ExponentialDecay

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

I know we hear "quantitative, quantitative, quantitative", but I think it also has a lot to do with the programs to which you are applying and what you are hoping to do research-wise. I have a very weak quantitative background (and a worse Q GRE than you), but I don't anticipate pursuing much quantitative research, and I made my research interests (and methodological interests) fairly clear throughout my application. It really depends on what you are hoping to do, and whether or not you need to demonstrate that you can do that work if it is necessary for the research projects that you want to pursue.

Honestly, I think that you should start by seeking guidance from your former professors. GradCafe is very helpful regarding certain aspects of the application process (GRE studying tips, SOP advice, Interview advice, etc), but not so much when it comes to something as major as choosing a field of study. Sure, we can list all of the best places to study political psychology, but we can't really tell you whether you should be studying political psychology or not. You should contact a professor who knows you and knows your work and have a conversation with them regarding your research interests and how to best pursue them.
 

So after some of the recent discussion elsewhere on the board, I thought it might be nice to start an (admittedly early) job market support thread for those of us going on (or back on) the market in this upcoming cycle. 
For people on for the first time, I thought it might be nice to start early as a place to ask questions as you're preparing materials, and give those of us on for multiple years a place to commiserate and soothe our souls by helping someone else out. 
Since we have such a relatively small group of people at this stage, lets start with a combined thread for all of our woes, and can split it into disciplines if we want at a later date if the crowd grows enough. From conversations with friends, the application process isn't so different that there isn't a ton of overlap. 

I think that all of @Bibica's advice is very good, but I just want to emphasize the importance of this point. Chicago and Columbia both have a lot of PhD students, and the tenure-track/tenured faculty are likely spread thin between advising them, teaching, and conducting their own research; before you spend the money on one of these programs, make sure that you will be working (at least some of the time) with faculty that can write letters for you. Remember this, too: the value added from either of your current options will be the connections you make with faculty (resulting in rec letters) and the strengthening of your research abilities, not the name brand on your CV.

I think you will be fine, but it might be a good idea to talk to your advisor about this just to get more perspective. It is a little embarrassing, but trust me, many grad students (including me) have admitted more embarrassing mistakes before!
Normally these scammers are in the business of stealing your money, not your research ideas. I am guessing that if you answered the next set of questions, they will probably ask for payment for the application or for the program itself. So I wouldn't worry too much. In the worst case scenario, they might use your text to either scam other people (list your abstract as a fake attendee to their future fake events) or sell it to unscrupulous people looking for academic text. But this is pretty unlikely as this implies they are able to distinguish good vs. bad academic text and if they could, it's unlikely they would be running this sort of scam.
So I wouldn't really worry about it. Also a good idea to talk to your advisor in the future before submitting things like this. Even if it is a legitimate thing, I generally would want to discuss how much uncompleted work to reveal in an abstract with my advisor!

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.

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.

Are you sure? You are in Professional Programs > Government Affairs.
Indiana has the top MPA program? Bullshit. Anyway, this insight is actually pretty universal across professional and academic programs both: in grad school, program ranking matters more than the university's layman prestige.  In a field like policy, the location advantage is furthermore a huge deal. It's why policy programs at otherwise shitty universities, like American or GW, actually have pretty decent job placement.

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

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

@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.

@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.

1. The idea that you can get into a PhD program simply because you did an MA at Cornell is misguided.
2. The idea that you should do a PhD as some kind of last resort is incredibly misguided. A PhD is a multi-year commitment that's hard to get through even if you come in with all the passion in the world. 
3. The idea that you would then get a job at a North American University with your PhD that you aren't really passionate about and in a field you didn't actually want to be at is just plain offensive. The academic job market is ridiculously competitive. Those "lesser tier" jobs you're describing will still be highly competitive. The idea that you can go into academia as some kind of backup is just so incredibly misguided. More likely, you'll be miserable and depressed doing something you don't want to do, leading to poor performance, and therefore to failure to get a job (or graduate). Sorry to be harsh, but you have no experience and no actual academic interests. You'll be competing against people who actually want to be where they are. It's tough enough even when you have everything going for you, and almost impossible otherwise. If this is your backup strategy, I highly recommend that you go back to the drawing board. 

@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.

@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.

@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.

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

@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.

@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.

If you can make a genuine case for being an outcast whose religious or political views put him at risk of persecution, you can apply for asylum once you're in the US. Compared to the EU and Australia, the US asylum regime (narrowly defined) is better for people of your background and so far largely untouched by Trump and Bannon. (But you'll need to have better reasons for your asylum application than "no girls, no relationships, just a boring job" - that's half the world's guys in every country, the US included.)
There are downsides to the US asylum regime because you won't have government-provided pro bono legal aid and won't have work authorization until a few weeks to months after your application is in, during which time the government offers you no support...you'd be lucky if you got NGO support for basic subsistence. But if you're at Cornell while you apply, you might convince CIPA to keep you as a student despite your change of status from F-1 or J-1.
By the time you finish CIPA, you will have become a permanent resident. Jobs will have become easier then.
But I digress.
As someone who lives in an Islamic Republic next door to yours - and who lived in your country for over a decade - I would advise you not to overthink the difficulty of your situation. Correct me if I am wrong, but you seem like someone who doesn't have major financial problems, doesn't have 7 sisters to feed and marry off like some young men in Pakistan do, etc. The dust, broken roads and noisy mullahs are irritants but 180 million Pakistanis put up with them. I would imagine you could as well, at least for another year. You're in Lahore, not North Waziristan. Unless you have crippling dust allergies, you can live with it.
The various degrees at the Kennedy School require up to 6 or 7 years of work experience. Your GPA can't be changed, but gaining more work experience will definitely help with HKS or any other school, especially if you can improve your scores by a few notches, which you can because you have a whole year ahead of you. Everyone does it with a 9-5 job or a full course-load. That's just the way it is.
The biggest life advice someone gave me right out of undergrad was not to rush it. Take your time. Go out in the 'real world.' Spend some time in the sun to fully ripen. Then go back to school.
One year out of undergrad, you strike me as someone who is still in his early 20s. If that's the case, I would take a year, maybe two. You're still early in your career. One to two years at a job is ideal at this stage. Change jobs. Gain multiple experiences because this will give you different policy vantage points. It will make you a better applicant and job candidate.
I am sorry if this is a bit preachy, but I was in your shoes several years ago when, after six years in the US, I dreaded returning home for the exact reasons you outlined in your post. Five years into the dust and grime of my country and a few close security encounters later, I'm grateful I returned. I will be going back to the US for grad school this fall, and I am secure in the knowledge that I have real-world experience in a tough country -- knowledge that will enrich any conversation in a policy program (I got into CIPA as well, but I will be going to another grad school).
I would imagine that the beer I'll drink and the girls I might fraternize with will be all the sweeter. And the air...ahhh, I can finally go out running again.
---
ADDENDUM: The challenge of the position you're in is to see beyond your current situation, to incorporate contingencies into your planning. Here's one contingency: If you choose to go to CIPA, chances are that your view of Pakistan might actually change. Two years is a long time - you might miss Pakistan, might develop new perspectives. If you get a job right out of CIPA, that'd be great; if not, you can always return to Pakistan to much improved job prospects with an Ivy League degree in hand...and apply for an H1B the following year. I know more than a few foreigners - Pakistanis included - who returned home after a stint in the US. Many of them are happily working there.

Revolutionary, I think you need to figure out what you prioritize, moving away from Pakistan no matter what you have to do or getting into policy even though it might take longer and mean you wont get a job abroad. As others have mentioned policy is not the type of career that will enable you to easily get job sponsorships abroad, especially not in the US at this point in time. 
IOs are really the best option for internationals because of how hard it is to get a visa, but again those jobs don't grow on trees and with only one year experiece you will be competing with all of your classmates and people from other top degrees who have more and better experience than you. Simply having a Cornell degree wont make you a shoe in. It's not even amongst the top top top policy degrees in the states... I think you might be overestimating it a bit cause it's an Ivy (not saying that it's bad, there are just bigger names out there for this). 
It seems like your heart is really set on Cornell and ultimately you're looking for people to justify your decision, as you hace noticed by now very few of us agree. However, there is no one path to success. Having 3-4 years of experience, great volunteering, 5 languages and whatever else people say you need to succeed won't guarantee you get a dream policy job in an amazing place and that you'll be happy. Although I agree that this degree right now is a big risk and seems financially irresponsible sometimes you gotta take the leap. If you do make the decision to go, make sure that you're going with your eyes wide open and that you are prepared for a scenario in which you don't get a visa in the US or elsewhere, don't get into a Phd of your choice (which i agree you should never do just for the heck of it) and will have to move back to Pakistan anyway. 

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

@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.