ExponentialDecay

@GradSchoolGrad Please enlighten me if you see otherwise, but I've read both posts I made here and I see nowhere that I've been unkind or not nice, to you or to anyone. You never explained why you took such a condescending tone with me, "First off" and so on. Based on my longterm experience on this board, you are very invested in being the resident expert on all things here and you become incensed whenever somebody posts something you disagree with. I'm really not looking for an internet fight so, if you can't keep your communications civil, I'd rather we not interact anymore. You can post your opinion on a subject without directly putting it in opposition with mine. People here are smart and capable of making their own conclusions. Anyway. I find your post off-topic. The conversation was about whether trying to stay in the US after a master's degree is a good risk right now, and you have not addressed this point whatsoever. I will reiterate that, per my assessment, the US is not worth the risk right now (and basing one's decision on your unpedigreed assessment of what is "highly likely" for an as-of-yet unelected Presidential candidate to do is quite silly). This is where I'll leave it.

I'm sort of confused by your tone. I'm not saying a US education is bad; I'm saying that trying to immigrate via F1 now is much riskier than it was even a short while ago. I don't understand why you're acting defensive. 1. It doesn't matter. Even if Biden wins in November, policy and procedure doesn't just change like that once a new president takes hold (I should hope that people who advise on the Government Affairs grad school forum know that). It takes time for a new administration to make changes to immigration policies - hence why Trump's immigration policies, most of which were implemented at the agency, procedural level, and weren't even macro policies that passed through Congress, in large part came into effect in 2018 onwards. Further, we don't know where on the administration's priority list specifically, say, F1 visas or H1B visas will be - though I suspect they will not be high, given COVID and global economic collapse and all. We don't know who will control Congress. On a practical level, this administration's interventions created huge backlogs for USCIS, DOS, and other agencies, and constructed a multitude of procedural risks and barriers that I doubt will be high-priority enough to repeal in short order if at all. Finally, from an expectations perspective, we already have ample evidence that businesses are reaction to uncertainty around US immigration policies by entirely cutting the hiring of people with, shall we say, uncertain status - we're not just talking students on OPT, we're talking DACA recipients, asylees with EADs, anyone whose status is remotely uncertain. I don't see why in this case their expectations should recover faster than in literally any other situation where business expectations became deflated. 2. 2 years is actually not any time at all in the policy world. I'm not an expert in this field, I just follow it for personal reasons, and I have yet to read an expert who doesn't think that it will continue to be really bad for the next 2 years. 3. Institutions globally also value a Canadian education, or a British one, or a French one. Today there are many famous non-US schools in virtually any field, which also typically cost less and provide more options for staying in the country after. I think the US is not the best option for a non-MBA masters compared to other countries, where masters degrees are taken seriously rather than seen as a stepping stone for people who didn't get good enough grades in the BA or people who need to wait out a rough job market. Maybe 20 years ago the US was unique in offering non-lecture class experiences and practical learning, but today it is ubiquitous at top universities from Sydney to Singapore. Finally, this isn't "knee jerk" for me. I originally came to the US on an F1 visa (and yes, all my degrees are from the US) and I am still on a visa status today. This is an issue I consume a lot of news on and think about every day. Aside from my multitude of personal friends who are also non US citizens, I also am in touch with many people who are more junior in their careers in this very field, who worked with me in the summer or attended an event together, and who reach out to me regularly to talk about how they're doing on the job market and what their options are going forward. So I'm sorry to step on your toes, but the reason I commented here in the first place is that I do know a lot of facts, not just speculation, about this topic. If you don't have personal experience with the US immigration system and are not an immigration professional, I would maybe think twice about giving out diagnoses for other people's knees.

I would definitely pick a program that is STEM-certified. More and more MBA and policy programs are going that route, including some big names. That said, regardless of what you study and how many years of OPT you have, the current administration has made labor migration so difficult (not just H1B, but EB, L, O) that staying on after school has become exponentially more difficult than when you were in college. A lot of companies that hired internationals even 5 years ago now won't consider non-residents. Based on what I heard from a lawyer friend (large fwiw, of course), a lot of companies don't have the resources to hire internationals because they're fighting to keep existing hires in the country. There's a lot more hoops to jump through and a much higher likelihood of visas being denied or cancelled ex-post. So it's just a really risky proposition right now. I absolutely still know people who are staying on, but they all either have very quanty degrees from prestigious institutions or work for cap-exempt companies (and all were hired 2+ years ago - the situation got much worse even in the last 6 months). If I were a person considering coming to the US to study and work now, I'd look at Canada, Australia, or a European country where you speak the language. The US is just too risky imo.

This is a strange question. MPP and JD are very different degrees and lead to very different careers. If you are not sure which one is right for you, the answer is probably neither - for now. Getting an American law degree without plans to work in America is particularly strange, especially when you are not looking at financial law, contracts law or another area where being barred in the state of New York could be relevant. It does not seem to me like you are ready for grad school. If in Indonesia it is hard to find a job without a masters, I would recommend getting a local masters and going to the US once you have a better idea of what you want to do. I get that you got a scholarship, but life in America is very expensive, this is an investment of 2-3 years, and you really want to go once you can take the best advantage of the opportunities you are given.

...they also require linear algebra, calculus up to multivariable, and a proofs course? For admissions questions, you should look on the websites of the programs you are interested in and, if they are not answered there, contact admissions.

They had PhD-level credentials before they got the MPA. Not super relevant for OP.

If you want to get an econ PhD, do not - and I cannot stress this enough - do not get an MPA. Speaking of Harvard's MPA-ID, if you go to the open day, Dani Rodrik will literally give a speech to you, in which he will literally tell you that, if you want to get a PhD later, this is not the right program for you. MPAs and other professional policy degrees are designed for people who want to work in policy. They do not provide the right opportunities for someone who wants to get a PhD. Some degrees in this general area now offer relatively sophisticated economic and mathematical coursework - because that is what is increasingly required to succeed in many policy fields. A lot of the time these course offerings are not rigorous for hte purposes of demonstrating that you can do PhD-level work. Aside from that, a lot of econ people think people get MPAs when they're not good enough for an econ PhD. So don't do this. Make a choice that sets you up for success. If you want an econ PhD, you have broadly two avenues open to you. One, if you can do applied quantitative work, try to get an RAship at your local university, J-PAL, the Fed, some other econ RAship (you should do this anyway because it's required for the application and because it's a good way to determine whether you actually like the work). The math classes you have plus an RAship doing quantitative work sets you up to apply to mid-tier PhDs directly. Otherwise, get a 2 year masters in econ with a thesis option. If you want to go to a prestigious econ school (not at all a requirement to be a successful career economist, unless you want to be head of DEC or a Harvard professor), get a prestigious econ masters, like PSE or Bocconi. One year taught masters at places like LSE are not prestigious. One year taught masters that track the top 10-25% of the class into the PhD, like BGSE, are prestigious. Your best source of info on the internet is urch.com Finally, treat your PhD preparation as an exercise in determining whether this is the right path for you. Both on the downside (a lot of plenty talented, mathematically gifted people end up hating econ and dropping out) and on the upside (depending on what you want to specialize in, you may find better career prospects by doing PhD Finance - especially if you want to go into academia).

Not commenting w/r/t the specific situation with your visa, but I wouldn't attack @PokePsych for trying to be helpful and saying something that is very true. Moreover, not only are departments usually clueless about visa policies, but HR, legal and even the ISO can make mistakes and give bad advice. From the State Department's perspective, you and you alone are responsible for maintaining your visa status, so if you have problems because of some bad advice you followed - from your school, your lawyer, who cares - you are screwed. So just as a general piece of advice from someone who has spent a decade on F1, by all means listen to your provost and the international office, but double check everything they say with a second (qualified, of course) opinion or by reading all of the relevant legal documents yourself. Most visa stuff is handled on the USCIS website, but you may need to look up tax treaties etc for financial matters. Seriously, your visa status in the US is serious shit, especially in this administration. So stay vigilant and don't get nasty with people who try to help you out

This is probably way late, but depending on what you mean by sustainable finance (i.e. financial instruments and financing structures vs finance that targets environmental sustainability goals) you are better served doing a straight finance MA or MBA with a concentration on sustainable finance in the former case, and an environmental program in the latter. An international development program is going to be too unfocused to efficiently serve either of those goals. The SAIS energy program is well-reputed and you can switch into it. In either case, if you are committed to doing a public policy degree, I recommend prioritizing strong, well-connected finance faculty. The SIPA network at multilaterals is fine. Don't know where you're getting the info that MPA-DP cohort is significantly older than the SAIS IDEV one.

afaik SAIS is getting restructured imminently so just a thought overall though, unless CIPA is giving you a ton of money, you should do SAIS, especially if you want to work in an IO. I also don't know any country where Cornell is better respected than Johns Hopkins, but I know many countries where Johns Hopkins is a brand name and Cornell is virtually unknown.

@GradSchoolGrad I mean, I don't know when you got your masters, but things changed a lot in the policy masters arena even in the past 5 years. None but the most competitive programs have out of undergrad proportions as low as 25% lol. Programs at the level of Georgetown, SAIS, SIPA accept anyone who can put together an application in English. Really? It's pretty common. Harvard may disclose when spotlighted applicants are dual-degree, but they absolutely still feature them. HOWEVER, it is one thing for a well-established school to add a new program, create a new research center, or create a joint degree. I'm talking about reorganizing or eliminating existing flagship programs and culling staff. This sector is in a great deal of upheaval. Every policy masters today is having an identity crisis because employment options for policy generalists with 6 figure debt from a 2 year masters have dried up long ago. Schools are trying to plug large and persistent cash flow holes. Of course no one knows what will happen post-corona - hopefully, there will be a boom in student applications and at least the top schools will get more time and budgetary space to work through a gradual transition, but shit was moving scary fast in the past two years. I'm not privy to the reorg happening at CIPA and it is indeed not a good idea to go to a grad school that's going through a major transition. What I'm saying is that many of the students who are matriculating this fall at schools you consider "prestigious" are stepping into the same mire. I think a policy degree is still the right career choice for many people. But I don't think the decision can be made on prestige anymore. Most of the grads from Harvard and Princeton are stuck in the same employment situation as people from lesser schools.

How the fuck are you going to pay back 200k in debt with interest working in the humanitarian sector???

Check that the people placing into 120k consulting jobs from HKS aren't dual-degree MBA students. To my knowledge, the MPP placement is not great. If you want to work in consulting, stop wasting your time with policy programs and get an MBA. If you must get a policy degree, take the option that minimizes your debt. A policy degree isn't a huge hamper to your career options, but the humongous student debt will screw over your professional and general life choices for decades.

SAIS econ courses are not rigorous and will not improve your PhD application. The only people who go on to econ PhDs from SAIS are people who had a strong econ and math background prior to coming to SAIS. If you think you need to improve your academics, you should have applied to econ MAs, not policy programs; although, as you already have real analysis, you may be more competitive as a PhD applicant than you think. If you can take graduate courses from the actual econ department at Columbia, you are better off going to SIPA than SAIS (since it would be difficult to take classes in Baltimore from DC...) but in general, the notion of attending a very expensive professional program in order to prepare yourself for an academic program is inherently wrong-headed.

@GradSchoolGrad I have also never met anyone from CIPA, but all of the red flags you point out are true of almost all policy programs, including Georgetown McCourt. The proportion of students matriculating straight from undergrad has risen everywhere in the past few years, including very competitive programs like the HKS MPA-ID. I'm sure that share will tumble now that we are entering the recession, but if this is an issue for you (and I agree that it should be an issue if you are an early or mid-career professional looking to expand their knowledge and professional network with people who have held at least one job), you should apply to highly ranked MBAs. That's the only professional masters that isn't riddled with undergrads. Most policy programs don't differentiate between regular and dual degree graduates in their job publications. They also don't track how many people went back to their employer after the degree (which is a lot of people). And reorgs, unfortunately, are underway at several highly-ranked policy programs that I shan't mention on the internet and, in the coming couple of years, are likely to hit even more schools. In large part the education reorgs are part of a structural change happening all over the policy world, which now values a very focused training in in-demand skills over 2 more years of liberal arts education.

I suggest reading the stickied chance me thread. You will find that a large proportion of applicants are both 3+ years out of undergrad and coming from an unrelated field. The thread is also a trove of advice on several years' worth of applications - assuming, of course, that you are willing to see yourself as not so unique that nobody else's experience could possibly apply to you.

You should read your own "article" for MPA-PhD stuff, because the guy with the MPA and PhD in Public Policy is perfectly right - an MPA is not good preparation for a PhD. If you attend open days or prospective applicant presentations for the top policy masters like Princeton and Harvard, their reps will tell you the same thing. The reason is not so much that a bunch of classes will be irrelevant, since curricula at these programs are pretty malleable, but that even the relevant classes are designed for practitioners, not researchers. For example, your econometrics class will focus on interpreting and understanding regression outputs, not on how to build an econometric model and apply it to data. You will also have limited opportunities to work on stuff that will make you more competitive for PhDs, like writing a great thesis or getting real tight with professors in your subfield, because the program will be focused on trotting you out to employers and getting you a job at the end. There are programs that are better geared for an academic application, like the MPA-ID or some of the Harris School's programs, but they are an obsecenely expensive option that isn't tailored to what you want, and choosing them over going to a dedicated poli sci MRes in Europe that will cost you pennies on the dollar is a strange decision. I don't think a master's is a bad idea, but if you want a PhD, don't get an MPA. I don't think your GPA is bad at all (although I'm confused if that's a first or an upper second), but the GRE really is quite low for top programs and unfortunately they pay extra attention to that when you're not from a US school.

The fears over getting a job on this forum are a bit overstated - the difficulty highlighted here really applies to international students and people who are unemployable because of some exogenous factor, like being really picky or being unable to hold eye contact with anyone but their mother - and your consulting experience will be a definite plus on the job market. That said, a lot of people who go into international development drop out the moment they understand what these career paths are actually like. The downside risk here is that you will realize by the end of your first semester (at which point applications are probably past due) that the jobs you can get in this sector aren't worth your effort. Further, I wouldn't waste your 2 years on learning IR - it's not useful in international development, and in diplomacy only nominally so. The useful classes at SAIS and such will be roughly the same as offered at an MBA program. If you can be bothered to, I'd apply and see how much funding you get. You have good experience so I don't think you'll strike out (also, I'd investigate whether SAIS allows you to dual-degree with a program outside of those three on a case to case basis, as many schools do).

You can just as easily work in the non-profit sector with an MBA as with a policy degree, but you would have to at minimum take a pay cut relative MBA grads to work in the private sector with a policy degree. If you have a specific target organization, a specific policy program can be more efficient at getting you networked there, but outside of that, the on-campus hiring at policy programs is vastly inferior to MBA programs. The core of useful classes, assuming you are aiming at industry and not at reading IR at some PhD program afterwards, is the same at both. The difference is in the time invested (policy programs are 1-2 years, MBAs are 3), cost (although among elite programs that gap is pretty narrow), and difficulty of getting in. The three programs you mention are very similar in every respect. There's really no point in delving into the fine details like their respective quant training (weak across the board), professor and student quality and so on. They admit a comparable student body according to comparable criteria. Unless there is a specific professor you want to work with at either of the three and you know they are open to working with you closely, I'd pick based on cost, location, and ability to get a STEM extension on your OPT (which none of these three will give you, but there exist econ/finance programs, including at policy schools, that will). Regarding DC private sector, word of caution: much of the private sector employment here, including the big MNCs that traditionally hire many internationals, works primarily with or around the US government, which means that employers may require a security clearance or simply have an unwritten requirement to not hire foreigners.

Haven't been to Berlin, but would 100% go back in time and spend my youth in either Vienna or Barcelona. Both are very cosmopolitan, fairly cheap, and there's a lot to do any day of the week, especially for young people.

Only if you perceive the verbiage as hostile in itself, which is a strange choice in our life and times, but whatever. Given the paucity of data, any employment effects comparison between these schools is untempered speculation.

This is a strange dick-measuring contest. Both Harris and HKS have constrained programs that are objectively quanty and competitive and therefore have separate admissions processes, but the vanilla MPP at any of the three programs is going to be the same 200-person bullshit humanities deal that isn't worth the paper it's printed on. You can take your American Foreign Policy class with the risen spirits of all 44 former US presidents and it's not going to matter because no employer cares about that.

Which program at Harris? From what I remember, the PhD-level classes are reserved for MACRM and that quant-heavy policy program. idk if MPPs can get into them, even if they are technically allowed to take them. Regarding quantitative work, it's not only reserved for PhDs (especially the low-level stuff), but if you're definitely committed to it, I'd reconsider doing a policy degree at all. If you have a strong enough math and programming background as is, you can get a low-level policy quant job now (depending on the prestige of your undergrad, that will take more to less cold-calling, but it's totally feasible). Likewise, if you're fixated on getting another degree, I'd get a degree in stats, economics or DS. You can build a quantitative background at most policy schools right now, but the rigor is definitely geared towards humanities majors, which may work for you if you're very good at math or you're a humanities major, but if you're in between, I think you'll struggle to get a deep enough understanding to succeed in a quanty job. I wouldn't take out 6 figures for a policy degree. That's an unnecessarily high debt load for almost any degree.

You're not arguing that a hobbyist shouldn't be admitted at all. You're arguing that a hobbyist shouldn't be admitted over a candidate who would see the PhD as a job. Do you think that a candidate who sees the PhD as a job is going to be easier competition for your internal funding or whatever else than a hobbyist? I.. wouldn't care? As long as the person knows what they're doing and is easy to work with, I don't care what their motivation is. That's their private business. And like I said, I see no reason why the quality of scholarship should be impacted by lack of desire to turn scholarship into a paid job. There's certainly more than enough examples of terrible scholars who want a job in academia. I think this is sour grapes. Like, if you're not fully committed to battling against impossible odds in obtaining TT, you can't sit with us. Your attitude is functionally no different to the attitude of some quasi-emeritus who looks down on people for having an alt-ac plan B. And your attitude is your private business, except I don't understand why you align yourself with a view that is expressly counter to stated beliefs and even interests. If you are a "serious scholar", more people getting your degree for fun is better for you in every possible way. These people represent a more (or should I say, de facto) sustainable source of demand for the training that you want to be paid for to provide, yet they at the same time are not part of your competition for those professional positions. The age of people getting generic humanities degrees to be more employable is over - so I think catering to people who get your degree for personal growth purposes only is in your field's future. And moreover, perhaps they'll be able to inject perspectives into the profession that people who are desperate for history jobs are disinclined to express even if they hold them. It may be uncomfortable to view your field as something people enter for fun, but why the hell not?

I've seen many of the users represented here lament the overproduction of history PhDs and the state of the history job market, not to mention shepherd hopefuls towards reconsidering their PhD ambitions, so I'm curious at the viciousness with which you receive someone who has admitted that the PhD would be a hobby. Isn't it good that they've already decided not to compete for increasingly rare TT positions with the rest of y'all? Isn't it good that they'd be taking up the chair of a young person who will spend 10 years on this "career" only to be cheated out of it by the job market? Why decry the myopic attitude of history departments to alt-ac opportunities and the recruitment of fruitless strivers on one hand, and engage in this self-defeatist gatekeeping on the other? Statistically,the majority of history PhDs are doing the PhD as a very long and stressful hobby until they are forced to leave academia and get a job that only uses their PhD training in a very perverted sense of "use". How are the majority of the posters on this forum different from this hobbyist? In that you don't admit to yourselves that your chance of getting TT is miniscule and that you're going to treat the PhD as a consumption good from the outset? Why not admit people who see the PhD as a retirement project? Nothing says they can't produce compelling research, and they might actually be useful to the department in the form of cheap TA labor that then don't grow bitter when they can't get any practical benefits out of it. That's probably the only kind of PhD admit that in this climate could be called ethical. Sure, it's not prestigious or whatever for the department - but what's your incentive to protect bullshit exploitative academic practices?