ExponentialDecay

@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.

Just to chip in, I will say that it is great that you come here looking for advice. Take my advice as a grain of salt, considering that I haven't started my MPP yet (but I do have several year of work experience and I've spent well over a year researching this).
 
First of all, 1 year may seem like a lot to wait if your situation is shitty right now, but in the long run it will be nothing if it ultimately helps you make a better choice. You do not want to take your graduate studies lightly. I know that Pakistan can be a suffocating place, but I think you can have it in you to just lay low for twelve more months. 
Regarding GRE, the quant section is actually the easiest to improve, specially if you have several weeks. Just do Magoosh for 30 minutes every day and correct your wrong answers and you will see your score get much higher. (In contrast the verbal section is greatly limited if your english is not up to par or if you weren't an avid reader before-hand). However, also keep in mind that GRE is a very small part of the application, and the one extra year of work (if relevant and you stand out) can do much more difference).
Regarding MBAs, money and positions may not seem like a factor now, but in 2 years they will be, trust me on this. If you go to grad school your primary focus should be on what you want to project your career. That doesn't mean that MBA is the only correct answer here, but you should take into consideration what you want to do. For example, most big non-profits value MBAs more than MPPs. But an MPA may be more valuable for public sector work. Never forget the huge financial undertaking that this choice signifies! Personally, if I could start again and money wasn't an issue I would consider a joint MBA/MPP, but that's just me, given my own preferences and outlook.
Are you competitive for other schools in one more year? Depends. The GRE is not as relevant as you think, as I said above. You say you are passionate, but can you tell a coherent story through your work experiences and volunteer work? Can you get relevant work experience in an extra year?
Best of luck
 

Chiming in to agree with the other posters that studying in the US with the goal of getting a job here is a bad idea. Immigration is a hot topic and there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the H1B. I wouldn't risk it, if I were you, there is unfortunately a high likelihood it won't work out like you hope. I'd agree with the others that at the moment, focusing on a country that isn't as hostile to foreigners is a better choice, especially one where it's easier to stay once you've studied there. 

Any particular reason you feel the need to analyze this?
 

Anybody can, but should they? 

In some ways, much more stressful and brutal than I thought it would be, and I thought I was prepared! The numbers of postdoc openings vs. applicants for this year was like any other, knowing the ratio feels a lot different than living and competing in it! 
But in other ways, I found community in ways I didn't expect. My subfield is small, so I have met almost everyone else graduating in my subfield at conferences or during visits. We all apply to positions that are generally in astronomy though, not just my subfield, so at least sometimes a "no" to me meant a "yes" to someone else in our subfield (i.e. a friend), so that was nice. It was really nice to have friends at all institutions to share the stress of the job market with me. 
I can write more details later including what seemed to work well and what didn't etc. but the next few weeks is busy with submitting dissertation (tomorrow!), defending and moving for the new job  Remind me in mid-June if you want to hear more.

I think there are a lot of differences between people, and when their interests don't fit our own, we are very quick to write them off as "basic" without realizing that what is interesting to you, may be considered "basic" to someone else.  It is fun to think of ourselves as better than everyone else and special because we have a certain career, hobby, or interest that not very many people share.  But imo you are just as self absorbed and "basic" as everyone else if you have to talk about your own hobbies and interests in order to interact with other people in a meaningful way. 

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

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

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

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

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

Congratulations @lyonessrampant!! From one-about-to-defend-student to another!  

@wrighna, you are reviving a two-year-old post just to advertise your podcast. We've been lenient in letting you advertise here, partly against the board rules, but please don't abuse our good will. 

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

Except that, given what I've seen from placement data, the sub field rankings are just as questionable. And given that, as you acknowledge,the best place for a student has to be considered in light of many different factors, a bad list like USNWR ends up skewing admissions toward the "top" schools in spite all of those other factors, which seems to me to harm the profession by reinforcing arbitrary credentialism. 

First of all: don't freak out too much on GRE scores. Many people have been admitted even to Top10 programs with GRE scores not that great. Anything like 160 on both parts is good enough for almost everywhere. The same goes to your GPA: not stellar, but you don't need to be dragged by it.
Second: although Georgetown is definitely a good program (I applied last cycle, unsuccessfully), I think you should consider applying to other programs related to your academic interests. It's not good to have only one option.
Third and most importantly: focus on your SOP and your letters of recommendation. They are by far the best indicator you can provide and the things they will look for most of the time. Fit is important and you need to convey how good an addition you can be to a given department.

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.

Every institution I ever went to, there were people who thought it was wonderful and people who thought it was crap. In my estimation, both opinions were based on little if any objective evidence. They were mostly formed on subjective ideas of fit, a vague sense of how their life was going at the time, and general pessimism/optimism. Very little to do with their practical circumstances.
That said, I've never liked people who think that they are smarter than every other person in the room and who dismiss every idea they disagree with as idiotic. Rarely if ever are these people anything other than a vibrant manifestation of the Dunning-Krueger effect.

Every institution I ever went to, there were people who thought it was wonderful and people who thought it was crap. In my estimation, both opinions were based on little if any objective evidence. They were mostly formed on subjective ideas of fit, a vague sense of how their life was going at the time, and general pessimism/optimism. Very little to do with their practical circumstances.
That said, I've never liked people who think that they are smarter than every other person in the room and who dismiss every idea they disagree with as idiotic. Rarely if ever are these people anything other than a vibrant manifestation of the Dunning-Krueger effect.

Every institution I ever went to, there were people who thought it was wonderful and people who thought it was crap. In my estimation, both opinions were based on little if any objective evidence. They were mostly formed on subjective ideas of fit, a vague sense of how their life was going at the time, and general pessimism/optimism. Very little to do with their practical circumstances.
That said, I've never liked people who think that they are smarter than every other person in the room and who dismiss every idea they disagree with as idiotic. Rarely if ever are these people anything other than a vibrant manifestation of the Dunning-Krueger effect.

Every institution I ever went to, there were people who thought it was wonderful and people who thought it was crap. In my estimation, both opinions were based on little if any objective evidence. They were mostly formed on subjective ideas of fit, a vague sense of how their life was going at the time, and general pessimism/optimism. Very little to do with their practical circumstances.
That said, I've never liked people who think that they are smarter than every other person in the room and who dismiss every idea they disagree with as idiotic. Rarely if ever are these people anything other than a vibrant manifestation of the Dunning-Krueger effect.

Not to be harsh, but if you don't have at least a vague idea of what area you want to eventually make a career for yourself -- Local Gov v. Environmental Policy v. IT -- you probably shouldn't be going to grad school yet.  Why not just get a job in one of these areas for a year or two to see how you like it?  You should at least know what your predominant one or two interests are before applying to school.

One thing to keep in mind is that acceptance rates are a really blunt and ineffective measure. Programs will get loads of applications, a lot of which aren't really 'credible' - applications submitted without all documents, applicants who barely scrapped a passing mark, applicants who misunderstand the purpose for the program, etc. You aren't really competing against the total number of applicants, but the total number of 'serious' applicants.