To comment on the original post. It's not worth the debt. My final three choices came down to the Elliot School-GWU, The Institute of World Politics-DSS, and the Fairfax Virginia based Missouri State University Defense and Strategic Studies Program-DSS, a smaller lesser known school in the D.C. area. GWU didn't offer me any funding IWP offered a little bit. When I talked to the financial services guy at IWP he basically tried to talk me out of going to the school by comparing it to buying a new car every semester. GWU and IWP were both in the $50k region. At the Elliot School open house I talked to a graduate who now works at the GAO. I asked him if it was really worth the cost. After telling him about the cost of DSS, ($24,600 overall) less than $10,000 with a work study offer, he basically said the Elliot school wasn't worth $50 grand in debt if I could get a masters some where else a for fraction of the cost.
At first I was thinking about the big names that come with big debt, but now I have a chance of graduating debt free. DSS offers a faculty on the same caliber as the other big name schools, some of them have taught at places like Georgetown, West Point, and the National Defense University. The only compromises for going to an affordable school were on name prestige and program size.
It's not too late, DSS has a really late application for the Fall, July 20th; however, April 15th is the deadline to receive priority consideration for admission and merit-based scholarships.
http://dss.missouristate.edu/default.htm