brooklyn11

I use SAS and R all the time and have used STATA extensively in the past. In my experience, basically no one uses SPSS anymore other than in some into data/stats courses. Its true that R is the future of this stuff and I use it for analysis and graphics all the time because its so flexible. But its also true that its not as good as SAS with extremely heavy data processing steps. Ive gotten around this in R-only environments connecting R to an SQL server. SAS has been the standard for some time (except economists who prefer stata, statisticians who seem to prefer are, and some others). Not just in industry, but in the public and nonprofit sectors and at thinktanks that do research. Just go to any job search engine and type "SAS" compared to "STATA" and you will see what I mean. For summer practice, teach yourself R because its free. Try http://www.statmethods.net/. In reality, the skills and basic concepts transfer between the various packages. Plus you will not be able to learn any of these fluenty without on-the-job practice anyway.

There are recruiters from banks, consulting firms, NGOs and everything in between on SIPA campus all the time. Comparing it with B school just doesn't make a ton of sense. Really depends on what you want to do. I've worked in Policy research almost 10 years - before, during and after SIPA. I feel like I must have worked w an MBA person at some point but can't think of any. Probably because there are always economists around who tend to view an MBA as an expensive networking opportunity and an overly generalist education. It's called policy school for a reason! Not trying to be a dick but revolutions advice is not accurate in my experience

Oh man I just saw this looking at these forums for something else. I graduated SIPA in '09 and you guys seem to be dying for info so here goes. I learned an incredible amount at Columbia but there are definitely downsides to be avoided. No one at SIPA will hold your hand. I saw one of my advisors like twice. There are lots of interesting classes and interesting people and a temptation to treat it like undergrad where you try a little of this and a little of that. No one will stop you, but dont do that. Have an idea what your direction you are going and do it. The concentrations are all different and some are very flexible. I was going for a quant focus much deeper than traditional policy school stuff. I took classes at Columbia law and the PhD programs in the statistics, economics, political science, and sustainable development departments. It was great and very hard. Career services are worse than awful. Do not talk to them ever. They will try to make you sign up for "informational interviews" and all this other happy bullshit. Just avoid them they have no idea what they are talking about unless you want to work in management consulting. They actually tried to block my diploma because I worked a job over the summer instead of an internship and something was wrong with my paperwork. That said, if you are relying on ANY grad school career services office to get a job you will be disappointed. I worked my ass off first year and got a sweet deal as a TA the second year. If not for that the money would have been rough, but between that and some savings I got out of there with minimal loans. If you are taking out loans, DO NOT live on the upper west side and try to live the downtown lifestyle on the weekends. I had friends who did this and their loans are absurd. Live in Brooklyn or Harlem or Washington Heights. Go to dive bars instead of the godawful places the MBAs go. Otherwise two years will fly by and all that debt will kill you. Speaking of the MBAs, I was shocked to show up at SIPA and find a ton people who couldnt care less about public policy like the asshole on this thread. They wind up with jobs at funds and banks and stuff so I guess it works for them, but seems like a strange choice. There are lots of cool people at SIPA though. Dont worry. For what its worth, I had signed up for what looked to be some of the more challenging quant courses in the Columbia MBA program and wound up dropping them because they were mind numbingly easy excercises in MS Excel. So MBA is not some kind of gold standard. Finally, as I said you cant rely on career services or your degree alone to get you a job. Talk to people, cast a wide net with applications in the spring of your second year, develop a path of coursework that demonstrates you have learned some hard skills (if your concentration isnt pre-planned), and you will be fine. My only friends that had real trouble getting jobs were those that took random and interesting but unrelated classes and/or spent lots of time "networking" with the B school kids instead of doing their coursework. Or people who decided it was the UN or World Bank or nothing and declined offers. And this was in '09 when things were even worse than they are now. I'd say message me but i prob wont respond. Sorry. Good luck with the decisions everyone!