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@gemy, @Curious_Grad Wow, it's really that bad? When I was living in DC, I couldn't find any shared room in an apartment/row house that had bus/metro connection within DC that cost less than 900 a month... It's truly hard to believe there's something that could top that.... Christ And DC wasn't cheap in food and transportation cost either... high sales tax and no monthly metro pass and such....

Is it really that expensive in major European cities like London and Geneva? I hear that a lot, but I'm never sure what that assessment is in relation to. I lived in DC, NY, LA and Santa Barbara CA, and found them all to be very expensive compared to, say, the American Midwest. I think unless you do a program in a rural/suburban campus in the US, the cost of living shouldn't differ drastically between US vs Europe, as NY and DC cost of living is truly extortionate already. Add the fact that the tuition in Europe is significantly lower (even in expensive UK universities), in terms of money, Europe seems like a good option for me.

Nope. Not yet. I didn't even think about that part yet... I'm still very stunned that I actually got into one of my top choices... incredible But I'll post any further information I receive from IHEID on this thread for everyone's reference.

God, I really wish they would just tell me....... I hope that's not the case... Idk why I received my decision so fast. I didn't submitted my application that early (couple days before deadline), and my last name wouldn't have gotten priority alphabetically. Hopefully they randomly selected which emails to send out first... good luck!

@alchyna Thanks for the info! The suspense of waiting for the decision is killing me.... D: Should've applied earlier to avoid the Jan/Feb application season. But at least these European schools give a decision fairly quickly... I submitted my application for NYU at the end of Nov last year, and they still haven't notified me haha.

For those LSE and UCL applicants: How long did you wait for the decision after your application became complete? I received an email from LSE on 01/29 "Further Documentation Received", so does that mean my application only became "complete" on that date, and decision will take max. of 8 weeks from that date? For UCL, that date was 01/20, and the Portico says 6 weeks from the date the application becomes complete (so the decision should have come already or must come in the next few days...) Did anyone receive a decision before the est. time? And was the decision posted on LSE for You/Portico, or did you guys get an email?

Congrats! I got an identical email! In my case, my status on the admission module was changed BEFORE I received an email from the admissions office. And I was actually worried b/c only an official email from the office is binding, so I was nervous that the change on the module was a mistake D: But this was first good news from this admissions cycle, and I'm def psyched! Also for those still waiting, for reference, the email I received looked like this:

Thanks! And wow, there's a lot of ppl over at that thread. I'll def join u guys for future discussion. Gradcafe def needs a seperate IR forum... Thanks! And I'm not sure which round my application was in. I just applied before 01/15. And no scholarship info yet Also, this morning I got this email:

@CarefreeWritingsontheWall I got an email couple days ago saying the decisions will be emailed by the 15th. The email also said the applicants don't need to check the follow-up website for the decision, but I guess they used that website anyway to send out decisions. I hope you get good news soon!

Has anyone else heard from IHEID yet? I checked the application follow-up today, and I got the following message! (I'm a MDev applicant) Congratulations! You have been admitted to the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva). Please provide your decision below before 15 April 2014. If you have already indicated your decision, please simply click on 'Next page'. But also I got this message: Condition: - Other condition set by the Admissions Committee I'm wondering if this is conditional offer in the traditional sense (pre-term summer session, econ classes, etc.) Or does it mean taking the prereq French language courses before enrollment? Hopefully this actually means I'm admitted, and congrats to all others!

I definitely spent WAY TOO MUCH In application fees ALONE, I probably spent something like 600 USD. Another 150 or so USD on GRE, and 50 USD on transcripts. One school I applied to send TWO COPIES of my official transcripts. TWO F**KING COPIES. I don't know why they think they're so special, when all of the other schools (except one, which had a specific reason for requesting my transcript) I've applied to were fine with a scanned pdf file for the purpose of an application... (sigh)

I applied to DUSP as well. That's def my dream school Thought about applying to GSD, but heard some negative stuff about it, plus it looked like a lot of its IDEV courses were just cross register courses from DUSP and HKS. I also didn't really feel like going through multiple semesters of studio classes.... (Though I would really love to study with Prof. Diane Davis. but I could prob do that if I get into DUSP and cross register....) But in any cases, all the high rank UP programs in the Boston area all have good academic coordination among each other, so getting into any one of them would be really good. And like you say, you could def take some in depth courses on very specific, UP-related, urban economics, water/energy issues, etc. BTW: by "I will be attending one of these programs in the fall," do you mean that you already got an offer from those schools, or are you a second year student? Edit: I just noticed that the OP started this post last march, haha

Thanks for the infor! I'll look into those options!

It's mostly b/c all most of all of them (in CA) have math or basic econ prereqs for even the intro macro/micro courses. And I really hate to go through the process of waiting couple weeks to get a math assessment test appointment, go thru bs paperwork, wait for the results, and then be late for registration (this has happened before....). It's really fu**ing annoying that a good score in SAT and GRE + A in my undergrad stat class counts for nothing and that they ask you to either go thru the bureaucracy or take high school algebra before taking intro econ. Still, would you mind if I ask you where you took your out of state econ course?

I was wondering how people are satisfying/planning to satisfy the quant req for many of the IR schools. Originally I planned on taking courses at a CC or online CC courses, but many of them fill up really fast and a lot of them had annoying prerequisites or require you to take an assessment test. I'm not really down to go thru all the CC bureaucracy, pass all the prereqs and find out that classes are already filled up. So I was wondering if people knew any good, cheap, and acceptable/transferable alternatives to CC econ classes. I heard Straighterline is an option for Stanford applicants, but I'm not courses from which institutions will be accepted by IR schools (such as Columbia, SAIS, GWU, etc), and I don't really want to bother the admissions offices before I get an acceptance letter (if I get any that is ) Can current students, alumni, or prospective students shed a light on this issue?

I uploaded everything with PDF, and it seemed fine. I think you're good

The things I personally would do: (1) Get your intro macro/micro econ + stats + some calculus down (even better if you can get to more advanced econ/ make sure the courses you take are accepted by schools you're applying. I heard straighterline.com econ courses were accepted by some schools, double check tho) (2) Take language classes, preferably in a language from a region in which you're likely to be working in/relevant to your field of study (i.e. interested in East Asian security issues? learn Chinese, Japanese, etc / Like Middle Eastern issues? Learn Arabic/Turkish etc Or, a rare and underrepresneted language) (3) Try to take classes for credit at a graduate level, or go for a short certificate (but idk how useful an online certificate will be, esp in more qualitative subject like IR) (4) Think about who's gonna be writing your letter of rec, esp if it's gonna be one of your current/recent past employers Make sure they may be willing or even talk to them about it (5) Look for scholarships, grants, fellowship and etc. Some ppl I've seen had private scholarship/grants ready to go even before they got into any schools (something like the Rangel fellowship, I'm thinking. Or even just straight money scholarships) (6) Attend grad school info sessions, talk to someone in their admissions office. Admissions offices are usually welcoming prospective students, and you can talk to them about detailed reqs for admissions, content/nature of their MA programs, etc. (Plus, some schools ask if you had made any efforts to know more about school, like attending info sessions. That reflects positively on your application (but not immensely, still an advantage)) (7) Since you're in DC, try to attend many relevant conferences, presentations, and think tank/FP events (idk if you already know about dc.linktank.com) Try to just talk to ppl, even if that doesn't lead to anything substantial. Attend events w ppl from work, you know, and they may know someone there and you can build connection (albeit tenuous) You prob don't need to go overboard with these events, but personally I see this as a nice perk of working in DC, so I def enjoyed it. (8) Think about your SOP early on, if you haven't done so already. Make sure your GRE score is at least the average score, and see if you could improve it. And get info about your schools early on and eliminate/add schools you really don't think you want to attend if you get in. (But I'm sure you've already done these things) (9) Enjoy DC (and try not to freeze to death) That's all the advice I would have given to myself a year ago..... I'm a Fall 2014 applicant so i dont have first hand knowledge of all the details of grad school admissions/grad school life, but I'm basing these off what I've heard, read, and what ppl told me about when I was doing an internship in DC and talking to think tank folks and SAIS/Georgetwon folks. I hope it helps, and sorry if you already knew most of it!

Teachers College seems to have an international/comparative education development MAs, so I can definitely see that as being an option for you. (http://www.tc.columbia.edu/its/cie%26ied/index.asp?Id=Prospective+Student+Information&Info=Degrees+Offered) I don't know specifically about education policy, but if you want to focus on more global aspect of EP, SIPA might be a good choice, as you can def benefit from the SIPA brand name. Teachers College prob has more expertise, connection, and courses in EP specifically tho. But when considering brand name and etc, you need to think about what field you want to be in, and what kind of schools/degrees your predecessors in those fields have pursued. If you want to work in think tanks, NGOs, and etc, a intl. policy MA def has the advantage. However, If the orgs and companies that you wanna work for has people with degrees and connections from education MAs, you should pursue that track (you should look into the specifics of each orgs and fields, as I really am clueless about EP ) In my own case, I'm interested in international urban development, and not that many intl. policy schools offer a specific concentration in that area, except for a handful of schools. So I'm applying to a lot of urban planning schools with international development concentration, so the my pool of dream schools is about 50% policy schools and 50% urban planning schools. I would think you could apply to EP schools with international concentrations and mix in some intl. policy schools with social policy concentration and opportunity to cross register for classes in the EP department in the same university.

hedong, Thanks so much for the feedback!! Most of my family on my mom's side is from Jejudo, so I've been in an out of the island countless number of time. But I didn't grow up there unfortunately

Programs: LSE MSc Urbanisation and Development, UCL Bartlett Development Planning Unit, IHEID Development Studies, Columbia SIPA, NYU Wagner International Development Planning, New School Milano MIA, Harvard GSD International Planning, Columbia GSAPP International Development, MIT Urban Planning International Development Group, UC Berkeley MUP. Undergraduate institution: University of California, Santa Barbara (Top 40 US undergrad) Undergraduate Degree: BA, History BA, Sociology Undergraduate GPA: 3.61 (Honors) 3.8-3.9 (Major GPA) Study Abroad experience: Semester in S.Korea GRE: Verbal: 166; Quant: 159 (AW 4.0) Years Out of Undergrad: 0.5 years Years of Work Experience: 2 yearsPart-time, 0.5 years Full-time Describe Relevant Work Experience: - Research internship at a fairly well-known DC think tank, working for one of the top people there - Staff writer of a small, local daily newspaper covering city politics and etc. Languages: English: Native/Bilingual Korean: Native/Bilingual Portuguese: High Intermediate French: Basic (some coursework) Spanish: Basic (some coursework) Quantitative: Intro Stats, Intro to IPE (+ plan to take intro econ soon) SOP: Probably nothing special compared to others'. No unusual story to tell, really. Just a standard letter of my strengths/weaknesses, WE, fit to the program, etc. LOR: 2 Professors (Sociology / Development Studies), 1 Former Employer (Expect all three letters to be very strong. The first two know me rather well personally and academically. And the third I feel would still write me a relatively good letter, considering he/she asked me a lot of details in prep for the LOR and b/c we had a pretty good rapport going) Questions: - No long, full-time WE, no quant, fresh out of undergrad: Would I really have chance at any of the top IDEV, UP programs? -I know most of you are not applying to UP related programs, but some of the programs I'm applying to are policy schools, so I hope I could get some advice on those. Thanks!!

I'm applying to the LSE's MSc Urbanisation and Development According to the programme regulation: "Full-year programme. Students must take courses to the value of four full units" Does that merely mean that I must take four full units + dissertation to graduate OR does it mean I can ONLY TAKE UP TO 4 UNITS? I know that MSc degrees are really short, but 4 full units--excluding compulsory modules--come out to be about 3 elective courses.........which seems extremely limiting........

I second the first reply. I got a 4.0AW but I won't take GRE again. I've heard from numerous people that AW doesn't count for much, esp b/c it's still in its tweaking phase. If you're SOP is stellar, I think you should be fine. (I'm banking on my writing samples and LOR from my profs as well tho)