Gov2School

As MJA87 says, most policy schools just look at your best score, so if you have time to re-take the test before your applications are due, that's the best route. It's not like law school, where you get penalized for taking the test multiple times. And if you still don't get in (and you think it's because of your GRE score) you can apply next year and try for a better score, they won't care that you scored badly before. Anyone can make a mistake.

Unless LBJ has rolling admission, it's unlikely they'll be reviewing any files until the deadline has passed. If you're really worried about it you can email the admissions committee and ask them.

Well, don't feel hopeless. It's just one test, and the good news is it sounds like you have a strong academic background are capable of doing much better even though you didn't do very well this time. If it was me, I would wait a year for two reasons: 1) obviously, gives you more time to prep your GRE. You're not penalized for taking it multiple times, so I would keep going until you get the scores you want; 2) it gives you more time to think about whether this is the best path for you. A career-oriented policy degree isn't necessarily the best thing to sink your money into on "a whim". Maybe it's worth taking some time to decide if this is really the way you want to go. You have plenty of time to consider your options, there's no reason to rush into it this year. If you do decide to apply, you'll probably want to use your optional essays to explain what you think went wrong with your GRE score.

They may just not be contributing to the thread. Without knowing what the rest of your application is like, I'd encourage you to still apply even if you're not totally satisfied with your GMAT scores. Test scores are important, but they're not always the most important piece of your application. Colleges are looking to build a class with different attributes, skills, and background. Maybe your test scores aren't what they're looking for, but maybe the rest of your qualities are exactly what they want? No way to know unless you apply. If you get rejected, you'll be no worse off than you are now, and if you get accepted, you'll be grateful you didn't count yourself out.

You can check with the Admissions office if you want to be absolutely sure, but I stuck with the 1000 word limit as stated on the web application.

It says on the HKS website that LSAT scores are only accepted if the applicant is already in their first year at Harvard Law School who are applying to HKS in order to do a joint law/HKS degree, so that option is out. I don't think they give any preference to GMAT vs. GRE in terms of how much they value your scores, but just make sure to do your research. Many schools do take either the GRE or the GMAT, but some request just the GRE (though I suspect in practice you might be able to get them to accept the GMAT, you'd have to ask). So just make sure that whatever you choose works for all of the places you're applying.

It's a little hard to evaluate chances without knowing more about the rest of your application. Not having work experience will definitely be a negative for most of the US based schools you're interested in, especially WWS. Obviously schools do accept some students who have no work experience, but it will depend on whether the other parts of your application balance out what you're missing in work experience. It may not be as big a deal for European programs because it's more common for European students to go straight into Masters studies and then go to work afterwards. The question you have to ask yourself there is whether a European program will set you up well for your future goals and career track. If you're interested in international security, then the SIPA MIA should definitely be on your list. That's a huge program and I met several people at admitted students day who were coming straight from undergrad, so your chances may be better there. It also seemed like from their application that they were more open to counting internship hours as "work experience".

Princeton doesn't offer an MPA/ID program. If you participate in the MPA or MPP program at Princeton, you can choose International Development as your field of study (the Wilson School has four fields of study, and each student specializes in one field), but they don't have a specific MPA/ID degree offering. Harvard does have an MPA/ID program that is separate from their MPA and MPP programs, and it is supposed to be more quantitatively demanding than HKS' other programs. Also, at Princeton the only officially offered joint degree is a JD/MPA. However, if you can make a strong case for it, they do sometimes let people design their own joint degrees. I read on the WWS website about a student admitted last year who designed her own joint MPA/MBA with WWS and Yale School of Management. Harvard offers a wider variety of joint degree options because, unlike Princeton, Harvard has lots of other professional schools (law, medicine, business, etc)

Most applications have a supplemental or optional essay section where you can put down any information about your academic record that may be of interest to the committee. I would think that would be the most natural place to put this, and you can do a brief explanation about how you know you're missing micro-economics from your record, but you plan to enroll in the course in spring 2015 at XX school. If you're able to register for the course now, you could just submit a proof of enrollment as evidence that you're planning to do the work, but I'm guessing you're asking this because you can't register for the course until after your application is due. Some schools will also let you submit additional information after the application is due, before decisions are sent out. So in certain cases, you may be able to submit proof of enrollment later on, to show you followed up on the commitment you made in the supplemental essay. You should contact each admissions office to see how they handle sending in information like this after deadline. I know that last year WWS let me submit some updated material after deadline (fall grades and an updated resume because I had changed jobs), but HKS did not accept any materials after the deadline at all.

Well, if you're apprehensive about it now, I hate to tell you this, but it may not get easier with a masters degree. Depending on what you want to do specifically, a lot of jobs in the international field place a high value on experience, rather than credentials. So just having a higher degree won't necessarily make you a more attractive candidate if you've never worked in the field. It won't hurt you, but it may not advantage you above and beyond what a BA will do. And a lot of the top public policy programs want people with some relevant work/volunteer experience, so applying straight out of undergrad may be difficult if you don't have any extracurricular/volunteer experience to supplement your classroom work (maybe you do, it's just not mentioned). You have lots of time before graduation, now is a great time to start networking with alums and to leverage your professor's networks as well. Set up informational interviews in the field you're most interested in, and find out from people actually working in the field you want to go into what kinds of jobs are out there and what they recommend you do. That's the best way to develop an action plan in terms of job searching. Another idea would be to try to pursue the Peace Corps or doing a Fulbright Fellowship or another international fellowship. Depending on your particular interests, you might want to also consider teaching English overseas. And important to point out that it doesn't have to be an either/or. You can apply to grad school and also be pursuing some of these other options.

It might be helpful if you could enroll in a few courses now, either through your local university or community college, so you can show some recent academic work that's top form. Economics or statistics courses might be especially good ideas, since those tend to be a big part of the MPA/MPP curriculum these days. If you do well in your courses you can point to that as evidence of academic ability, even if your academic record is not outstanding.

Honestly, I think it's always better to wait until you have some work experience before applying to a Masters degree program. I think the only exception is if you're focused on doing something like medicine or physics where you just can't really do work you want to do without an advanced degree. But if you're interested in foreign relations, there's a lot you can do without a masters degree. And getting out into the work world will give you a better sense of what your most interested in and how to tailor your experience, before you drop serious cash on a graduate degree. Taking the GRE now is smart, because the kinds of things it tests you on are things you're probably doing now in school, but your GRE scores are good for five years, why not take some time and see what you're able to accomplish professionally before committing yourself to a program?

And just to be clear, I was told not to treat it like a research paper by the alum I spoke with, not the admissions office. That strategy worked for me (or if they didn't like what I did, they accepted me anyway), but I agree it's good to check with the school if you have specific questions. If you don't want to contact the admissions offices, many of the admissions blogs will address questions related to the application materials during this time period, so keep an eye out there.

On this one I can only speak to WWS. First, there is a good post on the WWS Admissions blog right now about drafting policy memos that you might find useful. Always good to take the tips directly from the source. Second, the advice I got from a WWS alum when I was applying was don't treat this like a research paper, i.e. don't use footnotes or citations. Just describe the issue succinctly and provide your policy recommendation. When I was doing my policy memo, I found it was helpful to pick a topic that I could write about without doing a lot of research, even if it wasn't so related to the area of study I was going after. I initially wanted to do it on some kind of hot or flashy national security topic like drones or foreign policy with Saudi Arabia. But those topics are so in depth, they would have required a level of research that didn't fit the scope of the assignment and that I didn't have time to do. So I chose a topic that was smaller and less flashy, but something I could write on from personal experience. Also, I'm sure they read 100 policy memos during the application season about how to solve Middle East Peace, so if you pick something from your own experience (as opposed to a global issue that you're just interested in), you're more likely to write something unique.

Sorry, but I strongly disagree. If the word count says 500 words, write 500. Some of the application computer programs will cut your essay off after the set number of words. In others, when they download the essay they'll be able to tell how many words it is (they won't count the words, but the computer will do it for them if your essay looks too long). 10% extra is very noticeable when you're looking at several hundred essays that are 500 words each, and not following application directions closely is a big strike against you. It's definitely hard to fit the limits (I remember writing those 200 word essays for SIPA, that's a paragraph, not an essay!), but you have to try. It is definitely a test of both your writing ability and your ability to follow the directions/attention to detail. You have to choose what are the most important details, and yes, some things will go unsaid. But everyone is under the same restrictions as you, so you won't be the only one leaving some things out. Compress, compress, compress. And look for ways you can take pieces of your longer essay, break them off, and weave them into the shorter essays.

You'll have to do what you think is best, but a generally speaking the number 1 thing admissions officers tell students to do is "follow the instructions on the application." If you're still unsure, you can also email the HKS admissions office and ask if it's OK to use the optional essay for additional personal stories.

Your personal story is what you write about in your statement of purpose. The optional essay is for explaining more about issues with your educational background, just as the instructions say. They give you a long word limit because some people have very complicated academic circumstances and they need room to explain. For example, I didn't have a lot of quant classes on my transcript, and I had a couple of places where my academic performance was not outstanding (including one course where I just flat out failed). The optional essay gave me some space to talk about both of those things. Some people have periods of poor academic experience because of medical problems or family issues, or they have some kind of disciplinary action that they want to explain more fully. That's what the optional essay is for.

I think it comes down to what else you have on your resume. Remember that your resume is another tool to make your case to the admissions committee, it's not just a random listing of all of your accomplishments. What you put on there should fit with the narrative you're trying to build through your application. If your travel experiences aren't relevant to that story (i.e. you want to study Asia policy, but most of your travel involves studying abroad in Italy or vacations to Chile), don't waste space listing travel for it's own sake. Do however pay attention to the instructions in the application. If they specifically request a travel section, then you should include it. If they only suggest listing travel (I think SIPA and SFS and Tufts do suggest it), consider how much space you have on your resume and whether the travel is relevant, and then decide if you want to include. Also be aware that some applications will have a separate section for you to list travel experiences, so you may not need to do so on your resume. I've traveled a lot both for work and personal travel, but I opted not to include a travel section on my resume. I noted in my job descriptions when travel was a part of my professional responsibilities, but it seemed redundant to list every single country I'd ever visited for work. And most of my personal travel was not relevant to my application, as it wasn't in the region I was planning to focus on in my studies. That gave me more space to highlight more relevant extra curricular activities and/or to go into more detail about my professional work. As for including GPA, I think it's up to you. There's no standard rule about it that I'm aware of, I included my GPA on my resume because it's high, and having a good GPA contributes to the story I want to tell about myself. If it were lower, I might consider leaving it off, as there's no need to remind people about it and distract them from my other accomplishments.

There was a woman who used to post here named Kaneisha Grayson who was a Harvard MBA/MPA that started her own business advising MPA/MBA candidates (http://theartofapplying.com/), she seemed pretty legitimate. If you go through the forums you can find some of her old posts. I do agree that having an admissions consultant for MPA/MPP programs is uncommon and probably unnecessary. Having additional people read and comment on your resume/statement of purpose is certainly helpful, but not sure it requires a professional consultant. For Business School, where you're competing against a much larger group of people, you have interviews as part of the process. and your reasons for attending may be less specific/harder to articulate, I could see it being useful to have the additional polish of professional help.

I don't know where/if you can find sample SOPs online, but last year HKS did an AMAZING series on their admissions blog where they posted notes that their admissions officers had taken on student's SOPs. Not the actual SOPs themselves, just the officers comments/reactions. The tips they give (for example: do NOT use famous quotations) are useful and pretty universally applicable. You should be following the admissions blogs of the programs you're interested in (most schools have them) and if they give tips/comments on essays there, definitely take note.

I applied last year, but from a list of 6 I eventually narrowed it down to 5. One of my six was a "safety" program, but then I decided that that was silly, since I 1) didn't really want to go there and 2) was employed full time so that if I didn't get in to one of my top choice schools, I would have probably stayed in my job another year and tried again rather than attend the safety. So one fell off the list. I've heard of people applying to up to 10, but never as many as 12-14. At that point, i think you'd have to ask yourself if you really have a specific enough idea of what you want to do in grad school if so many programs cover it equally. Plus, ouch, wow, the expense. Besides the cost, the entire application process was MUCH more time consuming than I anticipated. If you have a full time job, it's going to be really hard to do more than 6 applications. If you're a full time student, you might be able to manage a few more because your time is more flexible, but still, it's tough. I worked on my applications pretty much every evening and weekend from September until November (I set myself the deadline of being mostly done by Thanksgiving), and I used ever minute of the time. It paid off, I got in to all of my schools, but I'm glad I only had to do 5 applications.

Actually, these days having a STEM background can be very beneficial if you're looking for a government career, particularly if you want to do logistics and planning. So much of government work these days relies on data, the ability to collect, understand, and organize it (one of the reasons so many MPA programs have begun to focus on quant preparation), so in that sense, having a STEM background is really helpful. Yes, your background would be different than the typical Masters applicant, but that's probably more of a plus than anything. No school wants a class made of people with exactly the same backgrounds, so having something that helps you stand out from the crowd is great. Definitely focus on finishing your undergrad career strong (you have lots of time to raise your GPA) and then try to get some work experience after you graduate. I know in STEM fields it's more common to head straight to grad school, but the variety of available fields and paths in public service work really means that you won't have a clear sense of what kind of grad degree will best for you until you get out into the field and get a better understanding of what kinds of jobs are best for you. It's extremely difficult to figure that out while you're still in college, but once you get out there and start working you'll have a much better sense of both what kinds of things you want and, maybe more importantly, what things you DON'T want professionally. And that in turn will better shape your graduate experience. Also, having good work experience can help off set having a lower GPA.

Some applications (not all) have a separate section where you can upload additional work, so I would think rather than put links your SOP, the best thing to do would be to make a word document with your best clips (you can include links, but would also copy/paste the text) and include that as a supplemental material. You could also add hyperlinks to your resume (separate from your SOP), just know that they may or may not click through. Most schools have multiple people read each application, and some I'm sure do print out and read in hard copy, so you shouldn't assume they're able or interested in clicking on links. For your SOP, you can always ask the admissions office if they accept non-traditional statements, but generally speaking the best advice I got from admissions staff is to stick to the instructions exactly as they lay them out. They have hundreds of applications to read, and while deviating from the instructions might sound to you like being creative, to them it's probably a huge pain to deal with. If the instructions permit/encourage creativity, then go for it, but if they ask for an essay, write an essay.

Schools purchase the email addresses and other personal information of people taking the GRE from the company that administers the GRE, that's what generates these "recruitment" emails. Schools usually purchase a certain "slice" of information, depending on what kind of demographic they're trying to target (i.e., high scorers, people living in certain areas, certain ethnic groups, etc). It's not really a sign that a school is interested in you personally, it just means that they purchased your information from the testing company because you fit into some kind of category they're interested in (high scoring international students, for example). If you want to correspond with the admissions office, the best thing to do is either contact them directly by email or else participate in one of their outreach events (either online or in person, many schools do both these days). You can also ask to be put in touch with alums in your area who would be willing to talk to you about the school. Most admissions offices are pretty friendly and willing to talk, especially if you contact them early before they get too busy.

I took mine at a community college in my area, which offers a lot of courses for working professionals. Most of the other people in my class were also looking at grad school applications and were taking the course for the same reason.