samiam

You're too late for this year - applications for Fall 2015 have closed at pretty much all schools worth attending.

This is more of an observation than a tip: I was surprised by how long it took me to get back into the habits of studying, having been out of education for a few years. Before I went back to school I had a job that was often long hours, but once I left for the day, my time was my own. Being a student was totally the opposite - I only had 12 hours a week of classes, and had to work out how to schedule the rest of my time (I am doing a coursework Masters so don't have research obligations). I never felt like I was 'off duty' - no matter what I was doing, I could in theory have been studying (even though I don't need to study constantly to do well in these classes). At the same time, the temptation to spend the afternoon drinking coffee with friends was always there, because 'I can always study later'. So you might want to think in advance about how you'll handle that dynamic.

There are lots of reasons people might block others on Facebook, many of which have nothing to do with who your friends are. I wouldn't read anything into that.

Don't stress. I found a typo in the first line of my writing sample for one of my schools, and I got accepted.

Anecdotes are not data, but I sent mine in only hours (and in a couple of cases minutes) before the deadline and got acceptances. So I don't think it matters on their end.

Is it 600 words or 600 characters? You say different things in different posts. If you have 600 words, definitely provide more detail along the lines of what Peachypie and jetvermillion suggested. Even if you only have 600 characters, there's a lot of 'filler' in what you wrote that you could take out so you can include more specific info e.g. They know all this already (who you're writing to, why you're writing, and that you want the to take this info into consideration).

Have you asked them about your proposal to audit and retake? Each school has its own rules for such things - they are the only ones who can tell you whether this is possible, and also what the consequences are for failing a class.

Georgetown has a 12 month Master of Policy Management: http://mccourt.georgetown.edu/academics/mpm

You only emailed him yesterday? Slow down. He probably has a million things to do, and a potential future student is unlikely to be at the top of his priority list. If you haven't heard anything in a week, then send a short, polite reminder by email.

Michigan and Berkeley are the names I most closely associate with education policy. Another option would be Harvard Kennedy - you can take courses from the Harvard Graduate School of Education as part of their MPP or MPA.

What sort of work do you want to do? It's hard to say much about whether a degree will improve your employability without knowing that.

I can't speak for MAs, but MPPs are not designed as a stepping stone to a PhD. They are professional programs intended to prepare people for jobs in public policy or administration, not for academia.

I echo what chocolatecheesecake said above about talking to people about your specific circumstances. For what it's worth, I'm about to start a mid-career MPA. I've chosen to do this rather than a two-year program for several reasons. (1) Cost - half the tuition fees and half the foregone income. Neither a one year or a two year would add much to my earning potential, so that's a wash. (2) Time - I think a year in the classroom will be enough for me. If I decide I want to wait another year before going back to my career, I'd rather spend it interning/volunteering somewhere left-field that I couldn't do professionally otherwise. (3) Flexibility - most two-year programs have multiple compulsory courses, most one-year programs have few or none so you can focus on what you want to do. (4) Peer group - I think I'll learn a lot from being around people who also have significant work experience under their belt. PM me if you want to discuss further.

Does your school have a gay student support group? Might be worth having a chat with them, as they may have a sense of what the reaction might be in your department.

You might get more advice if you post this in the Computer Science forum: http://forum.thegradcafe.com/forum/33-computer-science/

Why are you applying for this particular course and not (for example) an MBA? Why are you applying to this particular university and not a management and marketing degree somewhere else? Presumably because you think it has something to offer that is better suited to what you want to learn, and what you want to do afterwards. If you don't know, perhaps you need to do some more research before applying, as the course might not be the right fit for you.

Before you go into meet them, I suggest you write down a chronology (and take it with you to the meeting) - what courses you took when, what credits you think you had when, what advice you were given at different times about what more you needed to do. That might make it easier to work out the difference between what they think is going on and what you think.

That's a massive amount of debt and could really cripple the choices you make for the rest of your life (e.g. whether you can ever buy a house, take time off to have kids etc). Sit down with a calculator and work out how much you will have to pay each month, compared to the average salary in your field.

Which airport? Some are much faster to get through than others.

Yes, it does.

Regardless of whether you could get into a good school and get funding, my advice is to wait. You are likely to get way more value out of a professional Masters program if you have a couple of years of real-world experience under your belt to give context to what you learn. There's a reason the top programs prefer people to have experience first. Presuming you'll only go back to school once (most people do), it will be a much better use of your time and money to do it in a couple of years. And as WinterSolstice said, it's entirely possible you may change your mind about what you want to do anyway, once you've actually spent some time in the workforce. Also, writing applications takes a lot of time and effort - you'd be better off putting that time into finding a relevant job. Do take the GRE this year though if you can - the scores last for five years, and I suspect it's easier to do that now while you're in the habit of studying and test-taking, rather than after you graduate.

There's not nearly enough information in your question for anyone here to give you sensible advice. What do you want to do when you graduate? How much will each program cost you? What do you think are their strengths and weaknesses? Are you a US or international student? What education background and work experience do you have so far? All of those things are just as much, if not more, relevant to your decision than whether the university is famous.

There's a thread in the Government Affairs forum specifically for assessing people's chances at MPPs - you'll probably get a better response there.

Inspired by this post does anyone feel like sharing the phone and tablet apps that they find most useful for school? (I finished my undergrad ten years ago, when smartphones didn't exist, so I'm sure there's all sorts of fantastic things out there I have no idea about.)

Did they give you any hint as to when we might hear? I have to be on campus at the end of July, and am pretty keen to know where I'll be living.