ExponentialDecay

I think it could be challenging to criticize the field, while not having much experience in said field, and not be seen as someone who doesn't understand what they're saying because they've been the person outside looking in, if that makes sense. If you're taking a very critical approach, then imo there should be professional experiences in your life that add weight to your criticisms. Perhaps taking a stance more of questioning, curiosity, and wanting to learn different approaches, rather than "this all sucks and here's why", in your SOP would be more beneficial. I read your other post and that's my impression.

1. What do you want to do?
2. Does program x place students into positions doing what you want to do?
3. Go to the program that does (2) most successfully
People so often forget that graduate school is a means to an end, not the end itself. Either prestige or reputation are only meaningful insofar as they help you get the outcome you want. Getting the world's most prestigious history degree won't help you if you want to be a physicist.

List what math classes you took and your grades in them.
the GRE is good but tbh unless that 3.43 is weighed down by Cs in humanities classes, that's a worrisome GPA. It's a worrisome GPA even if it's not weighed down by humanities classes. It also depends on what your research was and who your supervisor was for that (whom you should ask about your chances btw). If you want a realistic shot at MIT and Stanford, I'd get a master's from a program that places at MIT and Stanford (LSE, Bocconi, BGSE), kill it, do research with Giacomo Ponzetto, and then you'll have a good chance of getting in. 

1. I'm not sure why it's a good idea to incentivize superfluous posting? The point of this forum is to provide and retain information. Would anyone find it helpful to wade through dozens of "what's your favorite cat color?"-type postings in order to find what they're looking for?
2. I am likewise sure that ~no one is intentionally giving bad advice that they know is wrong just to watch the world burn, but as in legal parlance, ignorance of the law excuses not: whether they're giving bad advice intentionally or not, they're still doing harm. And it's not realistic to expect experienced members to monitor this BB for n00b answers. We have full time jobs and real lives and stuff. 

1. I'm not sure why it's a good idea to incentivize superfluous posting? The point of this forum is to provide and retain information. Would anyone find it helpful to wade through dozens of "what's your favorite cat color?"-type postings in order to find what they're looking for?
2. I am likewise sure that ~no one is intentionally giving bad advice that they know is wrong just to watch the world burn, but as in legal parlance, ignorance of the law excuses not: whether they're giving bad advice intentionally or not, they're still doing harm. And it's not realistic to expect experienced members to monitor this BB for n00b answers. We have full time jobs and real lives and stuff. 

I think it's a pretty standard situation: person does other things for a while, then considers going back to academia. Half the forum is in this situation.


You're not that important.


Maybe, maybe not. Why guess when you can easily find out.


Call the department or send an email and ask this question. How would we know what master's a specific program considers equivalent?


Do you want to be a history professor? Do the PhD. Do you want to do something besides being a history professor? Don't do the PhD.

Domestic students are eligible for in-state tuition.
Departments waive the tuition for you (i.e. you don't have to pay it), but that doesn't mean that money doesn't exchange hands inside the university. Teaching you, maintaining your lab, your office space, etc. actually costs the university money - and they have to pay it to the graduate school or whoever. 
Public universities are being subsidized by government (mostly state) money, and the justification for that support is that public universities exist to educate the residents of that state. That's why they have in-state tuition and out of state tuition, and why tuition at most publics is lower than at equivalent privates. As a non-US citizen, you're technically not eligible for that support. 

Hi! I am in a history PhD program and also went to law school, so I have a bit of insight--though I also did my BA in history. My first piece of advice would be to talk to historians and current history grad students about your interests--sometimes people who are passionate about history find that academic history is different/not at all what they imagined it would be. What attracts you to this discipline exactly, and could you do the kind of work you want to do by going down an academic legal path? Legal articles are good but they're very, very different to history journal articles and the latter will weigh far more when you're applying to history programs. I don't want to say that articles are "better" than teaching but they speak to your ability to do academic research/to go through the process of peer-review etc, and that can be more relevant than teaching experience to the question of whether you're going to be a successful doctoral candidate. Admissions committees do care about this stuff--given that you don't have an academic history background, they'll need to see evidence that you know what it means to be an academic historian and that you've taken some steps towards working towards that career, even if that just means doing some independent research. In your position I'd strongly recommend an MA program, especially if you can find one that's funded. Aside from giving you the opportunity to create a solid writing sample, publish journal articles, and get to know your field, an MA will give you a sense of whether academic history is actually for you. 

I think it's a pretty standard situation: person does other things for a while, then considers going back to academia. Half the forum is in this situation.


You're not that important.


Maybe, maybe not. Why guess when you can easily find out.


Call the department or send an email and ask this question. How would we know what master's a specific program considers equivalent?


Do you want to be a history professor? Do the PhD. Do you want to do something besides being a history professor? Don't do the PhD.

I think it's a pretty standard situation: person does other things for a while, then considers going back to academia. Half the forum is in this situation.


You're not that important.


Maybe, maybe not. Why guess when you can easily find out.


Call the department or send an email and ask this question. How would we know what master's a specific program considers equivalent?


Do you want to be a history professor? Do the PhD. Do you want to do something besides being a history professor? Don't do the PhD.

I think it's a pretty standard situation: person does other things for a while, then considers going back to academia. Half the forum is in this situation.


You're not that important.


Maybe, maybe not. Why guess when you can easily find out.


Call the department or send an email and ask this question. How would we know what master's a specific program considers equivalent?


Do you want to be a history professor? Do the PhD. Do you want to do something besides being a history professor? Don't do the PhD.

You need to demonstrate an current visa stamp and current I-20 in order to enter the US. To remain in status in the US, you just need a current I-20. I'm not sure what you mean by a separate process so I can't answer that question, sorry.

The letter is issued by the university, the I-20 by the US. Since it's a migration document, it doesn't need to match. My I-20, for example, runs longer than my program! The most important aspect of the I-20 is having it is signed. If your I-20 is not signed properly and periodically, you may not get into the US no matter how long the document is valid for. 
When I was away doing research, for example, I couldn't get it signed every semester because I was abroad. As a result, for returning, my university issued a second I-20 that they sent to my research site. 
The visa is a different thing and, yes, they can be of different lengths. Actually, I recently renewed my visa because I got a 6th year fellowship and they gave it to me for five more years, even though I only showed evidence of funding for one. 
So there you have it: program, I-20, and visa with different dates. What's important is that at the moment of entering the US you have a valid visa, a recently signed I-20, and a passport valid 6 months into the future. 
*disclaimer: I am not an immigration expert, I just have 6 years of experience. YMMV*

*pursue. peruse means to read carefully.
- be an RA under a professor and hopefully get the research published with your name on it
- do an independent study, a thesis, or some other large independent research project (again, under the guidance of a professor)
- attend a professional conference, maybe present some research at it
- post this in the sociology subforum, or at least read the sociology subforum.
reading journal articles in the field isn't a bad idea, but I don't know if that's the most pressing concern, nor do I know that it's a good idea to do read them in a directionless kind of way (but perhaps because I struggle to do so myself). Reading widely inside your field, and deeply in your area of concentration, is important to develop the kind of contextual knowledge that will help you produce good research and good written application materials; but it's more important to demonstrate that you can produce research rather than just consume it.

Oh my god I love @Sigaba. He's so ruthless.
OP, read the damned site. There's 10 years' worth of application discussions here. You'll get more from conducting your own reading and forming your own opinions based on what discussions prior users have had than you will from posting naive questions and relying on whoever answers. I've started to dislike people directing OPs to the search bar, especially in pompous form, but for a budding scholar (or adult), it really is useful to develop the instinct to first attempt to resolve your problems independently rather than immediately asking for help.

Oh my god I love @Sigaba. He's so ruthless.
OP, read the damned site. There's 10 years' worth of application discussions here. You'll get more from conducting your own reading and forming your own opinions based on what discussions prior users have had than you will from posting naive questions and relying on whoever answers. I've started to dislike people directing OPs to the search bar, especially in pompous form, but for a budding scholar (or adult), it really is useful to develop the instinct to first attempt to resolve your problems independently rather than immediately asking for help.

It is never time to panic. As stressful as graduate school will be, the worst case scenario is that you go on with your life. You don't have a gun pointed at your head as someone wants to take something that you're not going to let him have. You're not living though a natural catastrophe. You're not going through a once in a century global economic meltdown.
As a rule of thumb, I recommend that when listening to the grousing of graduate students that one ask bluntly, "Have you spoken to Professor Xavier about your concerns?" More often than not, the answer is "no." 
I also recommend that one considers where a graduate student is in a program. The cares and conceits of a graduate student who is pre-quals can be vastly different than those of a student who has been around longer.
The age and life experiences of a graduate student can also be important. A "non traditional" graduate student may have perspectives that are vastly different than a traditional graduate student who is heavily invested in a program. As an example, when it was my turn to hand off information about writing qualifying exams for a particularly difficult professor (read: POS/#NOTBITTER), the recipient of that information, a retired USAF pilot with combat experience, laughed as I ranted. (Later, this gravel-voiced warrior shrugged as talked about having terminal cancer.)

The short answer is no. Unfortunately, competition always exists, and negative things do happen with competition. Let's forget about the issues between professors. From what I see, you are concerned that your advisor is like her other students describe. I would suggest that you wait until you get to meet her to know more about her. Based on that, you will have better ideas to communicate with her more effectively. 
I am giving my own example of my PhD advisors, *Cecilia and *Andy. Many students describe *Cecilia as demanding, uncaring, and someone difficult to work with. I do agree in part that she is a harsh advisor, but she is actually very dedicated to help students succeed. She is the one advisor who bothers to read and re-read students' drafts, and she always gets back to students in a timely manner. On the other hand, almost everyone describes *Andy as a "nice gentleman". However, when I brought up to him that I wanted to finish my dissertation before working on more experiments, he stopped reading my drafts. He yelled at me whenever I asked for feedback. He even refused to sign off my PhD until my other advisors stepped in. However, he asked his other student to finish her dissertation before working on more experiments to publish her paper. So, you will never know. 
Be confident in your choice that she is the advisor whose interest/expertise fits with yours. This is very important for any grad program. 
All the best!

By being authentic.

If you have 10 years experience, you're in a different category. The standard policy programs are for people with 2-5 years experience, whereas people with your level of experience tend to go for executive programs. 
That said, without knowing what your experience is, with 10 years of policy (not admin assistant, not random barista job) experience, you are competitive anywhere.

The first tip would be not to rely on getting insanely competitive scholarships to fund your grad school. For instance, UK programs notoriously have little funding, especially for internationals, and it is further unwise to treat professional graduate school as a study abroad opportunity. Unless two things are true: the program is substantially cheaper than your other options, or you plan to work in the country after you finish (which, if you don't have a UK passport, is going to be a tougher nut to crack than scholarships), get your degree in the States.
I can't speak to famous scholarships, but based on my personal/hearsay experience getting institutional scholarships, the two important factors are having your hard stats in good order and articulating why you'd be an asset to the program in a way that makes sense to them. I got funding everywhere, but my biggest funding was at a program that makes an accent on preparing people for the subfield I'm in at organizations where I have a network. 
You may want to read the relevant subforum. There's lots of good info there.

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

You have a great profile, but in the US students don't go to professional programs directly out of undergrad, so programs want 2-3 years of full time post-college experience. You'll still get into all of these schools, but your lack of work experience will adversely affect your ability to get (non-negligible) funding. The potential exception to that is Stanford, as it's not a typical policy program. I don't recommend taking out 6 figure loans for a policy degree as an international student with no policy work experience.

Thanks for the lecture, but 
1. I'm referencing RuPaul. I know POC doesn't just mean black.
2. What does race have to do with whether or not OP can attend SAIS part time?
I'm sure I just misunderstood, but jfc you trolls need to gtfo with this holier than thou bullshit

Thanks for the lecture, but 
1. I'm referencing RuPaul. I know POC doesn't just mean black.
2. What does race have to do with whether or not OP can attend SAIS part time?
I'm sure I just misunderstood, but jfc you trolls need to gtfo with this holier than thou bullshit