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I've had this problem myself where one of my recommenders kept putting me off (even a month after the deadline had passed for my top choice school), and what I did was to call essentially my back-up professional recommender, someone I know and trust very much, to come in and pinch-hit this recommendation. Very fortunately, she was able to send something out in within two days. I would strongly urge you to find someone and do that right away if your initial recommender hasn't been in contact despite your email/calls. And if you haven't contacted them, call right away and let them know you need someone else. Finally, I'd contact SIPA (and any other schools) and plead your case because it's your recommender's fault, not yours. It may not be successful, but at least you've tried. Good luck!

Alyssa, I'm not sure what programs you're referring to at Duke. Both the Masters of International Development Policy and Masters of Public Policy program provide chances for students to work part-time during the school year, and have avid career services staff who have encouraged us and helped us to find internships during the school year. As a first-year student, I'm currently doing a paid internship at an organization in Raleigh and just also began a paid teaching assistantship for undergraduates. Just wanted to put that clarification out there, because it's an important point.

If the deadlines for CIPA and SAIS haven't passed yet, I would consider finishing those anyway and putting them out there. If you are worried about funding, a great financial aid package from a "safety" school or one that is not your top choice can really help you get the funding package you want at your dream school. I knew USC wasn't going to be my first choice, but I leveraged a full-ride from them for an extra $10K from Duke, which I'm now attending. I know WWS will give you great aid if you get in, but I've heard varying things about Fletcher and HKS, so if you want the best shot at being able to attend (once you get in), then I'd advise you to complete those apps.

Just to chime in, I don't think 3.0 is really all that low, and as people have mentioned, public policy schools will care about what kind of courses you got those grades in. Since it wasn't politics or micro or stats, you're definitely better off than the GPA suggests. By the time you apply, if you want to show that the low GPA isn't because you can't knock it out of the park on quantitative stuff, take a few extra accredited courses at a community college or online and get As on those. That's a great idea before you apply. Professional experience means a lot, lot more for public policy grad school. The kind of places you have begun to work at are ideal for someone who wants to do a graduate degree later on, so put in a few years at more of these types of organizations or agencies or deepen your relationship with one and work full-time for a while (and incidentally, maybe save up a bit for school). Learn more about the field that you're interested in and figure out if you really want to work there full time before you decide to apply to grad school.

Great question! Here's my two cents. I took it as a chance to showcase the fact that I was doing a lot of traveling last year, and talked directly to the camera about why I love to travel and how that applied to what I wanted to do with public policy. I also edited in some footage I took with my camera in Taiwan, and surprisingly, an hour's worth of work on iMovie looks pretty slick! I think any way you can talk about what you want to do policy-wise and showcase your strengths and diverse talents is going to make a great video. Another note: @StarkResilient89, this doesn't apply to you as much, but for other people who may be debating whether to do the video or not, I would strongly advise it. I know some people who didn't and still got in, but there's no reason not to do it, IMHO. Whenever colleges have an "optional" essay or video or complement to your application, it's the chance to go the extra mile and really show that you want to go to this place and that you'll be a good fit. Lastly, I searched on YouTube and found quite a few great examples for Duke. Enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=duke+sanford+school+application+video

Crisisdiplomacy, I second pretty much all of these suggestions. Two things that are really important to grad schools are full-time work experience and GRE scores. You need to get your scores into the 150s just to be competitive; take a look at the average scores for the accepted cohorts of the schools you're interested in. To be safe, you want to be around or above the average scores, and I can tell you they are not below 150 for these institutions. If you don't have work experience, you should have a really strong story and SOP. On another note, it's not about whether you can get in to grad school or not -- it's about what life and work experiences have brought you to this place and how much you can get out of your graduate degree. I highly suggest you take a few years to work full-time and make sure this is really what you want to do, by which time you'll also be much better at networking, understand your specific interests a lot better, and be in a generally better place to make the most out of grad school, if it's really still the thing you want to do. I am learning from some tremendous professors of the practice at Duke who have no graduate degree, shockingly enough. It doesn't always take a grad degree to do what you want to do. But when you figure it out and decide you do, then it's time to apply to grad school. Very few people know what they want to do right out of (or when they're in) undergrad, and I firmly believe 99% of people could improve that understanding with more full-time work. Put in at least two to three years, and come back to grad school if it's still really the thing for you.

I don't think you're being unrealistic with the schools you listed... especially if you do a really good job of selling your prior academic experience in econ and stats, work experience, and then your SOP. I didn't get into GSPP though my GRE scores were higher than yours, but I really think that was my lack of prior quantitative coursework. It's totally up to you, but I would really go for it!! If there's any chance to take your GRE again, I would also do that and study the @%^&* out of that quant. =)

I have to agree with Gov2School on this one. I know some schools use software/apps for their application process where the essay really does get cut off after a certain point. If my memory serves me right, that's what happens with short answer responses on the Common Application, when you are applying for undergrad. I used to work as a college counselor for high school students, and print out PDF proofs to read/ correct, so I remember seeing that. It does depend on whether you submit things as a document (PDF), in which case they probably usually get printed out as a picture, but especially when you enter wordss into text boxes, there is the possibility they will get cut off because it's being processed as pure text. That's why they tend to give you such stringent word count requirements, formatting requirements, etc. You never know, and so the best policy is really to just abide by the letter of their requirements.

I do think your stats look pretty well, though you're right, the GRE scores could be even better. I would look into Yale's programs, because a friend with a similar background just started at Yale. She is doing carbon markets, and just absolutely loves her program so far. I can't say anything about how you compare stats-wise, but it's probably worth considering if you want to work in energy policy.

@jenn_conn, I think you are at a great point in your education to look forward to some solid job experience. Simply put, that's the best thing you can do to prepare yourself for the future instead of trying to figure out what grad degree you should be getting. Work experience is the most reliable way to try out the career path that you are interested in, and if graduate school will help with that, you'll find out as time goes on. Work in the public sector/ government doesn't require a graduate degree, not like math or law or even business, so try that out first. Just leafing through some of the SOP threads or other threads will help you see that many people came to grad school later from a variety of different majors (including mathematics) because of the work experience that they had in different areas. It's great that you've had some exposure to transportation management and working in local government already. I think this is a good point to talk to friends who may have graduated already and worked in such areas. Make use of your network that you got this summer from your internship and talk to other people and what they did/ where they worked early on in their careers. Go to your career services office and ask if they have alumni who worked in local government or transportation and ask to be put in contact with them. I strongly suggest you get at least 1-2 years work experience in the areas that you're interested in before you apply for a graduate degree. Even more is better and will help inform your career direction as well as put you in a great situation for funding. Good luck!

First thought off the top of my head is to start those quantitative classes. Either statistics or microeconomics (or even better, both) this fall will be a good idea. Chances are, you'll have to complete them before you begin school anyway, and it will be a big plus for schools to see that you're in the process of doing those courses. I think the most influential factors on funding are work experience and GRE scores. You're fine in the second area, and I'm sure the first is quite applicable to why you want to do public policy and what you want to achieve in the future. Make sure to weave that into your SOP very thoroughly. I think you're likely to get better funding from private schools than public ones, but that's a very general assessment. I got generous packages from both of my private university choices. Finally, regarding LORs, make sure you have a good one from work. About professors from undergrad, don't sweat it. I've heard from quite a few that they regularly get requests from people they barely even remember in class, 5-6 years ago. As long as you had a good relationship with that professor during the class you took, and you believe he/she liked you, that's a good basis to request a letter. If you'd rather not chance it with multiple recs, just ask one, and get two professional recommendations -- maybe from someone you volunteer with as well as work with. It's not the best situation to be in, but you can't really do much about it at this point. Worry about the SOP and spinning a good story. Overall, I'd say you're in a decent spot. =)

The biggest issue with quitting a job (especially if you're young) is appearing flaky or unreliable to future employers. Seeing as how you're a returned Peace Corps volunteer, I think you've already proved that you can in fact work somewhere for more than a year, and the typical rules of thumb about your first year of work wouldn't apply to you. I encourage you to think hard about what you'd like to explore, and as long as you've got a few ideas to run with, as @jujubea recommended, what with internships, starting your own business or non-profit, or even just a lot of volunteering gigs, it's okay to leave this job without having a guaranteed place to step into. While it's not a good thing to see that someone left a job without putting in a full year, it's really not the end of the world. Besides, you got something out of this job experience, even if you disliked it -- it's important to know why you want to leave and be able to articulate it. As long as you can think of a few things you'd like to try in the next three to five months or so and financially wouldn't be too burdened, I'd say go for it!

@Guvut, I have to say that your credentials are overall really strong and really impressive. Your GPA is pretty good, and not so-so at all; when they look at your transcript, they'll be focused on how you did in those micro/macro, IR courses, so as long as it was good in those, you're absolutely fine. But even if your GPA didn't look great, they would look next to your GRE scores to make sure that you know your stuff, and your GRE scores are really good. If you're curious about more of the stats, I'd check out the cohort stats on different program websites in order to figure out where you are relative to them. With such a good profile, I'd advise you to do some hard thinking and soul searching to make sure you can knock your SOP out of the park. Definitely know your story, and know how to tell it. Good luck!

I think having a course in progress is fine. The program I'm taking (at Duke) is pretty quantitatively rigorous, but I never had econ on my transcript anywhere, and all they asked was that I take the class before I enrolled. So I did the microeconomics class at UCLA, and it was a pretty okay experience. You get what you pay for, and you get what you put into it -- it's nothing really rigorous, but if you take it really seriously and try hard, it'll be rewarding and helpful for when you start econ classes in grad school. I'm glad I learned about all the different economic concepts, but I hardly did any sort of actual calculations and drawing graphs.

To echo MJA87, Sanford is an excellent option. I am of course biased, as I am a month into the first-year MPP curriculum here, and I'm having a really great experience. Sanford is pretty quantitative heavy, but I feel our classes are not overly burdensome and mostly applicable to policy making in the long run. The policy analysis part is also pretty great so far. It also has the added benefit of being close to the Nicholas School of the Environment also at Duke, which will offer some great resources if that's where you'd like to do some research.

Just finished up my course at UCLA Extension in July. I got it by crowdsourcing it from friends on Facebook, and it worked out pretty well -- online exams, all open-book, so proctoring wasn't an issue. And it cost $595 per course, so pretty cheap as far as online courses go. It'll satisfy your university's requirements, but it's not the most rigorous crash course in econ, so just know what you're buying. =)

Another aspect of the MPP is that it is a highly variable degree; everyone has a different sort of focus and a different path that brought them to become interested in working in public policy. Plenty of schools accept (a small percentage of) students directly from undergraduate to go into the MPP degree if they have that compelling reason for pursuing it, as well as experiences during and before undergraduate that has helped to shape their desire to work in public policy. Since the MPP is more about learning concrete skills to work in policy, problem-solve, and perform analysis, all of those skills make more sense in context of other experiences that you've had. That experience usually comes in the form of full-time work, but not always. It's highly variable from person to person, and their experiences and how they utilize their grad degree. But don't worry about other people, since you already know you want to get more work experience. My two cents on this is absolutely not. It's not worth it. If you already know you don't want to attend next year, it's a waste of $400 or $500, time on your recommenders' behalf in order to write you recommendation letters. And you might not try as hard the next time around. There are so many other things you can do to gauge your chances of being accepted/ to a given degree or program, including but not limited to emailing and calling faculty professors, career services staff, visiting the school and sitting in on classes, comparing your GPA and GRE scores to the average in their accepted cohort, discussing career outcomes and credentials with alumni or current students of the program, and a good long talk with your mentors or other people whom you trust and are knowledgable about MPP programs. During that process, you will figure out more about whether you want a degree or program or not, and why it's important to you. This is the really important part, not whether they decide to accept you or not.

Quick word of advice: look very carefully at each school's website and read up on where their graduates go after graduation, or where they intern at, etc. etc. Many schools provide pie charts or statistics on what percent go into direct government work, non-profit work, academic work, int'l work, the private sector, etc. etc. (And if not, you can email and ask for it!) That is a reliable way to gauge if the program is a good fit for what you want to do after school, whatever it may be.

Hi David, some of your questions are probably best answered by people in the admissions departments of these institutions. They can tell you what they prepare people for careers in and what percentage of alumni are going into what fields. I also think there is unlikely to be financial aid for many of UChicago's M.A. degrees from what I've heard from friends who did graduate programs there. But that's second-hand news. You should ask them directly for figures on their financial packages, what percent receive financial aid, and what the average package looks like, just for a few suggestions. Same goes for the other schools in DC. Don't rule them out for yourself just because of the sticker price. The right program for you is the most important concern. If the program is a good fit for you, you have nothing to lose by applying. After you get your decisions, whether you're a domestic or international student, you can ask for more/ negotiate any offers you can get. Especially if you have had substantial amounts of full-time work experience, you could stand a good chance of receiving funding. Good luck.

Some quick thoughts -- you're in a very unique situation, and I'd say the competitiveness/likelihood of admission for dual-degree JD/MPP students just can't be deduced from general admission statistics. You'd be better off asking the admissions office about how many students get accepted from the law school, but I get the sense that it's a pretty small amount. As always, have a strong portfolio, and I'd say, yes, take the GRE if you feel like your quantitative courses weren't very thorough or impressive (if you got a B or below). Don't give them a reason to say no -- that's how I think of it. I do think you may not be as strong a candidate for funding as a result of the limited work experience, but there's not much you can do about that at this point. The real question is: can you provide a strong, compelling reason for why you need both degrees? Do you have a strong story? Do you know what you want to do when you leave in four years with those two degrees? You just made a case for your need/desire for a very particular kind of graduate school... why are you now thinking about doing an MPP too? They qualify you for working professionally in very distinctly different areas, and the resulting overlap is a fairly narrow band of occupations and jobs that really do require expertise from both degrees. If you want to work in law but for public policy organizations, it may be a good idea to supplement your law degree with as many classes about public policy as possible or to work/ intern/ volunteer for those sorts of organizations to acquire familiarity and experience with them. There's a lot you can do to open future career paths and broaden your interests without shelling out the extra time/money/effort just for another degree, so I think you owe it to yourself to investigate it thoroughly.

When it comes to mid-career MPA or MPPs, I think there is no one-size-fits-all kind of reasoning for you to go through with it; it will be highly circumstantial and depend on your unique circumstances, experience and where exactly you want to go. It sounds like you have some good reasons to consider it, so at this point, instead of soliciting general advice, you should directly reach out to those programs (HKS, WWS, Fletcher) that you're interested in and ask about their mid-career students and what trajectories they've taken. Check with alums of said programs to see if it was worth their investment; GradCafé is great for getting a sense of the diversity of experiences that are out there, but I would take what people say about other programs with a grain of salt if they haven't gone there themselves. Also, good old-fashioned networking, as in talking with people in positions/industries that you want to work in, and hearing about their stories can help you decide whether the degree is worth it. Good luck!

@StarkResilient -- just a note, the time restraint isn't limited to when you apply. If you take a credit-bearing transcript-granting course in microecon, say, in the fall semester or even the winter, you can mention it on your transcript and it'll still count for your prerequisites. I was accepted even without having taken it, but they just wanted me to do it before I enrolled and send them a transcript by August 1. If you don't have time this summer, I imagine you can do it as late as next summer, but it all depends on your schedule. Not all institutions have the same policy as Gov2School noted but as long as you take it and get a transcript before you start your program, that's the important part.

Your profile sounds pretty great, I think. To address what you feel are some of your weak points -- your work experience doesn't seem so subpar to me. The internships and the paralegal job make a great story to tell in your SOP, and it sounds directly relevant to why you want to go to grad school for environmental policy. I think many people who apply to policy school in fact lack direct work in policy, and this degree is how they're getting their foot into that door, so don't worry that you haven't done what you're trying to do: if you were already working for the EPA, why would you even need a policy degree? The part where you said you were let go from your Fed job - if it was for budgetary or bureaucratic reasons, I think there would be no harm in mentioning it, but maybe someone else with experience in describing these kinds of things in cover letters should chime in, because you're following very similar rules in writing your grad school app. As for your recommendation letters, since the fall is the time to apply, you still have some time now to reach out to some of your favorite professors, maybe the person who advised your undergraduate thesis, etc. etc. and strike up a quick conversation just to let them know you're exploring the possibility of having them write you a letter. My professors have told me that it's been done before by people six or seven years out who barely interacted with them in undergrad, so there re much more awkward stories. Don't feel bad about it, since you're only three years out. A good academic reference will really go a long way. Just make sure subtly that they'll be able to give "a positive reference". Something I noticed is that you took both Intro to Microeconomics and are doing Statistics via Coursera. I'm not familiar with that particular brand of MMOC, but if they don't grant transcripts, some schools will not count it as a credit-bearing college level course. For example, I'm heading to Duke this fall, and did Intro to Microeconomics at UCLA Extension, which is pretty cheap ($595) and completely online, all exams and everything. It wasn't hard at all. But it is credit bearing and I can send them my A- to prove I took it. A MMOC equivalent like OpenCourseWare at MIT wouldn't have worked. Either check ahead of time or hedge your bets by signing up for some cheap community college courses or UCLA Extension if you need good online classes before you apply to school. It's certainly something I wish I would have done. Finally, your work experience (3+ years) puts you in a really good place as far as aid goes, I believe. Work experience seems to be an overriding factor in giving aid, from all the stories I've read on here, and from my personal experience (got half aid and full aid at the two schools I was accepted at). Your GRE scores sound pretty good, and if you write a great SOP and have great recs, I think you'll have an excellent shot at getting in and getting aid. Most schools list the range of GRE scores of their accepted cohorts, so check on that for some schools. Also read the "Final Decisions" threads here on the forum to hear about how people with varying stats/qualifications did in terms of programs and aid throughout the year. It is super helpful to hear about the diversity of experiences and aims that grad schools are looking for. One last note - consider Yale's environmental policy school, as I had a friend who just got accepted and are attending their program in environmental policy. It was her number one choice, and she's really loving it already, because she got a summer RA position over there. Best of luck!

I definitely echo hj2012. JET is going to be great preparation for a number of programs. I'd say with this sort of experience, you're well on your way towards an international career of some kind. Especially on the graduate level, it doesn't matter so much what undergrad degree you received. The point is really to take your job experiences and make sure it's something you're interested in. Working for international education organizations can be a way of getting into foreign policy, after all, but it depends on your particular interest in IR and foreign policy. Once you kind of have a good idea of what you want to do after graduate school, you can start working toward it now. If you're interested in international public health, then maybe education wouldn't be as relevant. If you're interested in developmental economics, maybe that's where you should look further. I know being a teacher can really suck up all your time, but if you're in the middle of your time at JET, it could easily be a great chance to start up a blog or your own side projects or maybe try volunteering for an organization in Japan that is policy-based. I don't know about the possibilities on the ground, but I'm sure that if you clarify the direction further, you can find something to expand your experience and knowledge. Good luck!

While it's clear that this is an option, I think it's probably not a great idea. Applying to schools should be taken rather seriously, and taking the GREs or asking for recommendation letters, etc. is something that you really only want to go through once. I frankly think it's a waste of time and money if you already know that getting work experience first is going to help and get you better funding. More importantly, you can get all the feedback you can get back from admissions committees through their decisions by doing the work of researching these programs, talking to professors/staff at programs you are interested in, current graduate students, alumni, and generally tapping your network for information and advice. In high school or even college, there's some sort of distinction to being young and precocious. You can skip grades, or put in your time and just get out; it's not as important because it's more or less for a piece of paper so you will be hireable (high school more so than college, obviously). I used to think that grad school was just another step up on the ladder, but graduate school is very much optional. You do it for yourself, not other people. You get more out of it if you bring a lot to it, and full-time work in the real world changes you a lot. Just because you can get in and out before the age of 23 doesn't mean it helps you. Especially when you're going for a professional degree, I do not think it will be an advantage to be the youngest person in the room.