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I really prefer "cost averse and risk savvy" as a label. But there are different ways to think about this, because it's not black and white, and help you keep it in perspective: 1) If you're really torn: there doesn't have to be a rock (boatloads of debt) or a hard place (a less prestigious school). Depending on your age, experience, and career thus far, it might make sense to wait and apply another year. You get better (guarantee of) funding with more work experience; I think that's practically a fact. 2) A less prestigious school could end up being a really good place for you -- it depends very heavily on your own interest and work and what you're willing to do there. I think prestige is fairly overrated, 3) Finally, I've seen some really successful people who don't have any sort of graduate degree. Even though we're surrounded every day by people with postgraduate degrees, I think we ultimately do know that's not the only way to success and that's not for everyone.

Aja, I haven't heard of this happening before at any school, but I can tell you're obviously very competitive at all the schools you've applied to. I think it's just something they want to do to show you that you're highly regarded. If the extra funding and the show of attention makes a difference, you can reconsider. If not, I know you'll have a great time at Princeton anyway.

I second the discussions about Maxwell alums and the reach that they have in DC. I just met one in the Executive Office of the President who was very helpful to me, so I don't think you should take too seriously the fact that they're not in DC. On the other hand, the MAIR is unlikely to be what you are really interested in if you want to do US foreign policy and national security. In my experience, that is more a field in MPP studies. I don't know what kind of Master's program American is offering, but you might want to look at the match or mismatch between your interests and the actual degree you're getting.

I think the path you are suggesting is very common, as well as very common sensical. As long as you intend to go to this school if you don't get into SAIS, then depositing at this school is absolutely the right thing to do. If you ultimately do get into SAIS from the waitlist, then you can forfeit your enrollment deposit at the first institution, and enroll at SAIS. If you have your heart dead set on SAIS, then you shouldn't deposit at any other schools and just wait or apply next year if it doesn't work out. In all other circumstances, you should deposit at your second favorite school, where you will most likely have a great experience and a fruitful career and a happy life. I don't think this is unfair at all to anyone on the waitlist; this has nothing to do with them, because schools may ultimately decide not to take anyone off the waitlist, independently of whether accepted students decline or accept offers. They don't take one person off the waitlist for every one that declines admission, because schools always over-admit and must over-admit. What your chance of getting off the waitlist ultimately depends on is the entire composition of the cohort. There is no drop-dead date for declining an offer, although you should always make those decisions in good faith. A student from the cohort above me had deposited, enrolled, and actually spent a few days at another school before he decided he should really be here instead, and switched over in the middle of orientation week or the first week of classes. Anecdotally, I've also heard that some people will take a week or two of classes before they were wrong about graduate school, and that it wasn't for them at this point, and left early enough in the semester to get most of their money back.

I think your story is far from a black mark -- told the right way, it's the story of how you got back on your feet and showed that you are capable of serious work. Graduate schools will look not just at your GPA but at your transcript, and if your grades really have steadily improved since community college and transferring to a four-year, it will speak volumes to your true potential. You still have a lot of time in college. Use the rest of your time to take some quantitative classes -microeconomics, statistics- and courses like an introduction to public policy or public affairs, to see if it's for you. Meet and talk with professors who have this sort of background. Go to career services and ask to be connected with alums who work in political communication or public policy, or volunteer at some organizations that sound neat. This forum can help you apply to graduate school: writing SOPs, handling recommendations, how to compare offers. But what is better is developing mentors right now at and through school who can give you personalized advice on your career. If you've kept in touch with former bosses, you already know the value of that. While you still have a school and network to draw on, use that as much as you can, and come back here when you're ready to apply. I promise people will be here. =)

I think in this thread, a lot of people read "Strength of SOP" as "Tell us how great your SOP is going to be", and of course, everyone puts "Strong." What is much more useful and relevant is for you to summarize what your SOP will be about. What *is* your purpose in getting this graduate degree? Why do you want it? If you can articulate that and relate it to your experiences, then any work you have can be "relevant work experience". It doesn't have to be policy - you should just tell a story of how you decided you wanted to work in IR/public policy.

Thoughts for people who haven't applied yet: if you know or think it will be difficult to attend Admitted Student Days, make the effort to visit before you apply. It can be as a formal prospective student visit or it can just be coming in and sitting in on some classes, with a word or two to the professor beforehand. Strike up conversations with current students who aren't tasked with guiding you around. You can get a more accurate feel for the environment there. I was able to do this at three schools, two of which I applied to and one of which I decided against because I didn't like the vibe.

I suggest providing much more information about each school and the amount of aid you will be receiving from each school. Without an idea of which programs, what they provide, what you want to study, etc., it's hard to give you advice just based on Europe vs. US or debt vs. no debt. Your US school could easily be one with great international connections. Don't forget to leverage funds from the European school to ask for more if you decide you really want to go to the US one!

A word of caution: better is a highly subjective term, and going by rankings is the first step in figuring out what "better" means to you. Around a certain echelon of schools, the rankings really lose meaning depending on what you really want. I think employers could respond fairly well no matter which school you attend - Cornell, Duke, or USC, because they all have good national (and international) reputations. I'm not sure about Minnesota because I haven't heard too much about it, but do a search and see if you find Minnesota MPP alums at the type of organizations or in the sector that you're interested in. I highly doubt you'll be stuck in Minnesota forever just because you got a Minnesota degree. If you want more specific feedback on careers and jobs in public policy, check out the career services websites of those schools and contact the people there to learn about the organizations people intern at/ work at, some alumni stories, etc. etc., some basic reassurance that you will not starve or go into endless debt repayment after you graduate. Finally, I've seen somewhere on this forum that a good rule of thumb about debt is that it should be less than what you expect to make your first year after graduating with the degree. For example, if you know you're going to gun for a consulting firm type job that pays $60-70K right afterward, it might be more acceptable to have a higher level of debt. It's not a hard and fast rule, and it won't make sense for everyone, but I think it's as good a guideline as any.

Just to play devil's advocate, if you really want to learn Python and Java, maybe a policy program isn't what you really want. Take a look at what courses/ skills/ experiences they're offering and what you want. On the other hand, if you're really sure you want to do a policy-related program, but also want to learn skills like Python and Java, it can be easy to take electives in the area that you want to specialize in. You should look at Harris MPP's required courses and figure out how much room there is for taking electives that may be in the MSCAPP program or electives across other schools at UChicago. There is more than one way to skin a cat.

I can offer some thoughts on the conditional acceptances with regard to microeconomics/ statistics and the placement exams for advanced quantitative courses. For more details on the current policy that is being applied, I urge you to check in with admissions if you haven't already. According to the current FAQs: Q. WHAT IF I HAVE NEVER TAKEN ANY MICRO- OR MACRO-ECONOMICS COURSES? A. We require all applicants to complete coursework in microeconomics and statistics at an accredited institution (with a grade of “B” or higher) prior to enrollment. Official transcripts must be submitted by August 1st. Last year, I believe the policy was that you needed to have taken coursework in those two subjects within the past five years. I had one statistics course from my senior year of college, which was less than five years out; when I was accepted, my letter said that I needed to complete microeconomics. I was a little surprised too, because I hadn't read closely all universities' pre-requisites policies. When I accepted the offer, I also had to reply separately to an email to confirm that I would do my microeconomics course before I enrolled. I took the online microeconomics course with UCLA Extension, which cost $595. I heartily recommend it, because it was easy to do while I was traveling abroad at the time. I wrote a short-response each week on the reading, took a quiz each week, and a final exam that was online as well. While by no means intellectual, it gave me a brief introduction to the subject, and I think helped me vastly during my fall semester. Duke offers a challenging quantitative curriculum, and I know I would've struggled a lot without it. Last August, I took the placement exam online a few weeks before orientation. I know just the concept of a placement exam can seem intimidating, like you're being judged even before you arrive. That wasn't my experience, though. You shouldn't study for it, because the point is really just to match up your knowledge of econ and stats with the depth of what the different quantitative courses offer. It only took me fifteen minutes to finish both placement exams, because I knew I pretty much knew nothing, and would need to take the regular course. During orientation week, we were placed into a regular or advanced course for both microeconomics and statistics, based on the results of the exam, and the MPP program staff emphasized that we could choose to take the other course if we were so inclined, but that we should know the difference between the two. As I chose regular microeconomics, I had to take two semesters; the first was an intermediate-level intro to microeconomics (supply and demand, monopoly, production functions), and the second is microeconomic policy applications, which uses what we learned in our first semester to think about structure for welfare programs, tax policy, or calculate benefits and costs. If you take the advanced microeconomics, the two regular semesters are condensed into one required course. From what I understand from classmates, it is more heavy on theory, and doesn't include as much of the applications that we're doing in our second semester. I also chose the regular course in statistics, which we colloquially referred to as "the people's stats". =) It is also a two semester requirement; the first was an introduction to statistics (mean, median, probability, t-tests, basic regression, using STATA), and the second semester is quantitative methods of evaluation, where we learn the concepts behind statistical research (multivariate regression, difference-in-difference, fixed effects) by reading lots and lots of empirical papers. If you take the advanced statistics course, it is again just one semester, and from the way it was taught this fall, it was very heavy on theory and proofs. Personally, I've enjoyed both classes much more than I expected. I have mediocre math grades through high school, and never took any econ or calculus in college. I was surprised to find out I could actually do this work, and have really come to enjoy it. I will try to get a fellow student to discuss his/her experience of what the advanced quantitative courses were like, and maybe encourage others to share their thoughts about the regular quant classes too. We just finished midterms and are now on spring break, which is pretty darn exciting! Hope to see some of you afterward at the Open House.

It said on my acceptance letter last year that: "We will renew your fellowship and assistantship (if applicable) at comparable levels during your second year of study if you remain in good academic standing, but we reserve the right to amend our offer if at any point you receive other funding or change degree programs." Here's also what the Duke MPP Handbook (accessible online) says: "The Duke MPP Program reserves the right to amend financial aid awards if a student receives external funding, applies to become a dual degree student or fails to maintain academic performance standards. Federal Loans require students to be making satisfactory progress. Students who perform below a 3.0 for two semesters will lose their eligibility for student loans. In order to be certified as making satisfactory progress towards the degree, graduate students must maintain at least a 3.0 ( cumulative grade point average. Students have an ongoing obligation to notify the MPP aid officer upon receipt of external funding sources, scholarships, or grants obtained independently." Unless you screw up your grades royally, I'm basically 100% sure that the awards you get your first year will stay the same in your second year. If not, I've got bigger things to worry about myself! =) Finally, these are very fine-grained, detailed questions. Please consider asking the Admissions office yourself, since they are the ones making these decisions. =)

To concur with Aja, I highly recommend negotiating here. It is always useful and never hurts to ask, as long as you do it politely and nicely. I received a full-tuition scholarship from USC, and used that as a reason to ask Duke for $10K more a year. They asked me to forward proof that I'd received that offer from USC, and then a day or two before the deadline to accept, came back with $5K more a year. Hopefully you will receive good financial offers from schools that aren't your top choice that you can then leverage for more from the one you do want to go to.

I highly suggest you bring this question up to the Admissions office, because it's pretty specific. Many people do receive partial aid through grants and loans, as has been testified to on this page so far. But it's hard to say (and people themselves may not even know) if they're specifically merit or need based. Good luck!

Last spring, I did a pretty thorough search of community college programs and online programs, and I couldn't find anything cheaper than what I took at UCLA Extension, which cost $595. Given that you're working full-time right now, I think you might end up valuing flexibility over cost. The UCLA course in microeconomics was completely online, and just required me to do quizzes online, post short answers, and take a short exam. Nothing had to be proctored through online, and many of the other programs I looked at did. (I think Berkeley required me to find a proctor, or to mail my hard copy of the exam back to them.) So take that into consideration. Finally, if you want it to count as a pre-requisite for classes and come away with a credit-bearing transcript, there's a price for that. Good luck.

BTW, Aja, we have a current first-year who just finished his time in Peace Corps Panama! Maybe you know him already, but feel free to PM me if you want to get in touch. =)

Here's some more information about stats for our class in terms of age, years of experience, GRE scores: http://sanford.duke.edu/admissions/mpp Here are some back of the napkin figures: our class is well-balanced in terms of gender, though maybe like 55% female. Out of our first-year class of 64, there are about ten to a dozen international students. Almost an equal number of returned Peace Corps volunteers too, I'm going to say! We also have a great cohort of veterans. As for minority students, it depends on your definition, since we have that many international students. In general, I wish Sanford were more diverse, but that applies to every institution I've applied to for undergraduate and graduate. What we do have are many socially-minded students who work on making this an inclusive community. Come join us!

You should definitely apply for FAFSA as soon as you can, and send the results to all the schools you're considering attending, whether you've received admission or not. I don't know for sure, but I do think they take your FAFSA into consideration.

Thanks for clarifying, Alyssa. It's definitely true that Duke doesn't allow part-time students in the MPP program. We're all full-time students, but off the top of my head, I can name about five friends in my cohort who have part-time jobs or paying internships off campus, and I know several people found them through the career office here. I'd also say we have a great network that is definitely national and international in scope - I'm applying for at least four internships abroad and in other parts of the states, which I've all learned about through the career office or connections with alums who have worked there before. Those networks definitely don't compare to the depth of the networks that Duke has in DC and Raleigh, however, so there's some truth to that. Well, I appreciate you clarifying, and I fully agree with you that professional work experience is very important during the MPP. We now return you to your regular programming about UGA! =)

I do recommend UCLA Extension, which is even cheaper than UC Berkeley. I paid just $595 to take an microeconomics course online, and my university accepted it as a prerequisite for enrolling. I strongly suggest you take some to prove you have good quantitative skills, which will go a ways to set off a bad GPA.

I would suggest you still apply to Ford if you really want to. Though as a public university they don't grant many scholarships, taking a TA means that you are eligible for tuition remission. I talked to a friend who graduated from there last year, and she confirmed that it's possible to get TA positions such that you get almost all of your tuition remitted, in addition to being paid. It can be pretty generous, so don't rule it out as a choice before you even apply. 160 is a pretty good quant score. Just check the average GRE scores of admitted cohorts through the Admissions page at different schools. I bet you'll see you're in the middle to upper part of the pack. Combined with your engineering degree, the Admissions folks will not doubt your quantitative skills!

So your video shouldn't really be a problem. They won't count it against you in any significant way, I'm sure. It's not like you submitted a 2 minute video! I would not worry about it. =) I think a 156 in quant is still pretty decent. That's about what I got in my GRE, and I almost had no quantitative work in undergrad (only one statistics course five years ago). They are now requiring (starting with my class) people who don't have enough experience to take either an introductory microeconomics and/or statistics course. Any credit-bearing course at any university which will issue a transcript for your work will be satisfactory, I believe. (No Coursera or MOOC, sorry.) And those will be enormously useful, I reassure you. I took intro to microconomics last April-June before I began school, and boy did I need it. As I mentioned in the reply above, I'm taking the regular microeconomics and statistics classes, and they have been reasonably hard. Last semester was definitely a bit of work, and this semester is even more challenging, but in a very good way. Sunny Ladd, a nationally renowned economist and education policy professor, is teaching our microeconomics class, and Manoj Mahonan, a health policy professor, is teaching our stats course. We're really learning to apply the quantitative concepts to policy-making and policy evaluation now, which is fun and interesting but man, I am spending a lot of time on reading and taking notes. Multivariable regression can be really complex! (I may be procrastinating on that work right now...). I don't believe any of my classmates in the first year are dual-degree candidates at the Nicholas School, but quite a few of them have environmental policy interests, and I know one is taking a climate change economics course at the Nicholas School right now. Not really knowing what the exact requirements are for the MEM, I would still say that you can make a strong case for being a good candidate if you have the motivation and the story to back it up. Many people make the mistake of thinking they won't be competitive for public policy school because they don't have any policy work experience, but the point of going to a professional school like Sanford or Nicholas is to gain the credentials and experience necessary to break into the field. If you were working in that field already, a professional degree may not even make sense. I would contact their admissions office and try to speak with some current Nicholas students. Hopefully they will be as helpful as Sanford's when I was applying!

So many questions! I'm glad you have them, though. I might prod another of my cohort who has been active on Gradcafé too to come back and share his opinions. Here is the link to in which I talk about my profile and experiences. Also in the vein of more threads, here's the featuring some of my own comments and questions when I was applying. =) As I am a first-year MPP, I am just starting the spring consulting project. It is a required core course for all MPP students in their first year, and I can already tell it is going to be an amazing (but crazy) experience. We have read over forty proposals from organizations all over Durham, North Carolina, and even nationally (projects from San Francisco, Baltimore, and other places). Next week, we'll be assigned to a project and a team of 4-5 students to do this consulting project over the course of the next three months. I think it is still highly relevant for international students because some of the projects have international focuses (one is on international adoption policy). It's also primarily meant as an exercise in teamwork, groupwork, and acquiring real-life experiences working for a real client, so you will find it very useful and a great illustrative touchpoint in interviews and other conversations. We're also being presented with a variety of areas like economic development, education, technology, local and state government, environment, welfare policy, and more. I'm confident you would find something to suit your interests and grow as a professional. I don't yet have any experience with cross-registering at Fuqua (the business) and law schools or at other institutions, but I know that quite a few first-year MPPs have signed up for classes at other schools, like law and business and medicine. I also know second-years who are taking courses at NC State. I think the process can be a bit trickier, and you have to take the initiative of figuring out what classes are being offered where and what their policies are. Fuqua also runs on the quarter system where as Sanford is the semester system, and I've heard that the business school saves most of the slots for their own students. Finally, one of my friends got the ethics core requirement waived because he could demonstrate prior coursework in philosophy in the not-too-long-ago undergrad. As far as I know, there aren't any competency exams involved with waiving requirements, but I think it highly depends on your individual experience. For the quantitative classes, you take online assessments before you enter in the fall, and have some latitude to choose regular or advanced microeconomics or statistics classes. The advanced classes are very hard work, but you don't need to take a second semester of that quantitative class in the spring. I've taken the regular two-semester sequence for both quant classes, because I don't have any quant experience in undergrad or otherwise, and I'm pretty happy with my decision. Same with ethics -- the professor we're taking it with now has some fascinating on-the-job experiences with professional ethics, and while it'd be nice to have requirements waived, I also really appreciate the chance to learn what I don't know.

First of all, let's confront your biggest fear: if you get rejected from every single school, you can simply look for a job like everyone else in your graduating class, get real professional work experience which can only benefit you on the application, and apply again next year. Applying to graduate school is not like undergraduate at all. You have a lot of choices in reality. There are many ways to work in political consulting or think tanks without a graduate degree. So your worst case scenario for grad school apps really isn't the worst thing in the world. Remember that when things get too rough. I was rejected from the first graduate school I ever applied to when I was in my senior year of college. I was really stunned and stumped for a while, and it turned out to be a very very good thing in retrospect, because I got to work for a few years in a different field and figured out I wanted to do public policy. That being said, your quantitative GRE is weak, and it would make up for it if you've gotten good grades in the quantitative coursework you took. I hope you got straight As on probability and statistics, and that you maybe tested out of calculus. Lack of work experience is just what it is. I wish I had a dime for every time someone on Gradcafé tried to convince me three internships added up to one full-time job, but I'll probably never change my mind, and neither will admissions committees. It's good that you've gotten a substantive experience with the budget as the student body president, but know that you're up against people who have years of full-time job experience, so you have to be competitive in other ways if you don't have that experience. What are those ways? I think the holy Trinity of public policy or government affairs admissions is 1) the right skills (GRE/GPA), 2) the right experience (full time is best) and 3) the right reason (SOP and letters). So if you don't have all three, it's of course not a judgment on you, so don't take it personally. It's that having all three puts you in the best position to make the most of your two years. You sound like you want to go into it for the right reasons, so if it doesn't work out this year, go work full-time for a few years, make sure you still want to do education policy, and study hard before you take the GRE again. And then you'll be in a position to get multiple offers, better funding because of your experience, and really know that you're picking the best program for you. =)

Hello all! Glad to hear you're applying to Duke, and I wish you the best of luck with the process. I am a first-year MPP at Sanford, and have really enjoyed my time here so far. We have quite a few international students in the MPP program and also the MIDP program, so you're in good company. It'll be a while before you find out of course but as you're international, I would take advantage of the student admissions ambassadors at each of the different schools you're applying to and really ask them to share more about their experience and ask the questions you're interested in. I wasn't able to visit Duke beforehand either, and being directed toward current students, as well as toward professors who took their time to email and Skype with me as a prospective student was all enormously helpful and encouraging. Let me know if you have any questions in particular about Duke!!