WhatAmIDoingNow

I do not know that grading system, but is that a bad GPA for engineering? Did you take any social science, statistics, economics courses? Did you do well in those? I started my BA in a hard science field and had average grades for the program. The grades look horrendous taken out of context and compared to someone is a social science program. I was able to get into an MPA with my GPA from my last two years of undergrad, a strong SOP, and a good work history. A good GRE and SOP, with work experience, can overcome bad GPAs for some schools. If you can take a graduate level course related to PA or PP, then take one to show that you are serious and capable.

The tax breaks are amazing! Paying off a bunch of debt on the first tax return.

If it is important to your family and you trust them, you can delegate the planning to them and have the ceremony over the summer or winter break.

Skype or Facetime once a day, switch off on visiting each other every month. We were 1000 miles apart, so monthly flights may become bimonthly if finances are stretched. For the visits, we always made sure that the whole weekend was devoted to the visit. All school work was completed prior to the visit. With the school schedule, vacations are easier to plan with the large breaks. We after the first semester, we started to plan vacations where we would meet up in a different city when flights were a good price.

Married here. My biggest concern is the toll that academic careers can take on relationships. Watching people get tenures and divorces is disheartening. My husband and I included this issue when making decisions about our careers, me with academia and he not with academia. Being cognizant of our relationship's needs and balancing "us" with our professional growth has a heavy influence our decisions for sure.

When you are married and get accepted the first question is one of the following: "How does [husband] feel?" "What does [Husband] have to say?" "What will [Husband] do?" "What does [Husband] think about this?" "What does [Husband] want you to do?"

We looked at the cost and logistics of planning a wedding for our family members to attend and just went to the courthouse with a couple of our friends. Between the cost of a wedding, our families being big and dispersed across the US, and not knowing where we will be 6 months from now... it wasn't worth the hassle. We also are not religious and have been together for ages. We will have an anniversary party for family to attend. The only universities with affordable wedding costs are at WashU (https://eventmanagement.wustl.edu/weddings/), and Duke (https://chapel.duke.edu/visit-events/reservation-requests/weddings). My experience with programs is it is up to the student to make their life work around the program. Universities publish their calendars years in advance, outline program expectations for every year of the program, and give other notices as far in advance as possible. I would say that you need to prioritize which is more important. You can cram the wedding in during a fall holiday, delay your grad school admission and focus on the wedding, or hold off until another season for the wedding. If you decide to cram the wedding in, you should look at delegating to a planner. As MidwesternAloha stated, academics plan their lives as much as they can around the academic calendar. If you work with your program and mentors, they will do what they can to help you succeed. I knew many people who were pregnant their last semester of coursework and/or coordinated their weddings to fit the academic calendar. They had their families heavily involved with planning and coordinating the events.

Got my ASU admission on Saturday. It was a generic and automated email to check my ASU account for the official letter, which was automated with no additional information. I will be calling mid week on this. ASU is my safety school. It has great faculty and the school, college, and university are really investing in the ASU School of Public Administration becoming a top PA school. Already has decent rankings. Students also have access to electives almost anywhere in the university, the biggest university in the US. There is also a lot of collaboration with faculty across schools and colleges, which it important to me. Some fantastic opportunities to beef up my quantitative methods and analysis. ENMC, that is still good news, even if it isn't the absolute answer you want. I have been watching the results page and all those applicants that get flat rejections...yikes. I got the same Evans message. It is nice to hear from them, that they are actually looking at the applications. Anyone else hearing anything?

For our masters, I applied a year before my husband(at the time he was my boyfriend of 5 years) and left the state. I had never actually been to the state my master programs were located, he had and liked the area. He wasn't ready to go back to school and wanted to add another year of work experience to his resume. He ended up applying and being admitted for the following fall to a program at the same university that I was attending. We ended up living apart for one year. Living apart sucks, but it does have a lot of perks. Time management was easier, because we set aside one hour per night to talk or Skype. We also switch off on flying out to visitir every month for an extended weekend. The rest of my time was designated to school work and my research job. This setup actually ended up being financially neutral, because the flight and a few dates once a month was close to our expenses for a whole month of eating out when we live together. For the PhD, we discussed me doing a PhD a year before I applied. We made the decision for me to take a pay decrease to stay in research for a year as I applied to programs, rather than take a better paying job outside of research. During the past year we have talked about the implications and I updated him on what I was learning about PhD student life and academia from my mentors and other PhD students. We also discussed the programs and locations as I researched and applied. Luckily the programs that fit with my interests are located in areas that we have both visited in the past for various reasons and are happy to move to for several years. As the admissions are coming in, we are discussing the logistics of how we can move and when we can get to the various locations. He is looking for jobs in the locations and we are projecting our hypothetical budgets for all locationso. It comes down to my decision, but he is heavily involved in the decision making process regarding quality of life, finances, and job markets. He is also doing his best to keep me sane during the whole application and program admission/rejection process.

I am interested in policy implementation in and across public and nonprofit institutions. There are not many programs that actually have projects around this area, Humphrey is has specialists in the exact area of research. I am still waiting to see about Evans, but will most likely be at Humphrey come fall. :-) Humphrey also has an international management conference that students can attend this summer, sounds interesting.

Evans just sent me an email that they are reviewing my application and will email the decision between February and mid-March. Although it is nice to have some information on whether or not they have my application.

I just got a call from at the Humphrey School and am admitted! I am so excited, my top choice

So the IBR is great and the public service forgiveness sounds great. The issues you need to keep in mind are that the qualifications and terms are ever changing. It matters when you apply and when you got your first federal loans. Every year the public service forgiveness is tinkered with. It used to be that you applied for it first, now you apply for it close to completing the terms (which are tinkered with every year). You must be working an average of full time (30 hours per week) for 10 consecutive years, making all your monthly payments (which can never be more than 12 days late). If you do not meet these terms, then you start over with your count. So keep this in mind if you take 3 months off of employment for some reason. .. If you apply for the reduced monthly payment program, there is the ability to fall back on their forgiveness, 15 to 25 years depending on the program and when you took out your first loan. OR, we all revolt.

Econ is important and if you get into a program, they will most likely still make you take an undergrad econ course. May as well take one while still in undergrad. There are many different econ courses you can take as an undergrad, if you are interested in learning.

Before I had submitted my application, I received an email from Evans stating that they were already reviewing applications and to still submit my application before the deadline of Jan 15th. Now i am wondering if they just wanted the extra $85.... Congratulations! Make sure to add to the results page. Wait, are y'all applying to the MPA program? That makes sense that they would be admitting students ahead of the application deadline.

You may want to add your results to the results page. No one has really posted results from those schools.

I am following ENMC over from his/her thread. Waiting on U of Minn Humphrey (12/01/14), U of Wash Evans (1/15/15), and ASU Public Affairs (1/15/15). I received a personal email from an ASU academic specialist that my application was complete when all my references posted. Other than that, silence. I was looking at previous years on GradCafe and applicants reported hearing from Humphrey in early February for the past couple years. Talking with professors, it looks like we should hear by early March from schools because of funding allocations and internal university deadlines.

Did you talk with any profs at Evans about strategy on applying? I was told that they have a hard time getting administration people through the first gate, the admission tend to favor masters of econ who go for straight policy analysis. There are some great profs working on institutional topics. My overarching interests are social welfare institutions, service delivery, and infrastructure. I am specifically interested in policy implementation, collaborative governance, and institutional risk prevention/response.. My wild hope is to be able to decide on a program, not have them decide for me. Which thread?

I believe Cornell has a PhD in Developmental Psych and JD program. I was momentarily intrigued until I snapped back to reality. So much school! You really need to go into grad school with an end game in sight. Need to start contributing to society at some point, not just taking classes.

I only applied to three for my master program and it worked out for the best. I only applied to schools that had courses and opportunities I valued, were in locations that I was willing to move to, and had the potential for low cost through affordable pricing or funding. There was the dream, safety, and whim. I was rejected from my safety school, wait listed for my dream school, and accepted at my whim school. The deadline to accept the whim school was before the wait list acceptances were to be announced, so I went with the whim. My whim actually ended up having far more opportunity for my field and research opportunities than the other two. It also ended up being cheaper than my in-state safety school with the funding I received. I am doing the same route with my PhD applications. If I don't get into the three schools that I have thoroughly researched for fit, then I would rather not do a PhD. I have met and worked with too many PhD students over the years that went to programs that do not fit with what they want to do and they were/are miserable. Quite a few never completed their dissertation. It is too big of a commitment to not fit with the program and there are other career opportunities out there.

Waiting on U of Minn Humphrey (12/01/14), U of Wash Evans (1/15/15), and ASU Public Affairs (1/15/15). I received a personal email from an ASU academic specialist that my application was complete when all my references posted. Other than that, silence. So my potential intellectual competitor, what faculty are you interested in working with? What areas of Policy do you hope to study?