ExponentialDecay

I disagree that there is no pipeline from consulting to MDB work - there are tons of examples in my network - but I agree that there's no case for dual degree if your goal is MBB. I also wouldn't get attached to the idea that you're going to move into international government work after MBB. It's a big step down in salary and prestige to basically do the same shit.

I can sympathize with not wanting to spend years learning applications you're not interested in. That was me in every single calculus course. That said, when you're trying to enter a mathematical field (assuming you mean legit data science, with blackjack and hookers matlab and models, not the light rearranging of datasets in stata or excel) and you don't have a mathematical background, that's a major handicap. People who do actual math - in the policy space, in the business space, wherever - tend to be suspicious (in my experience) of candidates coming out of so-called quantitative policy programs unless those candidates demonstrate a mathematical background in some other way (undergrad, work experience). Specifically, because policy programs don't give a strong theoretical component. Like, an econometrics course at a policy program that goes into any significant detail on matrices is a rare thing. If you're doing anything more advanced than plugging stuff into stata, being able to understand the theory behind what you're doing is important (and even then - I've seen people make gross errors with plugging stuff into stata that showed they fundamentally misunderstood the function they were trying to replicate). Fairly or unfairly, someone who comes from a policy program faces a question that someone from an applied math program wouldn't necessarily get. tl;dr program selection isn't just about what classes you can take, who the profs are, what the placement is, how much aid you're getting and the rest of that wonderfully complex bouquet of factors - it's ultimately about how that program will brand you. And what kind of branding you can benefit from depends on where you want to go, but also on where you're starting from. Policy school is a natural choice for people who want to go into policy (it's in the name, after all!), but in terms of what that brand would do for a specific candidate's background, I feel like a lot of people, especially humanities majors hoping to make the jump to something more quantitative, would be better served by a specialized masters in something like finance, econ, applied math (you can take the prereqs non-degree) or even an MBA (they just have more credibility, even in policy).

The question I have is, why did you think that a policy program would prepare you to be a data scientist?

Are you applying for the F1 from within the US (ie you are changing status within the US from one nonimmigrant status to the F1 student status) or from your home country (ie you will be leaving the US and receiving the visa from your home country's US consulate)? If the latter, the address should be your permanent residential address in your home country (as the DS-160 requests, if I remember correctly). If the former, that's a different process so idk but you could probably look it up on the USCIS website.

Why, to entice you to attend, of course! As @WildeThing mentioned, USD 1500 against a total tuition bill of over 60k is nothing. Given my experience with cash cow masters in the US, I would take a "scholarship" under 10k as an insult tbh. Price formation in US education is demand rather than cost driven, so these tuition numbers are a pie-in-the-sky figure that schools use to price-discriminate applicants; a program can give you anything up to free tuition and a stipend, if they want to. It all depends on how interested they are in you as a candidate. I don't think this is a useful axis of analysis. All taught programs are a way for the university to make money, which they need to survive/afford stipends for their PhD students. Universities do not offer taught programs as a form of charity. What matters is whether paying for this degree is a good way to get what you want. If it's to get a non-academic job, it probably isn't. If you want to use the degree to move into a PhD, that's something people have done from the MAPH - if you also must go into six figure debt for the privilege, imo that's a much less defensible proposition. But the point is, you don't need a definitive answer in this cash cow-not a cash cow referendum to make good choices for yourself.

If those are the types of skills you mean, I am not sure why you advocate for some involved selection process - you can learn these skills at any job.

Not really: 1. Trying to predict what will happen 5-10 years from now is a fool's errand. You can make an educated guess, but the degree of field-specific perspective you would need to do that is not typically available to the average entry-level applicant. Also, in 5-10 years, any technical skills you have will be out of date anyway. 2. The vast majority of jobs don't require any special skills, or require such that are easy to pick up in a couple months. 3. Just in my personal experience, the bigger benefit of having work experience as an applicant with a PhD is that it gives employers the confidence that you can work in an office. Hiring is a risk-mitigation activity, as in employers are not so much interested in hiring the objectively best-skilled person as they are interested in hiring the person that minimizes their risk of a problem employee or having to repeat the search, and that's why stuff like employers fretting about PhDs being overqualified comes in. Something in the same vein that gets discussed less is the inherent contradiction in hiring someone with a terminal degree, who is likely highly technically skilled (even if those skills are transferable), but having no empirical evidence that the person can navigate an office environment - something that most people learn as interns or entry-level employees. It feels silly to hire this person on to do entry-level tasks, but at the same time, when you have no confidence that they can do basic but critical things like appropriately interact with their boss, appropriately interact with the client, etc, you can't hire them on to higher-level roles where the cost to the company of them messing up is much higher. So that's really why it is important for PhD applicants to invest time in getting "real-world" work experience - to demonstrate that they have the basics down.

They're rich and can afford to.

Funding for professional master's programs is rare, funding that covers living expenses is rarer, and funding that will be enough to support a wife and 3 children is infeasible. Maybe if your country has a program that sends students to America, you can see if they'd give you that volume of funding, but it's not something you can expect from a university. If you need a visa, keep in mind that an F2 spouse would not be eligible to work and, while a J2 spouse can work, right now it takes about 6 months to get a work permit and since you'll be in the country for two semesters, your spouse will probably have barely any time to use it. So it's going to be a completely wasted year career-wise for her.

The career pivots you are considering are all pretty disparate and it is not clear to me how a policy master's would help you with them. For example, economic consulting is actually highly quantitative, so going from a policy degree to economic consulting is a difficult leap; if you are interested in economic consulting, you should get a quant degree with a focus on applied math and econ. On the other hand, a policy degree would set you up well for political risk consulting. But, because you're considering political and economic consulting in the same phrase, it feels like you think they're interchangeable and therefore makes me think that you haven't actually researched either. Your "in-house at a financial services firm or tech company" idea is too vague to be useful, but I can tell you that policy/strategy in financial services are all mid-late career roles that hire people with extant careers in Washington, not recent grads from master's programs. In terms of accepting the SAIS offer, it does seem like you applied on a whim and didn't really consider what you're doing deeply, which doesn't set you up for success. 20k is low; with your profile, if you were able to articulate a realistic career path/appear like you know what you're doing, I think you could get much more. I don't think the student body at any of the prestigious policy schools differs in any measurable way, with the exception of programs that have a more serious quant prereq, like Harvard MPA-ID, but if your desired career is NYC-based, it makes more sense to go to SIPA. I would also consider getting an MBA alongside/instead of. But, before you do any of that, I'd get a concrete understanding of why specifically you don't like your current job. Keep in mind that most policy grads end up doing some form of consulting, and all types of consulting are 90% the same shit across the board. A lot of grads also end up going back to their old careers, because this is a hard degree to find a job with, especially one that is "prestigious" and pays well. There are many ways to move on from a toxic job, and a policy degree is one of the less obvious ones imo.

You are OP. Then you have to pay for health insurance.

The school has to offer health insurance to international students because health coverage is a requirement on the F1 visa, but most likely OP will have to pay for it. That's about 2k. I have never heard of a school paying for relocation.

I have no experience with the Huntington Library, but I research a topic for fun (as in, all of my credentials are in a completely different, non-humanistic area), and I've gotten access to the couple of archives I need (albeit in Europe) simply by following their access procedures and talking about what I need the access for. I find that archivists need to know who you are and that you'll be respectful with the documents, but they're not gatekeeping for the sake of gatekeeping. Have you tried actually applying for access before you posted this rant about how you feel rejected?

No policy degree is worth more than like 20k out of pocket (I personally wouldn't even pay that). Take the full ride.