sp108

People always have the option of working full time for a few years to save up money instead of jumping into MPP/MPA programs after little to no work experience. MBA programs require at minimum 3-4 years of work experience for a damn reason. There is also a reason why professional programs such as MPP/MPA programs are year-after-year increasing their average age/work experience of their incoming class. This has a few advantages: 1) More money saved up so you don't have to live dirt poor on ramen during grad school or in some extremely shoddy apartment. 2) More work experience means you have a better chance of getting into a top school (with more funding too). 3) Being in a professional environment longer will do wonders for your personality. What you learn in the real world will help you out in grad school when you are going through recruiting, resumes, working on team assignments, etc. You will have a more professional attitude and this extremely important. You are not in undergrad anymore. You will have more leadership opportunities in a professional environment which is only beneficial to you. 4) The professional connections. The longer you work, the more professional connections you develop. This is extremely important for any area. 5) Being in a professional environment longer will give you more opportunities to figure out what you truly want to do. 6) Guess who will have a bigger advantage when it comes to landing a job? The people with more work experience. Higher starting salaries, higher staff levels. TL;DR Obtain more work experience. It wont hurt you. You will even able to attend that dream school you wanted to go to because budgets and more funding will make it more feasible and this debt conversation wont be as big of an issue.

The appeal form has an attachment feature to attach all the funding letters you have from other schools. The appeal form also asks if you are a SIPA fellowship recipient. I did receive funding as well but I haven't submitted an appeal form yet. There definitely seems to be some inconsistency with the way they are going about with the appeals.

Here is what the appeal form says: Please complete the form below if you would like to appeal your award amount to the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid. Only one appeal form will be processed per applicant. You cannot submit multiple forms or an updated version, so please make sure all of your information is accurate and complete. All appeals must be received by April 15, 2015 at 5p.m. EST. Any appeals received after the deadline will not be processed. Note: You are highly encouraged to visit the Welcome Portal to accept your enrollment offer and pay the new-student deposit fee by the April 15, 2015 deadline. (Your username and password are in your admission-offer letter.) While appeals are rarely granted, special consideration is given to applicants who have already accepted their offer of admission to SIPA.\ What are the deadlines for all your other schools? There is really some risk and uncertainty in paying the deposit only to not get any funding at all or less than desirable funding. I would say it's really your call depending on how much you want to go to SIPA compared to your other schools.

Basically I emailed their financial aid office telling them how grateful I was to receive an admittance and funding. I also told them that SIPA is one of my top choices and I am seriously considering the program however I asked them if there would be an opportunity to get funding. I was just really nice about it. I looked over their reply and they sent me a link to an appeal form which asks me to attach funding offers from other programs. I verified this email with another person and he said he received the same reply. It's a generic email. Requesting an appeal wont hurt. All they will do is send a form to you. The catch is that you will have to wait til after April 15 when most schools deadlines are made. You will also have to pay their $2000 deposit to have somewhat of a chance at funding. Atleast this is the impression I got.

Original intent was to apply to 7-8. I researched over 15 schools and kept a spreadsheet for all the schools with pertinent information. I finally narrowed it down to 4 schools that I would be happiest at and that's where I applied. 2 of them were "matches" and the other 2 were "reaches".

I emailed them asking for an appeal for my funding. They sent me back a form to fill out. Also, I would need to send the $2000 non-refundable deposit before they consider me seriously for a funding appeal. I believe decisions wouldn't be made until after April 15 which is the deadline for 3 out of the 4 programs I applied too. So yeah. It's quite the risk. I received some first year funding but really...it's not enough.

You choose the program that has the curriculum you are more interested in. I was a finance undergrad and I worked in the private sector for a few years and was given leadership roles. I was also surrounded by lots of MBAs yet I decided it's not where I want to be in the future. I want to leverage my experiences towards the public sector and the MPP/MPA curriculums were far better for my long term interests. Trust me, it's not something you should regret if you are genuinely interested in MPP/MPA/IR programs. It's encouraged to get a few years of work experience before entering any sort of professional graduate program. You will truly figure out where you want to be with a good amount of work and life experiences. If you feel regret doing one thing over another thing, then my advice is to not enroll this year. Wait it out and get some different work experiences and figure out what you truly want to do. Choosing to go to a grad program requires patience and tons of thinking and research before you decide you want to do it. Being regretful about it is just no good and thats when you will feel your money is truly wasted.

No, the illegal part should be them withholding your account information from you. They should by no means be controlling your application. Never. Don't care who it is. They shouldn't be doing that.

100% Agree with this.

That should be.. like...illegal

Sorry new to this but why would an external scholarship provider have control over any persons SIPA account? It just doesn't make any sense to me. Both things are completely independent.

Why don't you obtain access to your account? You will need it anyway. Email them. Someone else's letter isn't going to help because the letter's are customized.

What about for people who received first year funding? Would they say the same thing? I am drafting up an email to send to them but trying to gauge how they would respond.

The results/people on gradcafe are a very poor sample to draw conclusions on and I think cannot be representative of the whole population by any means.

I am currently deciding between Heinz (55%), Duke (50%), and SIPA ($12K per year). I prefer all of them like equally so I am really torn. Each of them have their own unique positives and negatives. Sanford certainly seems worth it. SIPA's as well but living in NYC is something I am still debating!