samiam

In my country, you can get an 'emergency appointment' at the US Consulate if you meet certain criteria, and one of the options is that you are an F1 student who only just got their I20 issued and whose program is about to start. Might be worth looking into.

I have had blue streaks in my hair for the last couple of years, working in an organisation that sits somewhere between professional and academia, and have had no problems with it. I plan to keep them for grad school, maybe add some green too. I do have them done in such a way that I can pretty much hide them if I need to - I have my hairdresser leave the very top layer my natural colour so if I pull it back in a bun and comb it the right way you can't see them. But I only bother to do that once or twice a year, for an unusually formal/stuffy meeting or presentation.

If you post this in the Computer Science forum, someone who went through the process last year might be able to help you. No guarantee the prompts will remain the same, though.

It's hard to make many suggestions without more info. What field do you want to work in? In what part of the world? What nationality are you (may matter for some programs/visas)?

How will it pay for itself? If you mean it is 'worth it' in terms of experiences, networks etc, then maybe, but that doesn't translate into the cold hard cash you need to pay back your loans. The Harvard name won't get you higher pay for government work (see, for example, numerous posts on this board talking about govt hiring scales), and most non-profits in the field the OP is interested in don't have spare cash to throw around just for prestige - it might get you a couple of thousand extra in salary if you're lucky, but that's not going to make much of a dent in $100K+ of debt. HKS might get you better access to the top consulting firms, which will give you serious cash if that's what you want to do, but that's not what most people who do MPP degrees want to do.

I'm pretty familiar with the Australian university system, although not particularly with The University of Sydney or this program. I'd be very wary of doing this in place of a US degree from a top or mid-tier school. Australia doesn't have a long history of professional masters programs, so many of them are much more like an MA. In general, they have very little quant content, which you may or may not care about. There's usually much less teaching by practitioners than in the US, partly because there's far less of a culture of individuals moving between practice and academia. The Australian security community is small, and much of it is based in Canberra, rather than Sydney, which would further hinder your access to practitioners. That's on top of what others said above about making connections for jobs. Sydney is indeed a good school, and it's a fun city - although expensive to live in. If you want to live there for some other reason, and have the money, go for it. And for someone who wants to work in the Australian security community, and is paying local tuition rates, this course is probably a good plan. But in general, there's no way I'd pay US-level tuition fees for an Australian public affairs-related degree.

Previous Schools (Name, type, or tier): Top tier in my home country, but pretty much unknown internationally. Previous Degrees and GPAs: Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Arts, Graduate Certificate in Public Policy. We don't have GPAs, but my BSc was equivalent to first class honors and the BA and GCPP to upper second class honors. GRE Scores (Verbal/Quantitative/Analytical Writing): 170/158/5.5 Previous Work Experience (Years, Type): 9 years full-time as a policy analyst/adviser in a mix of government agency, political and think-tank roles in my home country, including at some nationally significant organizations. Math/Econ Background: A bit of undergraduate statistics as part of a research year in my BSc; some non-quant 'economics for public policy' courses at graduate level. Foreign Language Background (if applicable to your program): None Intended Field of Study in Grad School: Domestic policy Long Term Professional Goals: Roles in government, think tank and advocacy organizations in my home country. Schools Applied to & Results: Admitted: Princeton WWS MPP; HKS MC/MPA; Columbia SIPA MPA; NYU Wagner MPA; and Georgetown McCourt MPM. I also applied to the LSE MPA, but withdrew my application before they made their decision. Funding: WWS offered me full tuition plus a stipend; SIPA offered around $30K over two years; nothing from the others. Ultimate Decision & Why: Princeton WWS MPP. I ideally wanted a one-year mid-career program, so WWS and HKS were always my top two choices. The funding offer from WWS made this an easy decision. I can see pros and cons to each program (e.g. careers services vs breadth of course choice), but nothing at HKS made it worth an extra $80K+ in out-of-pocket costs, especially since I don't expect either degree to significantly change my earning potential post-graduation. Advice for Future Applicants: 1. If you're looking at mid-career policy programs, don't freak out too much over the quant requirements - as you can see above, I didn't have any serious quant training before applying. I used what I had (some undergrad stats, an OK-but-not-great GRE score, and some quant work experience) to show that I wasn't scared of math, and explained in my essays that one of the reasons I wanted to do a grad degree was to build my quant skills. 2. Reputation isn't everything, but if you're not from the US and want to return home eventually after graduating, then do think about how the 'name' will work back home. I didn't apply for a couple of schools that I know have good programs because no-one here has ever heard of them, and would have no idea that they're top-tier schools in the US rather than just Random U. 3. It took me a while to work out that lots of the advice on this board is very focussed on diplomacy, development or international affairs. Views on program quality, reputation etc won't necessarily carry over to domestic policy, so if that's what you're interested in, take comments here with a grain of salt and do your own research.

I agree with the last couple of comments - if you're that undecided about what you want to do, hold off on further study. It's just going to defer that uncertainty down the track. Another factor is that you will probably get significantly less value out of your classes if you don't have real work experience to give some context to the material you're learning. I really noticed this when I did my first grad classes - the gulf between the students with even a couple of years of work experience and those straight out of undergrad was huge.

Can you defer the Maxwell offer for a year? You say you love your job now, but you might find in a year's time that you have learnt all you can from it and are starting to feel stale, which would then be the ideal time to go back to school. It also gives you a year to save as much as you can so you can be under less financial pressure from loans etc once you are looking for a post-graduation job.

Once you've set up your computer ID, go back to the email you got from Princeton notifying you of admission. There's a link in that email to view your offer.

Don't think so. I got a Dean's Leadership Scholarship for first year, which seems to be tuition remission with no additional work required, as well as a promise of an assistantship for one semester of second year (contingent on maintaining a particular GPA).

I applied for the MPA and did get offered funding. I'll be declining though, so it may well be available for someone else.

That's the link I used. Once you've logged in and selected your application, the status page says: Status Update An update to your application was last posted March 17, 2014. View Update >> And clicking on View Update takes you to a decision letter. They seem to be taking their time putting them up, though, so yours may not be there yet.

I think they're putting them up gradually - when I checked a couple of hours ago mine still said 'application submitted', checked an hour later and my letter was there. Best of luck!

I'm in, with some funding.

No worries. If I was thinking about attending, I'd definitely be chasing it up! Since I'm not, I just thought I'd post it here in case it's useful for others.

I just got the follow-up email too - no funding for me. The content re the PER requirement is very odd. The requirement is that you must either: Enter NYU Wagner with at least two years of full-time, degree relevant, professional experience or Complete a minimum of 280 to 560 hours in a degree relevant job or internship while attending NYU Wagner and before enrollment in Capstone. (Professional Experience Requirement) My email says: After a thorough assessment of your application, the Graduate Admissions Committee has determined that you will be required to fulfill this Professional Experience Requirement (PER) as a part of your degree program before enrollment in Capstone. I've got more than seven years of professional full-time experience in a mix of government policy roles and policy think-tanks. I would have thought that would count for the purposes of the first option - it was enough to get me offers for mid-career programs at other places - but it seems not. I'm not going to follow it up with them as I don't intend to accept the offer anyway, but it suggests that their review process is a bit idiosyncratic. It might be worth questioning for others with some experience who are told the need to fulfil the PER.

They claim to fully fund all MPP students (full tuition and stipend) who don't have an external scholarship, and that 90 per cent of all MPA students get some financial assistance: http://wws.princeton.edu/admissions/mpa/financial-aid http://wws.princeton.edu/admissions/mpp/financial-aid I've never heard anything that refutes that.

I applied for Dubin, and have been offered admission to HKS, but haven't heard anything about an interview. So I'd take it as a good sign for you that you have!

I'm in!!!! Really didn't expect this. My commiserations to those who didn't get in - I really hope that you find a great place somewhere. Email says "The details of your admission offer will be forthcoming by the end of next week", which I presume will include funding info.

Heard from a friend who's a current WWS student earlier today - the word there is that decisions have been made and should be released soon (which I understood as 'whenever in the next few days fits their timeline and processes' not 'in the next few hours).

As an international applying for US schools I agree with this. If I was applying for schools in my own country, I wouldn't even go looking for something like GradCafe, because it's not going to add much to what I can find out from talking to people I know. But I hardly know anyone who's been to grad school in the US, and all of those went to one of two well-known programs. These boards are a really useful source of info for the unoffical take on what schools are like and their comparative strengths and weaknesses, as well as all kinds of hints about US academic culture. And once you've found them, it's a great source of community for people who don't have others around them who understand what the application process is like and can empathise with you as you go through it (again, because it's relatively unusual for people to go to US grad schools, most people have no idea how it works). Even writing this message I've realised something I've picked up from here: calling the place you do your study a 'school'. I'm from an English-speaking country, but we would never talk about 'going to grad school' - most people wouldn't understand what that meant. You'd say you were applying to universities; 'school' here means K-12.

I'm into the MC/MPA. Both excited and relieved - this is the first decision I've had. Congrats to the other admits, and commiserations to those who didn't get in - sending you good wishes for an admit elsewhere.

National Urban Fellows looks great - but requires US citizenship, which I don't have. I'm looking into the MPA Accelerated program at UC Denver. Thanks for this. It does look like an interesting program, but it's an international affairs program and my field is domestic policy, so it's not for me.

From the results search, it looks like they sent notices out between 8-11 March last year.