Poli92

@16381776 Great posts, and I think it would be great for anyone thinking about working for the federal government to read them,  whether or not they want to go into intelligence. The only caveat I would add is to the comment above. For some specialized positions within the federal government, a minimum number of credit hours may be required in a given subject, such as math, stats, or econ. In that case, it doesn't strictly matter what type of program you did (for undergrad or grad), but it does matter that one of your degrees contains the requisite coursework. 

Got into WWS. Will mostly be my choice!

Before the results guys, whatever the final outcome, it was nice to talk to everybody here and I wish each one of you the best of success going ahead. Thanks and good luck. 

JHU AAP and JHU SAIS are not the same. They are completely different programs. I took some economic courses through AAP and their economics program is legit. As for their MA in Government Affairs and MA in Global Security Affairs, the classes are offered at night. It is an evening program with the majority of their students working full time in government, think tanks, etc. The only financial aid that AAP will offer are loans. AAP's employment statistics, this applies to all programs too, can be misleading because they count students who are currently employed as success stories. So if an AAP student has a job and completes the program, the school will count the person as being employed within six months of graduation. Most career services do this and it skews the employment numbers.
As for the quality of the program, I took a strategy class and it was a complete joke. Lot of their professors work at think tanks or for government agencies. One of their professors has written some really good books on intelligence, but I am unsure if the classes are any good.
 
These security and intelligence programs do not prepare you for jobs within intel. If you really want a degree that prepares you for that field, you must attend a war college or the national intelligence university, which are only open to current government employees. Sometimes NIU will have open admissions to external students but it is rare. There are people with MAs in fields other than security and IR/IA and they are doing fine. All of the agencies send their government employees, not contractors, to get trained on how their specific agency conducts intel. Networking will not get you a job with an intel agency. You must go through USAjobs or directly to their website. Networking works for contractors and think tanks but not so much for getting into intel agencies. And the truth about contracting is that contractors are treated horrible. The firms expect you to arrive ready to do the job and have the qualifications and certifications for it, which are only offered through the military or existing government employees. Don't believe, then go check out the major defense contractors and see what they want for entry level positions. They do not want to spend money to train you to do the job. Now if you are a directly employee of the contracting firm, then it is different.  
Go to a school that will offer the most financial aid. The government does not care where you went to school or what you got your MA in. All you need to do is check off the advanced education box. Your degree does not mater for promotion either. Besides, most agencies send their people to receive additional education at no cost to you.

I was in the military for 13 years. 6 non intel and another 7 doing intel. Went to undergrad at a small liberal arts college in the southwest and graduated with a BA in poli sci and econ. Went to a top 15 grad school and got my MA in international security. Fortunately I received a full ride and did not have to worry about debt. Been a govie for 5 years. 2 at the pentagon and the other 3 with current agency where I am a team lead with 10 contractors underneath me. To get a contractor gig, networking matters. Not so much for government positions because everyone has to go through USAjobs or the respective agency's website.  Your resume better meet the point requirements or the match the key words in the position in order to get a review from a real person. Once past that, you must past additional testing and get a security clearance, which networking will not help you get through the process. All that you must do on your own. Those agency recruiters who attend hiring events will all point you to the website and they really cannot go into detail about their work since it is all classified. They best they can offer you is when they think a position will be posted but expect no leg up or an advantage from speaking to a recruiter. I work with people who have no military experience and straight from undergrad. People with an MA in history or English. People with a degree from American Military University, online school, University of Phoenix, and lots of state schools. People with 30+ years of military experience. I have run into people with degrees from the top 15 schools. No one cares where you went to school and what you studied. They want only one thing: get the job done and don't be a liability. People love to talk about their degrees but when asked if it prepared them for the job lots of people say no. That is because these MA degrees in IR and security are not practical degrees. They are all academic programs. The programs do not teach you how to write an IIR, write a collection plan, write a cable, conduct an interview, conduct source operations, military planning, etc. These programs make you write lots of papers and read books and other academic works. None of that is used on the job. Everyone will receive training on how their respective agency writes and operates. Learning about the IR system is really of no benefit for someone starting off at the GG10 level. That level of analysis is not required and is more expected of people at the top positions of government and even then they usually reach out to PHDs to get that stuff done. These security and IR degrees really prepare people for think tank jobs. I was speaking with some people from GT SSP and I asked if they thought their degree helped them get a job. They said no. Internships were the key and they got in when the government went on a hiring spree. Most of them were in debt and one compared his education to the cost of an Audi that will take him 10 years to pay off. The only degrees that do prepare you for an intel job and will give you a boost are STEM degrees and GIS. Those courses suck but if you can get through it, you are pretty much guaranteed a job, unless you have a devious background and questionable character. Either way the private sector will be hunting you down to hire you.

Don't bank on it. In my experience public services employees lol at people who are expecting PSLF to actually pay out. 

I'm a pretty indecisive person, and I'm curious how everyone else is approaching their decisions on what to accept or decline. What questions are you asking? What factors are most important to you? How are you getting your information (talking to current students, website, admitted students day, etc)? Obviously funding is extremely important, but I know that not everyone always goes with the cheapest option. How are you gauging whether higher costs are worth it? I know that debt vs payoff is always important in all fields, but I think it is especially important in public policy, which no one gets into thinking they're going to make big money. 
Here are some questions that I've been asking:
How many students go on to be PMFs? How well do students know their professors?  Are research opportunities accessible to grad students? What sectors are students employed in after graduating? How easy is it to take interesting electives in other departments? What do most students spend time on outside of the classroom? Is heavy extracurricular involvement common? Do most work part time? What are the alumni or career center services like? (Are there more specific questions I can ask about this?) How many years of professional experience are most students coming in with? What questions, facts, etc have helped you get a good sense of what a particular grad school is actually like? I'd love to hear from people currently in these programs or recently graduated about what you wish you would have asked before enrolling. I don't think these are particularly nuanced so it would be great to hear what questions you have asked that led to enlightening answers.

I was accepted to Bologna with 20k funding!
Due to my unrelated background and not having taken Micro/Macro, I knew all of my  schools were a long shot, so to be accepted to a top school like this at all is exciting, but getting funding at one is even crazier. Plus they will let you keep the money if you defer, which is a relief since I'm a Fulbright ETA semi-finalist! From what I read above they have some attractive funding-related policies overall. @Ducky91 I'm also waiting to hear from Fletcher but I've learned from this weekend to not be too optimistic.

Over a decade ago when I was in high school looking at colleges, most of my peers were planning on taking out loans to be able to afford elite private universities.  My parents strongly discouraged that, and I ended up graduating debt free from undergrad (I chose a school that offered me significant scholarship money over a slightly higher ranked school that offered me basically nothing).  I'm so glad that I did that, especially since I ended up studying English literature and was never super motivated to seek out high powered private sector jobs.  I did take out some loans for grad school, but they are pretty manageable.
Student loans are not the worst type of debt, but it is still real debt.  $100k in loans, at current interest rates, will accrue $500-$580 in interest every single month.  That's what you have to pay before you even start to make a dent in the balance.  And then factor in you'll also want to be saving for retirement, saving for a home, and at some point graduating from living with roommates.  
Income-based repayment plans are awesome and I think they would be the way to go in this situation, but you need to be aware that you'll likely be paying back your loans for 25 years (Public Service Loan Forgiveness might be a possibility, but Congress is likely to get rid of it soon, and many IR jobs don't qualify anyway).  That's basically committing to setting aside 10-15% of your income (over poverty level) for the majority of your working life towards your student loans.  
And yes, that is for an investment towards your future.  But IR degrees are pretty generalist - you're not going there to get specific skills or a certification that is absolutely required to get a job in the field.  There isn't any rule that says you HAVE to get an IR masters to get a job in the field.  So an alternative is to think carefully about what you want to do in IR (nonprofit?  State Department?  International finance?) and map out all possible ways to achieve your career goals.  If taking out $100k in loans for a generalist IR degree is still the best way, then go for it.  But it may be that a more specific degree (finance?), applying to the Foreign Service, taking the UN exam, or signing up for the Peace Corps are more cost effective ways to achieve your goals.

Oh my goodness, congratulations! Getting full funding for an MA is ridiculously hard, especially fo a top program like yours.
I'm out of reactions so consider this a love react.

These two things are concerning. Why aren't you getting any scholarship money? These programs aren't super competitive, so as long as you're not a functional idiot, you should be able to. Take a look at the results pages for the various schools, SAIS, SIPA, HKS, etc. - people are getting 50, 60, 70k. So it's possible. Why aren't you?
Like - and stay with me until the end of the post, because this next part is going to sting - when it comes to hypercompetitive fields, be it academia or IR, if you're failing, so to say, at the first hurdle, the field is probably not for you. IR may seem glamorous, but doing something you're not built for becomes really old really quickly. Career outcomes are path-dependent, which means that, if you're starting at a disadvantage, barring some deus ex machina shit, you're going to stay at a disadvantage - and in a hypercompetitive field, that disadvantage will quickly catch up to you and leave you high and dry. 100k in debt, btw, is one hell of a disadvantage. That'll preclude you from taking most interesting entry-level jobs and will trickle down to seemingly innocuous stuff like not being able to attend networking happy hours because you have to catch the last train to Largo - stuff that cumulatively makes a big difference.
All of this isn't to say that you'll never amount to anything, but rather to say that you should avoid starting at a disadvantage. There's lots of reasons why somebody doesn't get scholarship money, and most of them are fixable. Do you lack work experience? Do you need to retake the GRE? Are you not applying widely enough? Is your application not telling a coherent narrative for what you want to do in the field and why School X is the best place to prepare yourself for it? If you don't know the answer to these questions, find out. Go on LinkedIn and set up some informational interviews with people in the field. Pick something you don't know about and learn about it, ideally by doing it. Immerse yourself in the field as a professional, not a starry-eyed child.
A note on work experience in IR: as someone who got a job in IR out of UG, don't get a job in IR out of UG. The entry-level stuff is all bureaucratic support (so, not the people who get to even touch policy with a 3 foot pole). It's a good way to learn about how the sausage is made, but that's about it. If I were to do it again, I'd get a job in something competitive, like consulting, that will teach you grit and concise analysis while also paying well and looking good on a resume, or I'd move abroad and do something crazy, e.g. start a beach bar in Trinidad, and learn from the ground up. Or work at an NGO that does fieldwork on the actual ground. You can arrive at policy from any background: I know former engineers, MDs, stock traders, artists, activists and so on who have successful careers in IR. It's all about what skills and network you can bring to the table. All this bullshit about what degree you have and where it's from and how much it cost is so fucking secondary.

Looking through previous years' postings like... 

Looking through previous years' postings like... 

I think it’s just trying to see a pattern where there is none. Matt can post about the admitted category on Saturday. He has previously posted on Saturdays

FYI, I just received my formal acceptance notification from the Dean of the Graduate School for admission to the Woodrow Wilson School. 
On a personal note, I honestly was not convinced it was all real until now. 

This spurred a weird mental image of Sean Astin guiding Matt's hand as he signs admissions letters with triumphant strings swelling in the background. 

FWIW I got a phone call informally notifying me of my acceptance to the WWS security studies PhD program yesterday.
I know that it isn’t the program you all are waiting for, but I thought I would pop in here from the political science board and let you all know. 

Maybe not even practitioners - it's mostly academics I believe. I spoke with one of the survey respondents (who coincidentally convinced his friend to put the survey in Foreign Policy years ago). He unsurprisingly listed SIS, none of the other DC schools, and four other schools he liked. 

Anonymity is a crazy thing. I'm sorry that happened to you, but without substantial context, your story just seems a little far fetched. 
If you went to one of the top private schools in the Northeast and a top 3 IR school, landing a private sector gig or even a position at a non-profit is not that incredibly difficult. Is getting a job in the conduct and formulation of foreign policy itself extremely hard, yeah. But being forced to go to Latin America to dodge debt is quite something. 
I have no dog in this fight--I'm not applying to the IR Masters programs, but it's a bit annoying to see stories like this written ad nauseum on this board. There's certainly some response bias for those who post their stories, so keep that in mind while reading everything you see here. 
All who are applying--keep your eyes wide open. If you want to be successful and get a good job in D.C. (or Geneva or wherever) after your degree, that process has to start while you're in undergrad or before you go to grad school. Make those connections early, they'll be invaluable later on. 

tl;dr These bad rankings don't make all rankings bad. 
While I would, and did, say that there is a limit to the value of these rankings as measures of the quality of the programs covered, I think dismissing the notion of rankings altogether is rather flippant. Moreover, I think your post misses the point of a ranking by focusing way too much on the expectation of some workplace social capital afforded to those who go to a higher ranked school, rather than focusing on what people who go to higher ranked schools actually achieve professionally relative to others. If middling graduates the top 5 schools still have, on average, better outcomes than those in the next highest five, then you could safely say that the top 5 programs provide better preparation than the other programs, regardless of whether one's colleagues talk in reverent whispers whenever one's top-tier pedigree is discussed.  
These rankings, however, can't be said to measure that very well (probably), because they are merely based on the subjective assessments of scholars in IR. What would be more useful, IMHO, would be rankings based on longitudinal surveys of graduates asking them to reflect on the extent to which they feel they have professional mobility. This could be composed of a battery of questions regarding income, debt burden, the attainment of progressive responsibility/promotions, the opportunity to pursue meaningful work, work/life balance, etc. I think something along these lines would sift through some of the interdisciplinary nature of IR, and the differing personal choices all graduates will make, to implicitly ask what I think is the most important question, "Has your degree empowered you to pursue your chosen path, regardless of what that specific path may be?" Once that question is answered, the major remaining criterion for a prospective student to evaluate is the topical fitness of the program. 
I suppose the main point I'm trying to get across is that bad rankings have more to do with poor imagination and design than some fundamental lack of value in the exercise of ranking, and since its something we're all going to do all of the time anyways, we might as well try to make good, formal, transparent ones available. After all, ranks are models, and as George Box tells us, "All models are wrong, but some are useful."  

Also worth checking out are the contending companion articles: 
It’s Never Been a Better Time to Study IR by Francis Gavin of SAIS
America’s IR Schools Are Broken by Stephen Walt of HKS 
My key reflection on the rankings is to bear in mind that they are compiled from "Responses from 1,541 IR scholars at U.S. colleges and universities." A common thread through both of the accompanying essays is that traditional, academic IR is behind the eight ball to some degree when it comes to understanding and serving the modern requirements of practitioners in the field of IR. 
Given that many (most?) on this forum are interested in professional masters programs in IR/PP/PA, to ask allegedly cloistered scholars where one would get the best professional preparation for a career in IR seems a bit self-defeating. 

Also worth checking out are the contending companion articles: 
It’s Never Been a Better Time to Study IR by Francis Gavin of SAIS
America’s IR Schools Are Broken by Stephen Walt of HKS 
My key reflection on the rankings is to bear in mind that they are compiled from "Responses from 1,541 IR scholars at U.S. colleges and universities." A common thread through both of the accompanying essays is that traditional, academic IR is behind the eight ball to some degree when it comes to understanding and serving the modern requirements of practitioners in the field of IR. 
Given that many (most?) on this forum are interested in professional masters programs in IR/PP/PA, to ask allegedly cloistered scholars where one would get the best professional preparation for a career in IR seems a bit self-defeating. 

The former dean of AU SIS has a good thread on the rankings. 
 

Let's share the admission decision and a little on your profile!