hesadork

I may well be in the minority here, but I'm not at all sold on the virtues of a double major. In my professional experience it's been exceedingly rare that a 2x gives someone a significant leg-up in graduate admissions, whatever the field. And that said, not having a PS major or minor will require explanation in your SOP. It's not an insurmountable hurdle, to be sure, but why put yourself in that position? A Stats major/PS minor would be a very powerful combination in my opinion.

What field is this? Outside of certain professional sciences I am hard pressed to undertstand how $45k in debt for a master's could ever be worthwhile.

Hi Panda, and welcome. Great question. When I wrote my master's SOP I was in the same place as you. I talked about why I was interested in HEA and how my post-UG work experience related to what I wanted to do in the field moving forward. No mention of faculty members or specific research interests. I did tie in some current events in HEA (ie, something being reported in the NY Times), but only because it made sense to in light of my interests and work experience. I focused on keeping it concise and well-written, more about showing off who I was as a person than about demonstrating intellectual firepower/research interests... Best of luck!

I think this varies a lot across institutions. It can also be a function of whether the program is in women's/feminist studies or gender studies, the latter of which sometimes accommodates a slightly broader perspective. Personally I always found Sociology (of Gender/Sexuality) to be a much more hospitable home for men interested in this field. And for the record, some women's studies programs are just as inhospitable to gay men as they are to straight men...

IrishNYC213, for what it's worth I think you made exactly the right choice given the options presented. Congratulations; Harris will be amazing. Completely agree. I'd also suggest that the non-quant classes to which you'll be exposed (qual methods, theory, management) may be a nice palate cleanser...that down the road could help you sharpen/improve your SOP. Again, completely agree. Just bear in mind that having an interdisciplinary interest area can be both a blessing and curse. It's a blessing because it can afford you the kind of flexibility you refer to above...ie, lots of different disciplines/programs that could work well for you and therefore lots of options. It can be a curse, though, if you don't ultimately find a comfortable disciplinary home. For better or worse, admissions and hiring committees like to put people in (disciplinary) boxes and you'll want to make sure that they'll be able to do that for you at the appropriate point(s) in your career. Again, congrats!

Congratulations. Excellent choice.

I have to say I'm surprised...I thought for sure that SIPA was a done deal for you based on your pre-visit posts, but your impressions now seem decidedly mixed. At the end of the day (literally!) it's going to come down to your gut. Just go with it and don't look back.

Georgetown is the superior program in this field, and you can have plenty of fun in DC.

I'd ditto ridofme as to how you can make your app more competitive. That said, I do hope you realize that several of these schools allow people to start in the spring rather than the fall, so you may not need to wait quite so long to get started. On NYC schools: I'd recommend that you consider adding Rutgers-Newark and the New School-Milano to your list. Admission to either is less competitive than to Wagner or SIPA and both are good programs (great programs depending on the sub-field) that should at least be on your radar. Depending on your career goals, Baruch should absolutely be in the mix. It is a very solid program, particularly if you're interested in working for NYC gov't or for a local nonprofit. And the price cannot be beat. On that note, is cost a consideration? Personally I would not pay rack rate for this degree at SIPA, Wagner or Milano...the ROI just isn't there and the debt will be crippling.

SIPA's estimate of living expenses = $20,000; Fletcher's estimate = $17,000. Morningside Heights is only slightly cheaper than the rest of Manhattan, and the parts of Harlem that abut MH know they've got a captive audience in CU students and price rentals accordingly. Every person headed to SIPA on and off this board is confident they're going to get 2nd year funding. And yet, each year more than 100 2nd year students don't get anything. That's not an insignificant number of people, all of whom were distinguished enough to gain admission in the first place. All of that said, I think your mind is already made up and that's not a bad thing...

Very thoughtful and fair analysis on the merits. But I don't understand the debt calculations at all, particularly how SIPA is coming out to be cheaper. Fletcher is giving you $19k for 2 years; SIPA is giving you $15k for only one, and not all 2nd year students at SIPA get a TA-ship. Not to mention that Manhattan is a more expensive place to live than suburban Boston...

The only variable that's hard to weigh here is wanting to be in Boston "for other personal reasons." Taking that out of the equation for a moment, since only you know how much importance that should command: I don't think this is a tough call -- you should choose WWS. Nothing on your Harvard "pro" list is worth $50k in my opinion, and I don't see any real WWS cons (aside from location for you). And graduating debt free will vastly expand your choices as to a next step after grad school. Best of luck choosing!

DaniCM, just be careful to avoid the rabbit hole of trying to make this decision based on hypotheticals. Gaming out the choice with what ifs will be paralyzing. Personally I think it would be a mistake to let this come down to institutional name prestige and where you think you'd have more fun socially/culturally. That just feels like a recipe for regret down the road. If you conclude that SIPA is the better program and you can make the $$ work, go there. But choose it for the right reasons. Otherwise, take the better $$ offer from Fletcher and make yourself the life of the party in Medford Best of luck with your visit and congratulations again on these amazing options!

I think a Fulbright-funded master's will make you more competitive for a doctoral program, irrespective of the institution, provided that you perform well in it.

SIPA is on 118/Amsterdam, which is Morningside Heights, not Harlem. Most Columbia grad students who want to walk to class live in MH, which is roughly West 110th St to West 125th St. Given the very large number of schools in the neighborhood (Columbia, Barnard, Teachers College, Bank Street, Union Theological, Jewish Theological, Manhattan School of Music) there is definitely a young/college town kind of feel. The UWS (West 59th St to West 110th St) is a very desirable neighborhood in Manhattan, but skews older and is a mecca for families (read: little kids). It's much more expensive than MH, and definitely lower key. I'd say the dominant feeling in MH is university while the dominant feel in the UWS is residential. While MH comes closer, neither neighborhood has the vibrancy or the nightlife of the Village or the LES.

Glad you two are connected! Seems like a good match. I have to say, I'm really surprised by that advice...his program at Steinhardt hasn't taken someone directly from undergrad in recent memory. You should definitely vet it with POIs at other top schools.

Well first, congratulations! You should feel really amazing about this turn of events, even if it's creating some angst. As an outside observer, I think the cons you listed for SIPA are quite a bit more negative than the ones you listed for Fletcher (location, social connections with other students). Boston is a great town to be a student! Be really thoughtful about the finances. SIPA is giving you less money and for only a year. How will you feel if you don't get the 2nd year TA-ship (which virtually everyone on these boards is pursuing)? NYC is amazing (it's been my home for the past 16 years!) but it is a tough place to live and is super expensive, even in Morningside Heights. So I think you should stick with Fletcher. Best of luck with your choice!

lafresca, I think you've made an excellent choice. Sometimes (maybe many times) the "easy" choice is the also the right one. Congratulations...now go blow the roof off of School B!

rync, I just saw your other post on race/ethnicity, education and the military. I'd strongly suggest that you look into sociology of education doctoral programs rather than higher education doctoral programs. I think they'd be much closer to what you're looking for...and could facilitate direct entry into a PhD program without getting a professional master's or years of work experience first. You'd be at a disadvantage without an u/g major or minor in sociology, but a strong SOP could go a long way to making up for that. I'm most familiar with the soc/ed programs at NYU Steinhardt and Columbia TC (both of which are administered jointly with their respective grad schools of arts and sciences), so perhaps take a look at those as a place to start and then go from there. You might be particularly interested in the work of R. Teranishi on the faculty at Steinhardt, as an aside. Good luck with your search.

I think this is not a good idea for a bunch of reasons. Your eligibility for admission to program one may well be retracted upon completion of program two (you did say they were "the same masters degree"); typically programs do not allow you to matriculate if you already possess the degree. This is something you'd absolutely have to disclose upon deferral and my hunch is that it wouldn't be looked upon favorably. Even if program one permitted a deferral, which I think is unlikely, it may not be accompanied by a promise of full funding a year down the line. Separately, I'm not sure two back-to-back master's degrees in the same discipline looks all that great in the eyes of PhD admission committees. It sounds like you had an amazingly successful admission season even if program two's decision came a little late. I'd say move forward with program two and let program one know ASAP so they can make someone else's dream (of admission or funding or both) come true. Best of luck with your decision.

Take a look at this thread:

I think it depends on how you want to approach social movements. Either discipline can accomodate the subject, but they'll come at it in different ways. Can you say more about your specific interest(s) in the subject?

A few thoughts: - Congratulations! - There's a terrific thread somewhere on here about "what surprised you most about the process" that you should check out. Most of the respondents talk about the importance of the visit, and I completely agree. Based on your experience, that's a + in the American column. Your gut counts for a lot! - You want to end up in DC, and you have a network there. Another + for American. - American would be cheaper given the length of the program even though DC is far more expensive than upstate NY. Minimizing debt is almost always the right answer. Another + for American. - Syracuse would give you IR training. If that's of interest, that's definitely a + for Syracuse. - I think the internship thing may be a wash. You get more time to do them through Syracuse but your options are probably much more limited given the location. And maximizing your time in DC would be invaluable for networking since that's where you want to end up. The major decision point seems to be whether you want a comms degree that is IR focused (Syracuse) or one that's broader (American), and only you can answer that. Aside from that question I think the scales are tipped in American's favor based on the above. Best of luck with your choice!

My opinion, for what it's worth: this is not a tough call. The offer from Denver is extraordinary; graduating debt-free with give you the flexibility to follow your dreams post grad school (including, possibly, doctoral study) irrespective of how those dreams pay. That freedom is worth a great deal. Go to Denver and blow the roof off the place and you'll set yourself up for a terrific career, wherever it takes you. I have plenty of friends who turned down sweet funding packages in favor of prestige. They are all, to a person, bitter about their decision.

Definitely check out the GA sub-forum. But... ...go to AU and take the funding. I think you would regret the debt incurred at GW for a very comparable program.