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Katrun, That's interesting they are confused over there! How can you enforce such a tight deadline when our offer decisions depends on their scholarships? I mean it's not like we are waiting on outside scholarship decisions. I emailed them about this and will let you know what they reply.

Thanks Mych! I just sent admissions an email basically asking for more time. I explained that Sciences Po's scholarship decision is in April and I won't be able to make an informed decision before that. I thought we had until June for some reason? I mean after all applications are opened until April for Sciences Po so my guess is they are trying to lock in the MDP program and know exactly how many spots are left since it's a smaller program than say International Development. Talk about pressure... I panicked for a minute there!

Guys I need your advice! I received an email from Sciences Po admissions with my student id number and it basically says that I must accept/reject the offer: "You have 15 days to do this. You must therefore accept or refuse the offer before 21/02/2014.If you fail to do so, we will unfortunately assume that you do not wish to accept the offer." But my problem is that the Sciences Po AFD scholarship decision will be out in April only and I'm still waiting on IHEID and LSE so I'm not ready to make that decision just yet. I'm not sure what to do? Do I write to them? Do I just accept? Did anyone admitted receive such an email? If I accept do I have to pay anything at this point? I know some schools like IHEID want you to pay a part of the fees as soon as you accept to make sure you are serious about attending. I'm wondering if Sciences Po does that?

The Dev Practice program is eligible only for Eiffel and the development focused scholarships such as the AFD scholarship. Thank god I was eligible for that one!

Congrats Katrun! That's great news! Too bad my program is not eligible for the Boutmy scholarship :-( Good luck in Haiti!

You are so right a few more months and we will have to make some tough choices here... it's a very stressful time since no one wants to make the wrong decision. Please everyone just make sure to share with us what school you actually plan to attend so that we can keep in touch and also to bring closure to future prospective students who will read all these pages and wonder where we all ended up! Happy Chinese New Year to you Mic!

Mickun & Curious_Grad congrats on your admissions to Hertie and SOAS!!! Mickun glad to see you back on the board :-) Katrun, Im in the same boat I am thinking about coming back to the US after graduating and attending a program that is recognized here is a concern. i think I plan to work for a while internationally rack up some experience and eventually move to the east coast. But you know they do say that you should attend school in a city/country where you would like to work, hence Geneva for me. Schools and their career centers logically have better relationships with local organizations and employers than on the international scale. So if your goal is to work in the U.S right after school then you are better off going to a school in the U.S

Well Sciences Po makes sense for me because of the way we can personalize the curriculum. I want to become a practictioner and Dev Practice is totally focused on the professional side of the dev field. Students get to work on real case studies alongside project managers from big French economic development agencies. That's really attractive to me because I want to acquire real skills not just learn theories in a classroom. Not to mention the program is 12 months instead of2 years. The program looks super intense but I would be done faster and ready to jump back into the job market. On a more personal level Paris is already familiar to me and I have family in France so it would also make my life a bit easier. However I do slightly favor Geneva because of its location, and the opportunities to work for big agencies there but also because IHEID seems at least to me a bit more laid back in its curriculum. I will actually have time to absorb what I'm learning and not feel huge amount of pressure like at Sciences Po. The institute is so specialized that they are better equiped to place their graduates in positions in the big agencies/ngo in the Geneva bubble and beyond. While Sciences Po offers tons of programs and PSIA is not their sole focus. I actually read on a French site that PSIA masters have lower job placements than their other programs but that it was also probably due to the fact that it is fairly new.

Yes you are right! It doesn't help that I am a worrywart! Since I'm pretty much done worrying about getting rejected everywhere (thank god that has not happened) I have found a new thing to worry about, ie cost of living!

Congrats on NYU Curious_Grad! That's great and what is your top choice? Katrun, I think all the cities I picked are crazy expensive to live in regardless so now that admissions are coming in and this whole grad school thing is becoming real I'm now getting increasingly worried about cost of living more so than admission to the rest of the schools I applied to. The D.C/NY//Boston area is where you want to be to study International Affairs in the US but the first thing I looked at was tuition costs and that alone scared the heck out of me! lol I head great things about Bologna! Is that the program where you do one year in Bologna and one year at Johns Hopkins? Or will you be studying in Bologna the whole time? Haiti that sounds exciting! You are quite an accomplished traveler, what are you going to be doing there? Dev work I suppose?

Congrats on your admission at Sciences Po! That's great news :-) What U.S schools did you apply to? And would you consider actually attending Sciences Po? So far it's where I'm going... pending scholarship decisions and admission decisions from IHEID. It's great to have different posters familiar with Switzerland posting feedback and useful info. For instance I didn't know about the banking limitations. I do know the Belgians and Swiss say numbers differently which sounds incredibly odd to me as a France French speaker lol it's another thing to get used to. My main concern is the cost of living and eating in these European cities. I know you are not applying there but last week IHEID sent us a housing application email and the cheapest accommodation available was around 750 CHF a month for a private room with a shared bathroom if I remember correctly. And I thought to myself after converting in dollars... oh my is this supposed to be affordable student housing?! Which city with big universities do you guys think is the most budget friendly to students?

Ha ha ha it's not crazy at all to not make a decision based on rankings but I'm being pragmatic here rankings and by extension job placement do come into consideration for most of us. It is hard to ignore! Investing 2 years of your life and possibly taking on debt to move half way across the world is a big commitment. I surely wouldn't do it if I didn't think it would benefit my career goals even if I liked the curriculum. But we are all different. Now if I had endless funding then sure that would be an entirely different matter! I'd pick what I like to study regardless of other factors, unfortunately few students have that luxury. If you really want to dive into development issues then I guess IHEID and IDS have the right programs or maybe a research track like Angie mentioned. You should then stay away from more professional degrees like the one from Sciences Po because I contacted a PSIA student who told me that most courses don't really dive into topics. Courses are pretty general unless you decide to write a thesis on a specific topic. And you are right development is becoming quite competitive this surprised me. Not that I expected the process to be a breeze but I didn't realize competition would be so intense for so few spots. So much so that IHEID had to defer many of us to second round!

Hello Mych Wow thank you so much for the wealth of info you just took the time to type! That is extremely useful to all of us IHEID hopefulls! I do hope we actually get to use it lol It will take time for me to get used to shop hours because in the US everything is always opened but I suspected that it was like in France so no surprise there. Same with renting apartments and thanks for the links! I'm glad to know you actually like living there and that there are tons of things to do. I always hear that Geneva is super expensive and kind of slow compared to cities like London or Paris. At this point I don't even know if I have a preference anymore I've turned possible outcomes in my head so many times. I will go wherever I am lucky enough to get a scholarship, as they say beggars can't be choosers! lol

Welcome mych! Thanks for specifying because that is exactly what I was going to ask you about! Foreign students status in Switzerland and how easy or hard it is to rent a place or find part time employment as an international! I have never heard of Wageningen University and I can't really comment on any Dutch program or the Uni of Oslo. The only ones you mentioned and that I have looked into are St Gallen and Sciences Po. i ruled out St Gallen quickly because of the german language learning requirement and Sciences Po is at the top of my list. Can you tell me if you like living in Switzerland? Is it easy to adapt?

Welcome to the board! I agree with a lot of what Angie said except for the LSE bit (my top choices are IHEID, Sciences Po and LSE). SOAS is a good school for development but I'm not so convinced of the ranking and job placements nowadays. LSE has a wider reach and connections, granted the Dev course electives at SOAS do look good. Did you consider doing a MPA with a Development focus? I think this would be good for you because you already have years of dev working experience you might not find a basic academic oriented curriculum challenging. And you come from a finance quantitative background so an MPA or a Development management degree sounds like the right thing for your profile. LSE has an MPA in International Development you should take a look at I almost applied to it but went with Development Management instead. And Sciences Po has a Development Practice 1 yr program I was admitted into for students with a few years of working experience. As you see there are many options! It's a bit too late to apply to US degrees unless you have already taken your GRE but there are also many US Development focused programs.

I ended up choosing Development Management instead of MPA ID and I received the 4th email Nov 28th. I am still under consideration and it's nerve wrecking!

Welcome Bonafide! I second angie's opinion, the adcoms are looking for diversity of experiences and academic backgrounds to make up the incoming class. However they usually do have a GPA cutoff point but seems like you've done so much since your undergraduate days that it's hard to overlook just because of a lower GPA. You seem to know exactly what field you want to focus on and you've been working towards that goal for a while now. Sounds to me like you have a good shot! May I ask what programs you've applied to at SOAS and Sciences Po? Development related as well? In any case I'm sure you'll be fine as long as you've laid down your case in your statement without overlooking your undergraduate performance and explained how you've grown and how much more focused you are. Besides you've taken steps to take classes to make up for it shows how commited and pro-active you are. I think you'll be just fine! Good luck and please don't hesitate to participate on this thread and share with the rest of us :-)

http://graduateinstitute.ch/home/admissions/application/application-for-accommodation.html under Important Dates that's what got all the speculations going

I guess we have our answer.... great thank you Mickun for squashing my admission hopes ha ha!

I know right Mickun? I was wondering the same thing is there anyone who didn't receive it???! Now that would be interesting to know! I just think that their jan 23 deadline if it only applied to the few already admitted students would give them an unfair advantage for housing over the rest of us who have to wait till March for a decision. It's only fair they release the links to everyone still in play for a spot at admission... but then again doesn't that mean way more housing applications than beds availaible? Hmmm ok I need to stop overthinking this!

Nice to see people back on this board! I too have received that email about housing. My guess is they have sent it to all deferred students and students still being considered so as not to penalize us. I doubt it's an indication of their admission decisions. Or maybe I'm being pessimistic?

Thank you and good luck to you too! Yes LSE is a good school but like you I have heard that the teaching is not that great and that you are pretty much left to fend for yourself so I guess what students told you is true. But you cannot deny that the world wide name recognition is an impressive thing to have on your resume. But for development I'm not sure LSE.is the place to be and the program is very academic with no internship component. Needless to say that I think the Sciences Po dev programs are more well rounded.even if LSE is the better school. Regardless I am still anxious to find out if I'm admitted or not it's nerve wrecking.

Well I know that it's a very prestigious school in France and very well known in Europe. It doesn't have that big name recognition in the U.S but social science academics know it of course. When I told my undergrad prof about going to school in Europe the only school he mentioned was Sciences Po. Besides if you want to work in development you will be working with people with international exposure who will know US/Euro schools very well so I don't think it would be a problem, unless you plan on coming right back to the U.S. to work then don't go to Europe. You will be competing for jobs with students fresh out of SIPA, SAIS, SIS etc... US employers are familiar with... but at least you will stand out! I applied to 5 schools all in Europe mostly because of cost I mean let's face it is wayyy cheaper and also because I did undergrad in the US I think it's now time for a degree from another country to round up my international profile. I think PSIA is really great and one of the few programs where you can really customize your curriculum and it seems less academic than many other development programs. I want to learn professional skills now and be ready for the job market so Dev Practice was perfect for me. Not quite sure I will accept my place yet because I'm waiting on their funding decision and I'm also waiting to hear back from IHEID and LSE.

Hi katpog, I have heard back from Sciences Po and I believe a few others from Intel Dev have heard back too. I applied in mid November and got admitted into Dev Practice roughly a month after I received the 'admissible' email if that helps.

No wonder we could not find anyone who got in! 30 already admitted into Mdev is so little! So there are about 30 more spots... hmmm Ok I'm joining you in the "don't feel so good" club