jz19

Jennifer Lawrence--a beautiful, young, Hollywood a-lister taking bragging about she loves being "fat" and "lazy", and the popular media applauding her for her "bravery".  Sorry, does not compute.  

Jennifer Lawrence--a beautiful, young, Hollywood a-lister taking bragging about she loves being "fat" and "lazy", and the popular media applauding her for her "bravery".  Sorry, does not compute.  

It's fine there, there's a few people in my cohort who live at 61st and Woodlawn.  Just make sure it's a good building with security front doors.  There's a lot of university police patrolling that area, plenty of emergency phones around there and it's a well-lit and safe feeling walk from campus to 61st and Woodlawn, but like anywhere in Hyde Park you just have to stay alert and preferably move in groups if it's late at night.  
 
The issues with living around there are that it's far to get groceries or to anything vaguely fun in Hyde Park other then the campus pub, and if you're getting public transport to go downtown it's a trek to get to the bus or metra stop.  There's plenty of night shuttles run by the university to take you around though and during the day there's two free bus lines for UChicago students which leave from outside Harris.  The sidewalk snow shoveling is also not great south of Harris but the only reason you'd go south by foot is to get to a cafe on 63rd.  
 
 

I've had good experiences with MAC and TLC management.  I would avoid privately owned buildings/apartments.  http://chicago-building-permits.findthedata.org is an easy way to find out who manages the building you're interested in.  Good luck!

Jennifer Lawrence--a beautiful, young, Hollywood a-lister taking bragging about she loves being "fat" and "lazy", and the popular media applauding her for her "bravery".  Sorry, does not compute.  

Jennifer Lawrence--a beautiful, young, Hollywood a-lister taking bragging about she loves being "fat" and "lazy", and the popular media applauding her for her "bravery".  Sorry, does not compute.  

I agree. That's why I was wondering. Usually I don't send thank you emails if they just give me a straightforward answer, but since this person came off as very kind and conversational (saying things like, "I'll shoot them an email for you") it made me think an extra email in their inbox wouldn't bother them. But I agree that despite a thank you email being a nice gesture, it is more work. This person probably gets 100 new emails a day. It sucks seeing your inbox that full. But they did respond very quickly and thoroughly (within 7 minutes), so I figured they weren't overwhelmed with emails at the time. 

Jennifer Lawrence--a beautiful, young, Hollywood a-lister taking bragging about she loves being "fat" and "lazy", and the popular media applauding her for her "bravery".  Sorry, does not compute.  

Jennifer Lawrence--a beautiful, young, Hollywood a-lister taking bragging about she loves being "fat" and "lazy", and the popular media applauding her for her "bravery".  Sorry, does not compute.  

Jennifer Lawrence--a beautiful, young, Hollywood a-lister taking bragging about she loves being "fat" and "lazy", and the popular media applauding her for her "bravery".  Sorry, does not compute.  

Jennifer Lawrence--a beautiful, young, Hollywood a-lister taking bragging about she loves being "fat" and "lazy", and the popular media applauding her for her "bravery".  Sorry, does not compute.  

Jennifer Lawrence--a beautiful, young, Hollywood a-lister taking bragging about she loves being "fat" and "lazy", and the popular media applauding her for her "bravery".  Sorry, does not compute.  

As a current MPA student, I'd say that it's a fair assessment to say the Price programs aren't designed to be immersive in the field of social justice studies. By and large, I would say we're more focused on questions of good governance. I think in terms of the faculty there is a clear bent toward political scientists, sociologists, and economists with a generally shared obsession with modeling and statistics; the MPP program is more heavy than the MPA program in this regard. As a "lefty" myself, I'm often more critical of these fields and the judgments they yield than many of my classmates (my undergrad major was History). 
 
That said, I think there is enormous opportunity at USC and Los Angeles in general to not just study social justice but put it into practice; doing, much less achieving social change/improvement can be very difficult. A big part of the university culture (besides football) is community service. USC does a lot of community programming at both the University Park and Health Sciences campuses. A number of schools (not Price) have their own outreach programs, there's also the USC Volunteer Center, and programs like the Joint Educational Project - https://dornsife.usc.edu/joint-educational-project/ 
 
I think if you throw a term like "non-profit industrial complex" at most people working in non-profits they're going to be confused, and our staff (such as admissions, career services, and student services are not trained to be intellectuals); that said I think most professors would grasp that without much explanation. 
 
If you're looking for rallies and protests, this is probably not the place (and that's perfectly okay). However, if you're looking to work in the trenches there's a lot of opportunity, I mean look at where USC is in geographic terms. USC Price students aren't tone deaf to these issues, but they are also not outwardly vocal by and large unless it's on topic; many of us do work in such fields and deeply care about the issues, but it's not always the central topic of discussion in class and outside of class. 
 
I think the best way to assess whether you can make the program work for you is to start looking at the degree requirements, who teaches what on the course schedule, and then start thinking about how you could incorporate internships/employment into capitalizing on what you're learning in class. http://classes.usc.edu/term-20143/ (both PPD and PPDE (E is for expanded). I'd also note  the faculty page doesn't show the number of excellent adjuncts we have so the class schedules are more useful in that regard. 
 
I would agree that USC Price is not particularly internationally focused outside of China/Korea and Mexico/Brazil. 
 
As an MPA, I actually just now looked again at the MPP requirements and they're definitely a lot more restrictive (not too late to switch before you have to take multivariate statistics). However, you can petition to have a course counted so long as there's a good reason. The MPP program is really designed to train you to do formal policy analysis for a government, private consulting, non-profits and organizations. The MPA program is more designed to train you to be the person "doing" public policy and making decisions based on the policy analysis produced by the MPP (warning, it becomes substantially harder to switch after you start).
 
Hope this was helpful and fair.  

Or you could uh... you know, try to lose weight? I don't know your situation at all and don't mean to be judgmental... but if you have to rest after every 20-30 paces you are definitely not getting the exercise you need and should be more concerned about becoming healthier than finding a campus that have seats with no armrests.
 
Edit: oh and to answer your original question...stay away from Colorado I guess. Lots of active health nuts here.

You can do a research subject supervised by a professor so I think it really just depends on your area of interest and their area of interest.  You don't get any electives until third quarter of first year so I don't know too much about it yet.  There are also people who write for various publications on their area of interest, like one of my classmates here who wrote about urban policy for The Atlantic.  
 

I contacted them yesterday and got a notice for an award today.  Considering that they estimate cost of attendance as 67k/year, it hardly makes a dent but is just enough to make me feel sick to my stomach every time I even think about turning the offer down.  
 
Ahhh!!! UChicago I love/hate you so much.

Congrats everyone who got an offer!  Wishing you all the best with what will no doubt be a month of difficult decision making about where to spend the next two years of your life and for those who end up coming to Harris, I look forward to meeting you soon!
 
 
 
Very few Harris MPP students get into the PhD program as I believe there are only accept very few PhD candidates each year (check the website, but I think this year was maybe 3 and you have to have a ton of prior econ/stats/game theory knowledge).  Some go on to do PhDs at other universities after the MPP - I know of someone from the class of 2013 who is now at Northwestern doing a PhD.  
 
Good luck everyone with the decision making! 

Seriously. I was ok with turning it down with no money but even a little bit makes that decision SO MUCH harder. 
 
I also got a scholarship offer today after emailing them yesterday. My account was updated with the new amount within 20 minutes of receiving an email from admissions placing me on the aid reconsideration list, so not sure if the decision was made before or after that. 

At first glance, I read "suspense" as "nonsense."  Really glad we don't have to deal with the Harris admissions nonsense anymore.  
 
About going to Harris without any funding--I'm struggling with the same problem.  I ultimately want to get a PhD and go into research/academia, and I don't know if it makes any sense to get into a ton of debt this early in the game.  I asked a friend who's on a PhD admissions committee at Stanford and he replied with the following:
 
"It seems like schools often choose candidates they know and like, so if you would like to pursue a phd at Harris, it makes sense to go there now and try and impress them by working hard for two years; in contrast, if you think you would want to pursue a phd at USC - it makes sense to be there for the MPP.  For me personally I would get a masters from the program who would let me do more high-quality research from the get go, because that would keep me engaged and potentially produce publishable work. I would not go to a place where there is little mentorship in terms of research because people are too busy, travel a lot, or are too busy with consulting outside of academia."
 
Apologies to hbhagz if this doesn't apply to you, but I figured I'd post it in case it helps anyone else!

Uhu!! Admitted with full tuituion + 19k scholarship! 

Just saw Culver City today... Love it, so cute! And pleasant! And I met friendly strangers!!
How is LA so damn friendly?!

I'm 25, and I think I didn't grow up until I was 23 in terms of adult activities.  At 23 I was on my own, paying 100% of my own bills with no parent bailouts ... which is something when you have a genetic disease that hospitalizes you frequently and really racks up the medical bills.  But once I started paying my own bills, having to make my own budgets (and follow them!), care about my credit score, buy a car and auto insurance, etc., I started to feel like I was an actual adult.  To an extent I'm still reliant on my parents for emotional support because I call them quite often, but that's mostly because we have been through a lot together and I see them as friends and allies in many ways.  While for some people calling their parents daily = immature, for me it's not an object.
 
In terms of emotional maturity, I think I grew up when I was 20 and had a really bad exacerbation of my genetic condition.  I had to take years off of school after that and went through a lot of very difficult hospitalizations and 20 was about the point when I think I started to solidify my personality and become the kind of person I considered mature.  This was not entirely due to the hospitalizations, tbf.  But I think I started to piece things together more.  I started not letting myself get away with flimsy excuses for my behavior; I took responsibility for myself and held myself accountable.
 
tl;dr, I think self-responsibility is what makes someone mature.  And there are two kinds of responsibility: the pragmatic kind (paying bills, etc.) and the emotional/psychological kind.  They happen at different points for everyone.  Believe me, I know plenty of people who are responsible with their bills, but I would never trust them with my heart.  And just as many people who I trust to be honest and sincere and so on, but I'd never ask them to so much as water my plants for me.
 
(edited to preserve anonymity; said genetic disease is rare enough to excuse me not specifying it)

French fries are my crack.

Just wanted to put in a good word for french fries--super easy to make and shockingly underrepresented in this thread.  

Take as many practice tests as you can.  The hardest part of the test for me was maintaining focus for 4 hours, so once a week i took an entire practice test with timed breaks to get myself used to the format.