ExponentialDecay

This is all very confusing. Unless you want to work in education, I don't understand why you'd go to HGSE. I doubt HGSE is the cornerstone of Anne Sweeney's success - after all, a lot of grads can't get jobs in the field and must look elsewhere, and sometimes they get lucky. If you want to work in education (or policy), I don't understand what that has to do with Hollywood. If you want to be an exec in an entertainment company, get an MBA.

I'm not attacking you personally. I'm pointing out that you tend to make brash statements about inconsequential things and not back up what you say with any evidence, which is about as personal as saying that your methodology sucks and that's why your numbers don't make sense. I mean, you're the one who came in here and were like, Princeton is MUCH better than Harvard, with no justification whatsoever. You seem to be implying that people should trust you because you're you. So, for a change, how about you make a point? Not that I'd like you to further beat this spherical horse in a vacuum, because to me this seems like a completely pointless, baseless argument that you must be making because you're bored or something. They're both good schools that place people with good employers. I don't understand why you need to get in here with an investigation of differences that don't matter even if they do exist.

@went_away you really love inventing pointless arguments out of nothing and getting really worked up about it, I see.

Most English programs allow you to take classes in other departments. All worthwhile PhD programs in the US are fully funded. If one isn't, it's predatory and it doesn't actually want you to attend. This is a cute OP and I feel like it has purpose. That said, it's kind of hard to advise you because you don't say what your research interests are. That will guide your program choice much more than your desire to take classes in the philosophy department. Not to mention, philosophy departments, just like English, differ in focus and strength and the classes they offer. If your interests are sufficiently interdisciplinary, an English program might not even be the right fit for you and you might need to apply to interdisciplinary programs. That's only if you know for certain what your project is, because grad school really isn't the time for self-exploration for the sake of self-exploration. As for lack for undergrad prestige, I'm not sure it's so much that that holds people in your situation back (though it is a factor, among hundreds of factors). The thing in common that applicants from low-ranked UGs and applicants from prestigious non-US universities seem to have in common is a lack of polish. Like, an OP from an applicant from a top US undergrad contains much different questions, assumptions, and information because they are more likely to know what's up. They have more information and support from their department in preparing for grad school. Presentation and register of your materials ends up mattering a great deal, and that's something most people struggle with if they didn't spend time in an environment that runs by those rules. Good news is, unlike prestige, that's all fixable.

German and French are frequently required or recommended in humanities programs because a lot of important scholarship was/is written in those languages. Which language you should choose nominally depends on what scholarship you are interested in. Realistically though, unless you really commit yourself, you won't develop enough of a fluency to read dense texts in the original, so it's your personal preference. For Russian literature, French is obviously a useful language to know because of the influence France had on Russia's history and culture. Depending on what time period you're doing though, German may be more relevant.

You can enter wherever you want and you don't need a return ticket. That said, if you are flying from Europe or basically anywhere that isn't the far east, you will enter the US on the east coast and change to a domestic flight to LA.

I'd be less confident about WWS/HKS just because historically they scrutinize the numbers, and whilst your story is compelling, it is not unique. I'd also be less confident in getting major scholarship money from prestigious schools. That said, the SIPA/SAIS/Fletcher/whatever tier at full price and anything below should be open to you. Do get 320+ on the GRE.

Do you need scholarship money?

I feel like this post needs a trigger warning, and I don't even have experience with most of the things in it.

This is not unlikely. I've heard that, if you're not good enough to make it into a competitive program, you're not good enough for academia, because getting in is the easiest part. And that person was in an excellent academic job market. And I know a lot of people who legitimately didn't consider anything but the top programs when applying, not least because they didn't have to. The more I live, the more I think that the chief benefit of attending an elite institution for undergrad is that you understand what you're getting into.

@Revolutionary Policy is not a specialization. That's like saying you want to specialize in engineering. As regards interdisciplinarity, sure, most policy people have an interdisciplinary skillset - but that is not the same as having an interdisciplinary focus. Until you grow to the heights of Jim Kim or Noam Chomsky and can permit yourself to pontificate on whatever you damn well please, regardless of what they call you doctor for, you need to have a niche in order to get work. A narrow one. A niche in policy is something like innovation policy, or productivity analysis, or aquaculture in west africa. I know some people who went the MPA - PhD route to stay in the country (which is unfortunately a necessary reality when you graduate from a middling MPA program and have no work authorization), among a broader circle of people who do so with whatever degree. None of them are at good programs, and none of them are getting academic jobs. Barring a strong undergraduate record (at a known university) or extensive work experience, the MPA isn't really a good gateway to a PhD. It maybe qualifies you for average polisci programs, random interdisciplinary programs, and public policy PhDs (for which academic jobs statistically do not exist). If you go that route, you need to realize that all you're doing is buying yourself more time to find a job. I can put you out of your misery: this field does not exist. Name any policy area, and you can spit and hit 10 specialists that have 3 citizenships, 5 languages, and star-studded resumes. If you want to work in an in-demand field, you're barking up the wrong tree. Try IT or finance. Nobody works here for the easy career progression or the piles of money; we do it either because we love it, or because we fell into it. What you can do to become an in-demand person is to 1) have a niche you are expert in (because you love it, because you're good at it, because you fell into it and stuck with it); 2) have a skill you do really well (statistics, writing, negotiation, etc); 3) be easy to work with (attitude, attention to detail, organization, good under pressure). That said, I agree with the other dude. If this is an itch you need to scratch, go for it. I'm more or less convinced that your discontent can be explained by a combination of growing pains and a lack of experience with having real problems, and I personally give you low odds for success, but then I'd give anyone in your position, broadly, low odds for success and yet some people make it. Just do a conservative cost-benefit analysis before you go. I know nothing about Fulbright. Cap-exempt organizations are universities and NGOs associated with universities. As for your plan for getting a PhD and "settling" for an academic career, it makes you look completely clueless. The takeaway I want you to get from this post, if not this conversation overall, is that, if you are in the US on a visa, you ALWAYS have to plan for the possibility that you will be going home, because as long as you are on a visa, that possibility is always there. The second takeaway is that, so far, the ideas you have for keeping that eventuality at bay are either unrealistic or have very low odds of success.

@MBR given OP's goal is to stay in the States, this degree might as well be art history (which, insofar as "hard skills" go, is not that far removed from policy programs). It is difficult for someone who is not an immigrant to understand how many more problems and how many fewer safety nets F1 students have, to the extent that I think people who are not international students are being irresponsible when giving advice on this matter. The only scenario where OP should "just go" is if this decision wouldn't cause financial strain on his family (i.e. they are very wealthy). Otherwise, no, they shouldn't YOLO because someone who can get their loans forgiven and get a job at any gas station told them to just do it. OP, I came here on an F1 from a similarly socially suffocating country which has strained relations with the US, studied a similar major to yours, and I now work in policy. I also know a lot of people who are working or are trying to find work in the US, UK, or EU on a visa. I can only speak from experience, which is colored by my individual perceptions, dis/privileges, and abilities, but I hope it helps. The first thing to realize is that your job search will look nothing like citizens' or green card holders, as will your financial risks. So take any general statistic, from placement statistics to minimum GPA requirements, with a grain of salt - they are not representative of international students' experiences. When it comes to getting an H1B, you face two major hurdles. The first is finding an employer who is willing to sponsor you for an H1B following your 1-2 years of OPT (because any decent school will make it possible for you to use OCT for internships). These employers are mostly big companies with lots of money, lots of lawyers, and lots of experience with the H1B process (though small companies sponsoring because they really like you as an individual and want you specifically has happened once or twice among my acquaintances). They mostly want to hire people with technical skills or at least work experience. Economics is probably the least quantitative that you can afford to go if you want to be competitive, which is why I personally would think twice about an MPA; the mathier, the more opportunities you are eligible for (which is not the same as getting the job, of course). The second hurdle is getting the H1B, where, assuming your company wants to sponsor you (i.e. pay for all the paperwork and go through the long bureaucratic process), you are admitted into a true lottery. I know people who have had to go home after working in M&A at Goldman Sachs because they didn't win the lottery, and rebuild their career from scratch. This was before 2009, when Obama cut the H1B quota to a third. H1B is a bloodbath, no matter where you work or what qualifications you have. You have the same chance as anyone else in that barrel, and if you don't get it, some companies will transfer you to an office outside the US, and some will just let you go. People who are telling you to consider routes to UN-type jobs are absolutely correct (though a degree from SIPA is by no means a guarantee), because that makes you eligible for a G-type visa, which has many perks beyond the chief perk that it is not capped and makes you eligible for a green card after a certain number of years. With that in mind, let's discuss degrees. Policy degrees are pretty frou frou, and I disagree that the skills they impart are particularly hard (please, tell me what a ~~quantitative analyst you are when you don't even understand the functional form of the model you are estimating). The problem is that the master's offering in the US is pretty bare - there aren't (m)any quality academic masters in social sciences that are valued by employers, because the market is dominated by professional degrees and there is a tradition for talented undergrads to work in a research position out of undergrad for a couple years and then go straight into the PhD. Then there's the problem that everything is so damn expensive. This is a serious problem, because you can't (imo as a person with a very low risk appetite) justify taking out 6 figure debt unless you are absolutely certain you can pay it back, but you can't be absolutely certain due to the effectively random H1B lottery outcome, and I know of no country in the world besides America where you can pay off that kind of debt, no matter what job you get. In my country, if you emerge with 6 figure debt and no US job, your life is fiscally ruined. For that reason, I wouldn't consider an MBA in America unless an employer were covering it. As regards what you would learn in an MPA vs an MBA program, I think you have a slightly unrealistic idea of both as well as an unrealistic idea of the realities of the US academic/job environment. Firstly, whilst I'm sure you learned a lot in undergrad and that the curriculum at Cornell or wherever is fascinating, these are professional programs, the point of which is to get a job. The strength of the curriculum is negligible compared to how effective a program is at achieving the latter. These aren't programs you go into to ~~find yourself or learn about the field. A lot of your classmates will already know 90% of what you're being taught, in technical or content classes or even both, and will be using this time to build their professional networks and work on projects that they can show employers or PhD programs (so, not exactly student work). If you go in without at least knowing what policy field you want to pursue as well as something academic or practical about that field, you will be lost. Secondly, and this probably goes for everyone, but especially for international students who haven't studied/worked in an American environment, one of the things you need to achieve in these programs is learning how to exist in your professional cohort, which includes building a personal brand/niche/narrative. Don't believe anything to the contrary: the US work environment is incredibly insular, and if you do things not how people are used to them being done, people will think you're weird, which will negatively affect your career progression. Another factor is what my foreign family call Americans being duplicitous, which is their naive way of saying that how people express themselves in America and how people express themselves in my culture are different, so unless you've been immersed in this culture for a while, you won't know what your cohort thinks of you, which is bad bad bad in this relationship-based business. There is still a classist, xenophobic notion here for what constitutes educated, unfortunately. For instance, a precious few of my colleagues are sympathetic to people who don't speak/write good English. Few bother to investigate whether an ESL person can't construct an argument or just doesn't have enough facility with the language, and just assume it's the former. On that note, writing well is the #1 most important skill (right up there with presenting/interacting with people well), not Stata. You may think you write well, but policy writing in the US is its own register. This field has a culture, and you will lose out if you don't know what's up. Especially the big players that everyone here wants to work for are snake pits, where no one will give you more than one chance, no one expects less than perfection, and a few people will screw you over just because they can. Don't get me wrong: I have a fantastic work environment with people who are invested in my success, but among my entire acquaintance, I am the only one who is this lucky. As for what you should do, the main red flags to me are that you aren't 100% sure what you want to study, and that you graduated college last year. imo you need to be about 2 years further along in your career than you are, both so you can get better offers and so you know yourself better and have a better idea of how to make the best of this opportunity. This is a lot of money to spend on something you're not totally sold on, man. My first year out of college, I was similarly discombobulated and unhappy, but I'm glad I rode it out. I learned about how much I didn't know I don't know, and simultaneously I got a much better handle on where I want to take my life and career. GL.

Ask not whether anyone can be a data scientist; ask whether anyone should.

A broken clock is right twice a day! Where is my cliches-are-cliches-for-a-reason prize???

And that reason is, because you're incapable of coming up with something new.

@lyonessrampant @TakeruK Eagerly awaiting non-anonymous job market realities posts from both of you

I could appreciate this artistic vision if it weren't so cliche. It's like seeing The Kiss in every college dorm room at this point. Could we work towards developing a more novel and exciting perspective on the selfsame human condition of which we are all part?

But if the rankings are commonly accepted as garbage, why should they reflect on the quality of your credentials one way or another? Similarly, what about the first-gen, low-income, nontraditional students of color who were accepted into highly respected schools that did not place well on these rankings? Should they feel as upset as you are satisfied? If so, doesn't it seem like a zero-sum game wherein everybody has a lot of emotions and nobody wins?

Have you taken any econ courses? Do you have any econ research experience? If the answer to both (especially the latter) is no, you will likely have to do a master's regardless of your grades. Study for the GRE and get in the 90th+. Dude, come on. It's high school math. As for getting accepted into a good program, that depends on what a good program is to you. Provided research experience and good letters, t50 is probably feasible.

A major con of UK universities is that they don't guarantee funding.

Vet status will do shit for you in international government. Daamn is Gandhi liberating India in this post? Because it sure is salty. You call it a depository, but the G-4 is worth ~20% of your annual salary plus avoiding the H1B bloodbath, on which the risk premium is punishingly low, especially in this administration. Know before you go is all well and good, but what really grinds my gears is public servants who act like they're doing the world a huge fucking favor. The UN institutions and affiliated organizations have a lot of problems work environment-wise, and the least protected employee classes are treated abominably unless they have someone in power who is willing to advocate, but let's be real, working in international organizations has undeniable positives, which may not be so positive for one person as they are for another, but if they aren't, why stay in the field? Do something else. The world is your oyster.

The peanut gallery wants to know, how much did OP pay for his Fletcher degree?

Most people working for the WBG are stuck as STCs. I'm legit not sure how much the PhD helps.

That's true about the IMF, but the WB actually hires a diverse cohort of technical specialists, since their program foci are a lot more varied compared to the IMF. Lots of people with career trajectory come in with just the master's, sometimes MPA, even among recent hires. That said, I think OP is being misled by the words "monetary" and "finance". Unless they want to work on the trading floor or in risk management, the work at either of those organizations has very little to do with the traditional finance industry.

Everyone always says that their situation is different from everyone else's, and it never is. That means you, OP. Ties to home are always a tricky one, but I find that officers tend to be lenient with young people because it's understandable that you won't have a lot of assets/property/family/whatever. Bring the deeds to your car, talk about your family, most importantly, don't say you plan to stay in the US, and you'll be fine.