still paranoid!

I am just sitting down to start this essay, and would also like to get some advice on the format and content! Is it one page double- or single-spaced?

To those who didn't receive emails: I got the scholarship resource one, but never received the one about my application being complete! I contacted admissions, and they said they had sent an email weeks ago. I checked my secondary email, and my spam filters in both accounts, and nada! Moral of the story, maybe your scholarship emails got launched into the same black hole?

I am one of the lucky ones who found out yesterday, but no word on funding (the email said those considered for funding will be contacted separately). If you browse last year's threads, it seems that they really do release results in batches, and plenty of people seemed to get admissions offers with funding well into March. I too submitted on the 15th (complete a few days later), and I don't think I had a stellar application, so it really does seem random. Keep the faith!