greendiplomat

If you're going to be so pugnacious, at the very least, read the first line of the post you're responding to...

Agreed, or if you're unsure of whether your cell provider provides such service, you could always go the more old-fashioned route of having a similar filter forward those emails to your friend, and have them text you. That way, you don't have to give your friend access to all your emails.

Likely that we (or people like us) have been flooding the admissions office with similar questions. Or it could be that they follow these forums. After all, admissions offices are the part of the schools the most in charge of "marketing" their programs, and if they're paying any attention to their branding googling "SIPA admissions" yields these forums as the first non-columbia.edu website. I see it already: "SHUT UP GREENDIPLOMAT March 9th, 2011 by Matt Clemons".

I would agree that King's might not be the best idea for a Master's but if the original poster's looking to get a PhD, I think it's a different story. Assuming that he/she is looking to follow the traditional post-PhD career by going into academia or fairly academic organizations (e.g. think tanks), I think what matters substantially more is the prestige of the particular department and whether that department has a faculty member whose research interests match his/hers, rather than the prestige of the university as a whole (which I again agree matters a good deal for Master's programs), which is largely based on the perceived prestige of the respective university's undergrad (as elucdiated in the prep school example that you gave).

King's College of the University of London is fairly well-regarded among academic circles (and anyone who knows anything about schools in the UK), though, as Meg11's post suggests, it's not as widely-known as Oxbridge or LSE (e.g. a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations that I was looking to work for had a War Studies PhD from King's, and I'm sure there are many more actively involved in the IR/Security field). As with any PhD program, though, while prestige and marketability of the degree can play a part in your decision, whether or not you can do research in your area of interest should take precedence. In short, if you're that keen on the program, King's is well-regarded enough to the people that matter in your future career path (i.e. academics, I'm assuming, if you're getting a PhD) that you should go for it. Since you're asking about the reputation of a particular program (and since this thread will soon be flooded with admissions decisions), you might get more responses/input if you start a new thread on King's, either here or on the Poli Sci forum.

Agreed with SarahL. They're not going to rescind an offer due to it (so I guess there's no direct harm), but they did specifically ask in the blog for people not to do that ("neither I nor my staff can tell you the exact date when you will receive your decision. Our goal is to release decisions as soon as possible, but if you email or call with this question, our answer will be that we are working as quickly as we are able and you will be notified by email once a decision has been posted"). Even if they do get back to you, chances are, with the volume of emails that they're getting at this time of year, you'll get the admissions decision before they even get around to your email.

Oh you mean it's not per day? *is sad*

As indicated in the blog post that SarahL shared, "[h]ow long it takes to review a file is largely dependent upon scheduling and coordination among the Committee members and it should not be a cause of concern if you have to wait longer than some other individuals to receive a decision". Being nervous/antsy about your decision is totally understandable, but don't start worrying about not having received a notification, it'll come in due time.

Yay! Congrats everyone! And for those not fortunate enough to be in the 10% of first-years that get funding, I know the uncertainty's a bit of a turn-off, but do recall that 70% of 2nd-years (pretty much everyone that gets a 3.4 or above in their first term, apparently) get funding in their second year, the median award of which is 21K (with a handful getting full-rides). More numbers here: http://sipa.columbia.edu/resources_services/financial_aid/types_aid.html. Looking forward to talking to a few of you on the admitted student's forum. I'll probably be the annoying one answering everyone's questions despite not being a current student (since I've accumulated quite a bit of info during my undergrad years at Columbia and then during my year off with too much time on my hands), so I'll probably be VERY easy to flag down.

Uy, sorry. I meant "It won't be *until* tomorrow". I'm clearly not helping anyone's nerves with my typos, so I'm going to log off now.

Oh no! Didn't mean to make people anxious! I've updated my post to indicate that, since it's past 5pm here, it won't likely be until tomorrow, and that historically, the first wave only consisted of around 40% of decisions.

[DEFERRED APPLICANT] Rumblings from the admissions office! I included the above tag to make sure that people don't have heart attacks. I got in for Fall 2010 and deferred, so this message does not mean that they've begun releasing decisions. BUT! I just got an email from Matt Clemons (seemingly to all admits that deferred last year), informing me that they've launched the welcome page. I'm pretty sure that this means that they're getting ready to release decisions in the near future! [update: note that this probably means that they'll probably only get out the first of several batches tomorrow, which was 40% of the decisions last year.]

I think your non-academic credentials are very strong. You have clear IR experience, and military experience is a plus. It's hard to assess your overall candidacy, though, without your academic experience; with a strong econ/quant background, I'd say you stand a very strong chance of getting in. Despite the temptation, not going to pull another practical joke here. I doubt that you'll be waiting much longer, though. As I've mentioned, looking back at last year's blog entries, they mentioned that they'd sent out the first wave of admissions decisions after the fact... so this silence could indicate that they're too busy sending out decisions to update the blog!

I do know NYU's MPA also has a later deadline than most... April or May, I think. In general, though, have you thought about working for a year and coming back strong to apply in the next cycle? Yes, you might end up being unemployed for a few months before landing something, but I definitely think the financial loss you'll incur from attending a graduate program not really right for you will be larger on the long run than the loss that you'll incur during those few months off. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I get the impression from your original post and the programs you're considering that your career objectives aren't very clear at this point, and, especially considering that you already have a Master's degree, it might be worth using this time to figure out what direction you want to head in next, and to prepare kick-ass applications for fall 2012 so that you can attend the program of your choice, instead of one that just happened to have a later deadline.

I think more people would be able to answer your question if you post this in the "Interdisciplinary Studies" forum, especially considering that EALAC is hardly a government affairs program. Peterson's usually has admissions data, and though it's usually a year or two behind, it does provide a decent indicator; they say 31% for Columbia EALAC (note that this is aggregated data for both master's and doctoral programs offered by EALAC). Do read my response to your other thread though.

Read the second para. of my response to your previous post: "Also regarding why you don't have problems accessing the application interface, I'm assuming that MPA-MDPs might not necessarily hear back at the same time as MIAs and regular MPAs. Either that, or you're being considered for fellowships (though I don't want to get your hopes up prematurely). " I think you should start reading posts in their entirety, since this isn't the first time today where you missed a crucial second paragraph in one of my posts on this thread.

I don't think we can predict when the MPP decisions are coming out based on the PhD decisions, since the committees are different, but I do think that it'll be soon.

It's where you applied in the first place (i.e. the online application).

For me, when I log into the "applyyourself" application system, it lists all of my materials as received under "Application Status:" on the front page, and right under that, there should be a "Decision Status:", which, for me, is followed immediately by "Available beginning 3/4/2010" followed on the next line by a link that reads "Your application decision is now available online". Also regarding why you don't have problems accessing the application interface, I'm assuming that MPA-MDPs might not necessarily hear back at the same time as MIAs and regular MPAs. Either that, or you're being considered for fellowships (though I don't want to get your hopes up prematurely).

Yeah, in retrsopect, it might have been cruel to pull that prank on heart-attack-prone applicants. Still funny though. Looking back at last year's blog posts, they were posting info about the decisions/outcomes before the decisions were announced, and the first post where they indicate that they'd sent out 40% of the decisions was on 3/5 (i.e. after I got mine). Looks like that's what they're doing. Fingers crossed for everyone!

Yes, I was admitted last year and deferred. I thought the sentence following plus my signature clarified things, but apologies for for my twisted/odd sense of humor. Although I guess this is a good chance to shed light on what everyone should expect. I got an email on 3/4/2010 (a Thursday) at 4:25pm, instructing me to log into the online application, where there's a link to the admissions letter, a copy of which was also sent to my physical address. If past years are any indication, I guess that means that you'll all be receiving notification any minute now, with a delay for those being considered for first-year fellowships.

I'M IN! ... though I've known that for a year now (just messing with you guys ). Looking forward to figuring out who my future classmates will be. In other news, this recent blog post on federal loans will be super useful for any domestic student that thinks they'll end up attending SIPA. Applying for loans was by far the most confusing part of the process for me, and I think this provides the basic information + links. Might be worth bookmarking it or something.

The GRE isn't as big of a factor as some people seem to make it out to be (and even if it were, any school worth going to would know/consider that international students don't have the experience with standardized testing that students educated in the US do); it's used just to have something directly comparable between all applicants as a common measuring stick. For policy/IR programs, the only two cases where I would say it matters would be: - if a candidate doesn't have much quantitative coursework on their transcript by which to evaluate them; or - if the candidate in question is being compared to a very evenly-matched qualified candidate for a spot and there's nothing else that really distinguishes the two (which I find unlikely, but may be the case in uber-competitive programs). As such the advice I always give people is to study for it, do your best, but then dedicate your energy on more heavily-weighed parts of your application that you have more control over like your SoPs, LoRs, etc... i.e. don't worry!

I think you're a strong candidate as Diesel says and should get into SIPA just fine and put up a good fight for Yale and WWS. The two things I'd say you'd have to highlight apart from what you've already listed on your profile are relevant econ/quant coursework (esp. for SIPA and WWS), as well as what you hope to gain (intellectually/professionally) from getting an additional IR master's after an int'l politics master's.

International climate policy/economics here. Lots of Teacher's College classes in your future (should you choose SIPA), I assume?