mrgreen102

Here is my advice.  Take it for what it is worth since I am not on an admissions committee:
 
1) The GRE is a horrible test.  It is infuriating that you are required to learn about things like geometry and algebra in order to get into good public administration/policy programs.  I am studying for the test now and I sympathize with you.  But you need to take it and do reasonably well.  I don't know much about Ph.D programs in public affairs but you should try to boost both your Verbal score and your Math score by at least eight points each.  What was your Writing score?
 
2) Where did you go to graduate school?  What is a "newly ranked Tier 4" public administration program?
 
3) It sounds like you have substantial work experience in the field of education.  I think you should focus on that experience and education policy as you don't seem to have a public health policy background.

Why I would go into academia:
 
1) Autonomy/Independence - I could choose my research topic and when I want to research it
 
2) Flexible Schedule - I would not have to work all day
 
3) Rewarding - I could help people learn
 
Why I would not go into academia:
 
1) Teaching - I dislike teaching.  I have taught before and I will hopefully not do it again.
 
2) Schedule/Routines - The work never ends.  Professors are always preparing for class, teaching, grading, or researching.  They also have to meet with students and deal with administration.  This means working on weekends and holidays.
 
3) Competition - It is really difficult to get a full tenured position at a university.  Universities are increasingly hiring adjunct lecturers because it is easier then giving someone tenure.
 
4) Meetings and administration - what juilletmercredi said
 
5) Niche - It is good to have a specialty.  But I also want the opportunity to explore new areas in my subject.  I am interested in international affairs, specifically the U.S.' relationship with Asian countries.  If I was in academia, I would probably have to become an Asian Studies or Political Science professor.  I do not want to limit myself to only knowing about Asian countries.

I also doubt the veracity of your point on legacies.  Legacies are a big deal for colleges but they rarely matter for graduate school (unless your family is on the board of the university or has a building named after them).

I think that your scores may be good enough for GW and American.  Georgetown is one of the best IR programs in the country and admits a smaller number of students than other programs.  But there are people on this forum who got into your preferred IR programs with the same GRE Quant scores as you (and even lower).  Here are some things you might want to think about:
 
1) What is the strength of your overall application?  Do you have any other problems besides a low GRE Quant score? 
 
2) Do you have prior quantitative coursework or work experience?  Have you taken any economics or statistics classes?  If you have, than that could lessen the effect of average GRE Quant scores on your application.
 
3) Do you honestly think that dedicating another 2-3 months to studying for the GRE will help improve your Quant score?  If you do, then go for it.  But it might not be worth it if you think your score won't improve by much.  In my case I spent months studying for the GRE and even took a test prep course.  I took the GRE last week and got an unofficial score of 153 on the Quant section.  I might take the test again in a year or so but I don't know if I want to spend that more time trying to improve my score when I doubt I will get above a 156 on the Quant section.

I'm not sure about this one.  It's hard to believe that spending two years getting a Master's degree at a university outside of the U.S. (unless it is in a place like Iran or North Korea) is going to shut you out of any government jobs.  I was told that it may take longer to get a security clearance if you spend extensive time abroad but that's about the only problem you will encounter.  Check out this thread for more details:
 

Okay, so here are a few of my random musings from my afternoon touring Fletcher:
 
-The Tufts campus is really pleasant, but you are on a college campus, amongst the undergrads (the horror!). Boston is a quick subway ride away, but you are in your own little campus bubble somewhat. Whether that's a positive or a negative is up to your own personal preference. Personally, I don't mind it at all, since I'm more excited about the academic element than the networking of DC. Its obvious the community is very tight-knit and judging by the fliers they had up there's always plenty of cool stuff going on.

-The main things they stressed were "community" and "flexibility," the ability to tailor your education as you see fit, which they directly contrasted to, ahem, certain other schools which tell you what to do (to which Fletcher responds, in their best Cartman voice, "Whatevah! I do what I want!"). You can pick from 22 fields of study, or design your own to suit your needs. You can also enroll in ANY school in the Boston area for credit. Harvard is the easiest, but so long as you get approval from the other school and can show how it is relevant, they'll let you do it anywhere. Otherwise, you can study abroad with one of the many schools worldwide they have a relationship with, or set up your own ad hoc study abroad semester with their help (unfortunately, you can either do this or do the Boston consortium, but not both). I was really excited about going to the Graduate Institute in Geneva, but apparently this requires fluent French, which I don't have, le sigh. Still, one of the main advantages SAIS has for me is study abroad, so the thought of being able to do it at Fletcher is nice.

-Those who don't wish to do a formal academic thesis can now do a "capstone" project instead. This is more professionally oriented than writing a 90 page thesis and I get the feeling people are happier with it.
 
-The people, as has been reported elsewhere, are all super friendly. I sat in on a class with Professor Kim Wilson, and she was very accommodating. One of the students, unprompted, stayed after class to talk to me and offer his advice, which was cool. On a similar note, the prospective and admitted students at the info session all seemed really accomplished (one guy directed an African field office for a very well known and respected NGO). All had extensive international experience, which made me feel like I was around people who shared my interests and I could get along well with.

-The sandwiches at the Fletcher cafe are pretty atrocious, but there were several nice looking little restaurants nearby. And a Dunkin Donuts, which is clutch.

So anyway, that's all that's coming to mind right now, but I'll be sure to post more as I think of it. Overall, I'll just say I got a very good vibe and Fletcher might be my frontrunner now (although that's subject subject to change after next week, when I hit up Chicago and DC). Feel free to ask any further questions you may have on here or through private message. For those of you going on Monday, have fun, its a really lovely place!

Overall, I was very impressed with the SAIS open house. Like, extremely impressive, almost intimidatingly so, to the point where I'm not sure how well I'd fit in there. Here are some random musings:

-They definitely took an aggressive "shock and awe" approach to selling the program, basically rolling out their most impressive alumnae (Wolf Blitzer made a "surprise" guest appearance, and the former acting head of the CIA was on the almnae panel, among others) and generally trying to overwhelm us with their awesomeness. And it was awesome; the number of people they have in important policy positions is ridiculous...they were just like, yeah, all of Obama's top security advisers were our students, no big deal. It did start to be a bit much after a few hours though, but maybe that was just me.

-They continually mentioned their location right in the heart of DC as a selling point.

-A great many of the prospectives I met were young people working in DC, all of whom had very impressive accomplishments already under their belts. Most of the people I met were quite friendly, if not exactly the kind of people I'm used to hanging out with. Same goes for the returning students, particularly the students who did the Bologna panel. Very friendly, although again, many of them seemed a bit too..."DC" for me, if that makes sense. That's purely a personal thing, to be sure, but in the end I mostly ended up hanging out with the other people I'd met at the U Chicago open house a couple days earlier, who seemed equally shell shocked by all the people running around exchanging business cards (the differences between the SAIS and Chicago open houses were...stark, to put it mildly).

-Still seems to be pretty neocon.

-Wolf Blitzer gave a really solid speech, but made an awkward joke about how great it feels when your beeper goes off on vibrate in your pants. It will forever be stuck in the heads of everyone present every time they see Wolf Blitzer on TV. And now its in yours!
 
-did not hear anyone talking about "elite B-schools" and thus did not see Revolution, unfortunately.

-definitely got a study abroad vibe from the Bologna people, for better or worse.

I'll post more thoughts as they come to me...

I wasn't questioning whether IR/public policy schools were meaningful; I was merely pointing out this question exists (to a large degree) in DC and at think tanks, where fellows have often come from (or teach at) these schools. I point that out because SAIS isn't as highly regarded in that environment as this guy claimed; rather, the opposite tends to be true because the interns that come from those programs tend to have more confidence/arrogance than meaningful work experience. This isn't true of everyone, and it's not only true of SAIS, but unfortunately it's true of a large (and vocal) chunk. Many people who end up at these schools with meaningful work experience go there to hone specific skills, and their success can largely be attributed not to their school but to their own drive and background and the synthesis they achieve with their particular programs. But perhaps despite that, even if many junior staff were considering IR programs, the near universal impression of them after actual employment tends to be significantly diminished, and this is especially true for DC-based schools. It is partly a product of an economy that forces MA students to take internships and junior staff positions that traditionally go to undergrads (and that don't require much skill beyond what an undergrad offers). That is why many deliberately choose schools outside DC to get out of the DC bubble where arrogance is often conflated with competence, where the market is oversaturated with public policy and IR degrees, and where interns think they run the country. I think anyone who has spent any significant amount of time in DC would echo this sentiment.
 
If I thought IR programs were meaningless, I wouldn't have applied to any, but I don't think they make sense for people straight out of undergrad. Again, for people honing specific skills, SAIS (and any of the top programs, or even those that aren't considered "top") are awesome. For people with no work experience, it's just funny how they trumpet their school's brand name so loudly, and SAIS students are known precisely for doing that. This forum is a case in point. Any school frequently talked about here, including those he thinks are "meaningfully worse," can be great if they're a complement to work experience. The only sense in which public policy/IR programs suffer, and this is especially true in recent years, is that they oversaturate the market with interns and junior staff with MAs doing grunt work. People who go into these programs, even GWU and American, can avoid that and go on to do amazing things, and the prestige/reputation of their school matters little.

Your little personal ranking there is arbitrary and more than a bit silly (and most likely offensive to many people on these forums). SIPA meaningfully below Tufts? What on Earth are you basing this on? You just come off as a pretentious putting your school above all others and then evaluating which are its "peer" programs. It's even funnier you compare it to HKS and WWS as an afterthought. Your perception differs markedly from reality, to say the least. You may have interned at some think tank, but having worked at one in both DC and NYC, no public policy schools are respected; in fact, you're generally discouraged from going to any of them. And in the first place, if you're a grad. student interning at a think tank, you did something wrong (pro tip: those internships are meant for undergrads). SAIS has no standing above any other school except on the GradCafe forums, where (and you're a case in point) SAIS students think they're some elite squadron of IR students. It's especially interesting they think that when, outside these mysterious "IR circles," no one knows what SAIS is. You're someone who hasn't even graduated from SAIS and you have your own personal ranking of IR schools? ...really? I was just comparing the perceptions in DC, where Georgetown is undeniably better regarded overall. You might not recognize that because you are probably only in DC because you're a SAIS student or intern, which is consistent with the SAIS stereotype I became familiar with while living there (you share that with GWU and American). A common SAIS stereotype is inexperience, not "super elite IR hero." I interned with SAIS students... as an undergrad.
 
The fact that you think a couple economics courses on the margins contributes materially to how you are evaluated (or perform) at the State Department proves how ignorant you are of what an FSO really does, even for those who choose the economic cone.

And I think you're wrong about State overall. Even asking friends and former supervisors, there's a strong cultural aversion to identifying the benefit of one program over another (largely because this benefit does not exist); in fact, it matters less and less the more you advance in your career, and even less so your first two tours. When you're bidding for posts, it matters much more who you've worked with. Not to mention, most people at State have not gone to public policy programs, so you are way overemphasizing the importance of brand name within State. 
 
Are you attending SAIS straight out of undergrad or something? I wouldn't be surprised. You have the arrogance of someone who has only ever been an intern and thinks he understands the "system." The mere fact that you're at SAIS doesn't give you the automatic credibility you think it does given the school's tendency (or perhaps reputation) of admitting people with little to no work experience.

For SAIS, it depends on your econ prep. If you have slid grounding in the area, the GRE matters less. However, if there's no evidence of economics or very little, then a middling score in Quant like yours would prob result in a ding. This coming from the Assistant Dean of Admissions.
 
Fletcher is pretty flexible, the strength of the app as a whole matters. 

Like DupontCIrcle said, the average for most top programs is around 155ish.These programs all make a big deal about emphasizing quantitative skills, but when it comes down to it they don't expect you to score all that high. So your score won't help you, but it shouldn't hurt you too much either. You'll just have to stand out on the other parts of your app. So long as you've got a high GPA, strong recs, an interesting SOP, and relevant experience, you'll be just fine.

I didn't do any specific studying for the FSOT so I can't make specific recommendations for studying.  There is an FSOT reading list at http://careers.state.gov/uploads/d8/db/d8db0c4f9dc58bd5620191eebd9ef8f7/3-0-0_FSO_readinglist.pdf but skimming over it, it sounds like a bit of overkill.  I think the suggestions I've heard before of reading a major newspaper and/or news magazine on a regular basis and being familiar with how the U.S. government works, basic international relations, basic history, etc.  The test is a mile wide and an inch deep, so you'll get questions all over the place but none of them will be too in depth. 
 
One thing that might be worth your time is to do some review for the English expression part and also to do some practice with the essays, especially if you're not used to doing timed essays.  ACT grades the essays, so it could be helpful to review the ACT essay process and whatnot.

Talon1025,
After reading about your background and and looking at your comments, this is my advice for you.  Take it for what it is worth:
 
1) I completely understand that you are worried about the value of an international affairs graduate degree on the job market.  If you would like to go into diplomacy/counter-terrorism, you should look at programs in D.C.  These programs are near the agencies/companies where you want to work and you would have plenty of internship opportunities.
 
2) I am pretty sure that a Master's degree in Finance will not help you land a job in either diplomacy or counter-terrorism.  Those companies need accountants but it seems like an odd fit.
 
3) Unless you are a true computer whiz or a hacker (like Mr. Snowden), I am not certain that a Master's degree in Computer Science will help you that much either.  But this degree is probably much more helpful on the job market than an IA degree.

Ask the schools if they have GRE score cutoffs.  If not, apply.  You'll be playing the what-if game for years if you don't.

I would recommend taking a prep class.  I am taking a Kaplan prep class right now and it has been enormously helpful.  I know the classes are expensive but they provide you with structure and resources, namely a huge amount of online quizzes and practice tests.  

I would recommend taking a prep class.  I am taking a Kaplan prep class right now and it has been enormously helpful.  I know the classes are expensive but they provide you with structure and resources, namely a huge amount of online quizzes and practice tests.  

Do you mind if I share your above-stated thoughts with the administration while I'm at SAIS? I'm sure they'll remember your phone call last week. Even though you haven't accepted your admission and financial aid offer, the repeated demonstrations on this website of your complete lack of any redeeming moral or intellectual character as well as your disturbed sense of entitlement will certainly trigger the morals clause in your offer. Don't bother to answer my question. I think we've all heard enough of your narcissistic commentary. If I were you, I wouldn't bother to visit. It came to me in a dream one night that you might not like your official reception...

You're wrong again. It's about being in an environment where I can meet people whom I have a lot in common with. All else being equal, I'm much more likely to meet a woman with whom I can relate to, at a top b-school than some random bar. We most likely would have gone to similar top undergrads, have mutual friends, worked in similar jobs, and have similar life aspirations and goals.

jm08, you seem to know both DC and Boston reasonably well. In terms of social prestige and clout, do you think SAIS carries more weight in DC than HKS does in Boston?

Good god, I worked at a PR firm in Beverly Hills and I thought I'd meet the worst of the worst but the way he represents himself on this board, Revolution is right up there. I don't know whether to be entertained or sadden. It's clear he gains his self worth, not from who he is as a person or what he himself accomplishes but instead seems to gain validation through the people he associates with, which again is very sad yet at the same time very entertaining. 
 
Revolution, reading your posts throughout this thread, it's clear you want members of this board to convince you that SAIS or any IR degree is worth your time and money. We all know our reasons for applying and they probably very different from yours. You seem to be searching for a lifestyle and while I think most of us are searching for a career in something we are passionate about. I don't think anyone goes into IR to get rich. The expected salary for IR grads is readily available and yet we all applied because it's what we want to do. You seem to know what you want, which is fine I'm not attacking your life goals. SAIS is a great program for IR, it's not trying to pass itself off as an MBA or as a substitute for an MBA. It doesn't make sense that you keep judging it by that standard.  
 
As a side note on the social scene, one of the SAIS (Bologna) grads I meet at the APSIA fair I went to, did a joint MBA/IR program, and one of the things she said was the her IR degree was a lot more fun than her MBA degree. Personally I don't think an MBA is that great of an accomplishment but I did my undergrad at a school that had a great business school so maybe I was just desensitized to its prestige by the sheer abundance of business students I knew. 
 
 
The herd seek out the great, not for their sake but for their influence; and the great welcome them out of vanity or need.
Napoleon Bonaparte

How can you make this sweeping value judgement? The kind of lifestyle you want to lead doesn't sound fun at all to me. In fact, it sounds pretty horrible. Socially, something like SAIS seems way more fun...get to spend a year in Europe, do some backpacking during holidays, meet interesting people from diverse backgrounds who have interests beyond cocaine/call girls/the crass accumulation of wealth, etc.

Not all of us are paying for two years of club med.

Just from these posts I have a strong suspicion you're not nearly as bright as you think you are...for one, you're not self-aware enough to realize everyone on this board is (not so) subtly mocking you. I also have to question the intelligence of someone supposedly so obsessed with connections who has managed, in a very short period of time, to alienate every one of his potential future classmates on this board. I can only imagine what everyone will think of you after two years of dealing with your obnoxious superiority complex/crushing insecurity. I think many, if not most, of the people at SAIS are more intelligent than you in just about every way other than making money (and for all I know, that too).

I'm not sure how many down-votes you need to get banned, but when the inevitable happens I have to admit I'm going to miss our little Gordon Gekko wannabe. He certainly keeps things entertaining around here...

Totally fair questions, so let me address them.
 
First, top b-schools in general are fun because they're a 2-year vacation from boring work life. Grades don't really matter since most schools have grade non-disclosure (employers cannot ask your grades).  Second, the mba is geared towards socializing, networking, and recruiting. There are literally social events every single day in the calendar; there is so much stuff going on that mba students joke about FOMO: fear of missing out. You have house parties, dinners, going to bars/clubs, dances and galas, costume parties, and travelling throughout the world. Harvard Business in particular takes this to an extreme level. I've been to a few of their parties, and they are super fun. HBS has for instance priscilla's ball, which is a drag party. They also have newport ball, a formal that takes place in upscale newport, rhode island. Then they have holidazzle, the annual christmas bash, as well as casino parties, boat cruise parties, countless costume parties, etc.
 
More importantly, the people at HBS or top schools in general are some of the smartest, most interesting, and accomplished people you will ever meet. And for 2 years you are surrounded by these people in a very tight bonding experience, and it's just freaking amazing. It should come as no surprise then that a lot of people meet their future spouses in b-school. And from talking to tons of students and alums from these schools, not a single one regrets attending, even when some of them took out $200K in loans. A top MBA is truly a transformational experience, one that cannot be replicated elsewhere.
 
As for what i'm looking for, i'm certainly not averse to hooking up, but i am looking for something a bit more long-term. MBA girls fit what i'm looking for, and the women at hbs/wharton/kellogg are actually pretty decent looking, in shape, and well put together.
 
This 2008 article from Boston Magazine talks about the HBS social scene. It's also no secret that boston girls LOVE HBS guys.
 
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2008/08/aint-no-party-like-an-hbs-party/

You seriously make me want to vomit.  Please do not go to SAIS because your attitude will be a major drag on the program regardless of your IQ.  I am praying for you to get into an MBA program.  You are PERFECT for an MBA - clearly most interested in the social environment and monetary impact of grad school.  I am also an ex Wall Street guy so I know your type very well.

Regarding your last sentence, easy there chief with the ad hominem attacks. If I do go to SAIS i'm pretty sure i'll be one of the smartest students there, so you should calm down a bit.