pubpol101

come from? @Erminia_LL, El pichichi was the original source for the claim that decisions would be released on Dec. 16th. I'd doubt this information, but in any case, IHEID's website indicates that the official deadlines for early action notifications is mid-January. So we can wait until the 15th or maybe the 22nd before we email IHEID should anything go wrong.

That's what I'm thinking. However, I also looked at my SIPA essays, and there seemed to be too little room for me to elaborate exactly what I want to get out of my education, so it's possible that my essays were just weak. I discussed issues with intellectual certainty for SIPA, but my essays for HKS, WWS, UT Austin, USC, and IHEID go into much more detail. Chicago, the word limit was far too short for me to provide the details necessary. They did however seem to be more interested in getting to know applicants as a person, so I think I did well on their extra prompts (1) why public policy, 2) your intellectual curiosity 3) what you'll do in your spare time). I'm considering joining the Peace Corps or pursuing a Fulbright research scholarship I applied for, but unless I have no chance at getting significant funding for MPP/MPA/MIA programs, I'm keeping my mind set on these programs, so I'm hoping to see if I have no real chance/if I shouldn't bother applying to the remaining schools like Duke, CMU, MIT, and Yale.

I was just rejected by Columbia-SIPA. Considering SIPA's relatively high acceptance rate, this makes me particularly concerned about the quality of my profile, since I'm hoping to get admitted to top schools for fellowship funding and get near/full funding at lower ranked schools. My essays have changed significantly since my submission to SIPA, but does SIPA's rejection mean that I realistically have no chance of getting full tuition funding at any school? Or that I have no real chance of getting into a top-ranked school? I've been admitted to Indiana Bloomington, but with funding decisions coming out only in March, that admit doesn't have any real implications on my viability as an applicant yet. I'm an applicant coming straight out of college with a STEM degree (3.76 GPA, GRE: 164V, 165Q, 5.5 writing). Quick profile highlights: I'm graduating after two years in undergrad (graduated high school in 2014, finishing college in 2016). I've had research internships with materials on Boko Haram sent to the State Department, one with a think tank in Bolivia focusing on teenage pregnancy, and a current one with a consulting company for Afghanistan. I've had over two dozen publications in outlets like the Huffington Post, The Hill, Cornell International Affairs Review, and etc. My work has resulted in public retractions for original sources cited by leading outlets like the Washington Post, and has engaged organizations like Reform Immigration 4 America. I have macro/micro economics, calculus I/II, statistics, and a lot of history coursework through AP/IB scores. Bolded schools are where I'm hoping to get funding from, regardless of their admissions selectivity. Other schools are intended to be paired with nationally competitive fellowships. Applying: IHEID (MDev), SAIS (MA), HKS (MPP), UT Austin (MPaff), Chicago (MSCAPP), Princeton WWS (MPA), USC (MPP). Apps to finish: Duke (MPP), Carnegie Mellon (MSPPM), Yale Jackson (MA), MIT-DUSP (IDG group) (MCP). Additional apps pending. Rejected: Columbia SIPA MPA, Cambridge MPP. Accepted: IU-Bloomington MPA. Funding pending.

Have any of you thought about applying to Central European University? I just heard about the school. It seems to have funding opportunities comparable to IHEID and it performs well in international metrics like QS, but I know too little about it to determine whether its links to international organizations and its location factor (Budapest) are even comparable to LSE, let alone IHEID. Do you guys know of any other European (continental or UK) universities that provide lots of funding to their students and have good links with international organizations?

I've been looking at schools with early January deadlines for MPP/MPA/MIA programs, and I've been hesitant to apply to these schools as I haven't been confident on my chances of obtaining scholarships from these programs: Wisconsin La Follette GWU Trachtenberg GWU's Elliot School UCLA Luskin Can any of you provide info you've heard on the number of students that receive full tuition scholarship opportunities? Quick information about me: 3.76 GPA, GRE: 164V 165Q 5.5AWA. B.S. in biomedical sciences. Graduating in 2 years (2014-2016 for undergrad). No post-undergraduate work experience. Various research/writing/leadership experiences--Boko Haram, epigenetics, biophysics research. Writing at Huffington Post, The Hill, and many other publications. Various on-campus activities--leading large scale lobbying efforts for international development legislation, as well as awareness efforts for disease campaigns.

For my SOP, I was listing things that I'd do at a graduate professional school. I'd already named another professor I was interested in talking to, and just before I started describing my extracurricular plans, I said that I'd be interested in pursuing an assistantship with a professor who didn't exist at the target school. Could this be a deal breaker? I know that typos usually aren't deal breakers but I'm concerned that the fact that I named one professor from another school might indicate that I'm reusing the same essay format for many schools if they catch it. I have a lot of specifics about the target school in the essay (courses, curriculum appeals, extracurricular plans, one professor I'm interested in talking to, etc.) so I'm hoping that those things will draw attention away from the nonexistant professor I named.

Pressing "Fn" + "F12" will display the HTML code on the page for Chrome and internet explorer (I don't know about other browsers). Use ctrl + F to find the "hidden" sections. It should be there for everyone--changing the code on individuals' pages would be a pretty clumsy way to notify people of their decisions--acceptances, rejections, and deferrals--since there's already a section for that which is marked as "under consideration" for all of us at the moment.

It's possible that the deferral of admission as opposed to a waitlist will leave your application simply marked as "under consideration". It's unlikely for IHEID to conflate waitlisting and deferrals as both matters are useful for the admissions process.

I think we might be going a little too far in terms of our digging here. No one's checked the HTML code on that page earlier, so we don't have any comparison from a few weeks ago. We also don't know much about the text's relationship with our actual decisions--it could be just a general update for the page with our decisions still being set for release in mid-January still as opposed to Dec. 16. Even if decisions were set for Dec. 16 and this code is an indicator of that, unless someone goes through the actual code and can tell us if the text's visibility appearance is variable or if it is set, we have no idea on whether this could refer to our acceptance or denial. What would be interesting is if not every person has the invoices code on their page. In any case, I think it may be best to just wait until the 16th unless an email or a blog post from the office confirms the actual date of decisions. In spite of el pichichi's comments, when I asked the adcoms via the prospectives email, they said that decisions wouldn't be released until January, so nothing's certain here.

Still present here as well. I looked back earlier in the thread and no one's ever stated that the recs ever disappeared. For applicants here, only the required document list disappeared and that happened just about a week ago for some, if not all of us.

The vast majority of schools, whether for undergrad or grad, STEM or humanities, pay particular attention to your performance in subjects related to the field of study. So I'm certain that your 3.3 will not hold you back nearly as much as the "average" 3.3, since many students with similar GPAs may have had their strengths in gen ed courses or other subjects unrelated to their field of study. No one can make predictions on anyone's chances, aside from the 3.2/4.75 GPA minimum that they described, but what is certain is that your transcript's trends--improvement, performance in challenging subjects, and performance in relevant subjects, along with your extracurriculars--will be far more important than just the 3.2/4.75 numbers on their own. And besides, none of us even have any idea on the extent to which the 3.2 minimum is related to the actual median GPAs.

Here's some information that you guys might find interesting from the chat. 50% of students receive financial aid (full/partial tuition, along with those receiving tuition waivers and cost of living scholarships), and half of those students (25% of those) receive additional cost of living scholarships (full/partial). Whenever they say "scholarships" on their website (25%) they're talking about the cost-of-living scholarships. Also, contrary to their website, they said that a full third of the student body receive the cost of living scholarships, not just 25%. They said that they also look for minimum of a 4.75 GPA for admitted students. This indicates that that's roughly mid B, just below a B+. http://www.foreigncredits.com/Resources/Grade-Conversion/ . That GPA seems quite low when converted to the US scale (minimum 3.2 GPA?), especially with their 30% acceptance rate, so there are likely other factors like grade deflation over there that may cause them to have higher standards for international students/US. However, this is probably the only available minimum quantitative indicator of what grades we need to get in, and if we take it as a minimum, it may actually be accurate--setting the minimum bar at a 3.2 GPA, where 3.2s will need extraordinary extracurriculars to be admitted, might set the actual average GPA anywhere from 3.4 to 3.7.

Yeah I just found that out on some website! However, we still won't exactly know what that means until I get there. Between A, B, C, D, and E, we'll need a C/D average to be eligible for scholarships, but I don't have any information on the grade inflation/deflation at IHEID, or whether their "C" means the same thing as a "C" in the US.

My documents have disappeared as well. @El pichichi previously stated that this means a decision has already been made for you. I'm still not sure on his sources (he said that decisions will be available starting 12/16) but it's certain that your application is at least in the processing stages. If your app is "under consideration", you're fine at this stage. El pichichi might be right though--if you look at the September (which is when '16-'17 apps first opened) archive on archive.org, the deadline for notifications was mid-December. See https://web.archive.org/web/20150910141329/http://graduateinstitute.ch/home/admissions/application.html . Why did they change it to mid January? Will they hold to the earlier deadline and not the later deadline? I don't know. However, it's clear that their original plan for this year was to send notifications mid December. Regarding the 1000 CHF, even though the website states the Jan 30 commitment deadline, IHEID said in an email to me that all of us will have through March to finalize commitments. I'm not sure why they put the Jan 30 deadline there if I got the March/April deadline in writing from them.

Hey all, I found this interesting document from the Graduate Institute's Student Association. It broadly details the process associated with allocating scholarships on the basis of merit and indicators for need. For the merit side, students are ranked by each department on the qualities of their applications. Need is based on "20-30 indicators", and students are divided into various categories: A+/A/A-, where it is impossible for students to attend without financial aid; B+/B/B-, where students could possibly attend but would have a difficult time without aid; C where they have the means to enroll and are thus ineligible for aid; and D where aid applications are incomplete/inaccurate and students are therefore ineligible for aid. The document indicates that after C and D students are eliminated, priority is given to academic rankings (the whole application, not just GPA) to rank students for aid. Incoming students receive more funds than continuing students (they believe continuing students have a better chance at finding income), so this poses a risk and benefit for us: 1) this means that some of us receiving funds likely won't be receiving funds in our second year and 2) obviously, we're more likely to get funds. There are additional factors as well, since some funds are available to specific countries/programs/etc, as some funds are funded by various donors, as well as master's/PhD/departmental distributions. However, it seems like the more simple system of financial need and prioritized academic rankings will apply for the vast majority of us, especially for those of us outside of the EU, who won't be eligible for as many donor-funded scholarships. http://mygisa.ch/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Scholarship-Allocation-Process-IHEID.pdf So with this, it seems to be clear that need is like a mere checkbox for aid. After need is established, your merits as an applicant are the greatest determinant of the exact amount of aid you receive, though need can change some rankings if academic differences are small and need differences are large (like A+ vs. B- or maybe A vs. B). It should be noted that continuing students are ranked by GPA, "professors' input", and letters of recommendation, with a minimum 4.75 GPA (not sure on scale?) for scholarship eligibility. EDIT: I just found information on Switzerland's grading scales: http://www.studyineurope.eu/study-in-switzerland/grades A = 6 (excellent) ; B = 5.5; C = 5.0; D = 4.5; E = 4 (minimum passing grade)

I thought SIPA notifications are only sent this early for the Spring application. I contacted the admissions office and they said that people who are applying for Fall will receive the notifications late Dec. or early January. They've said the same thing on their blog.

Ok I see. I guess I'll hope for the best! An admit letter, along with decisions from Columbia and Johns Hopkins, would be a great Christmas present.

I contacted IHEID and all early bird applicants will have through March to submit the pre-registration fee, even though their website indicates the January 30 pre-registration deadline. We'll be fine. It's on the General Conditions as found on the Applications 2016-2017 page, aka that document we should've all read thoroughly before submitting our application This was not the case last year for sure, because I downloaded the 2015-2016 during the summer and assumed it would mostly be the same. A few days before I submitted my app though, I found this year's version and noticed the requirement for pre-registration fees. And yes, I do agree it would be reckless... hopefully this won't be as strict a requirement for students who applied for a scholarship? Who knows. And I'd like to know @El pichichi's sources too. I do feel both excited and anxious wondering what my decision could be, and honestly if it's a rejection I just want to get it over with already, haha! If not... well, that's a completely different story. I'd like more information on @El pichichi 's sources as well, especially given how I contacted IHEID and they specifically said that notifications will be sent mid-January. And how exactly does he know that the disappearing list of submitted documents mean that a decision has already been reached?

I just contacted IHEID. They said that notifications will be mid January, and not in December.

Is this the official word from IHEID? Where did you hear about this information? Their website says mid-January, but there seems to have been conflicting word on this on the forum. Some have even said (not sure if this is verified) that previous years have had their decisions deferred beyond IHEID's stated notification timeline, so any word verified with your source on them pushing their notifications ahead instead of behind the original timeline would be particularly interesting.

Has anyone heard of anything for IHEID applicants with backgrounds unrelated to IR/Economics/policy? I'm a development studies applicant majoring in biomedical sciences and graduating after two years of undergrad, so I'm afraid that I'll be at a significant disadvantage here--both in terms of my major and my age. I have a solid GPA (3.75), with writing experiences (HuffPost, The Hill, etc.), policy research (Boko Haram sent to the US State Dept., INESAD epigenetics, etc.), and some development-focused on-campus non-profit work, so I might have something going for me. Obviously, I have zero post-undergraduate full time work experience. However, with their website, they seem to be a bit more stringent on academic background requirements than many of the US schools I'm applying to.

Unfortunately, the Grad Cafe's survey profiles are the best compilation that I can find on the web. Because of the immense diversity of graduate admissions to schools around the world, there are no databases that are even remotely comparable to those that are available to undergraduate applicants in the US like Cappex and Parchment, which though still using data vulnerable to self-selection, have enough data points to give percentage estimates based upon extracurricular activities, GPA, and SAT scores. From what I've found, it's mostly guesswork and extensive searching for me--in addition to the Grad Cafe's survey profiles, I constantly look at posters' profiles in the forum, ask others different perspectives on my own profile, and Google people's CV's when their real names are available, noting what they had done by the year of admission. Ultimately however, I've recognized that it's virtually impossible for me to get a good data set, and even if I had a solid data set for a bigger picture, it'd be impossible to use it as different schools have drastically different expectations and perspectives. Beyond ruling out schools that are obviously out of reach and schools that we are clearly not interested in, we would serve our applications best by revising our personal statement as its paramount importance is the one thing that has been consistently noted by adcoms of nearly all grad schools I'm interested in applying to. On this, it seems as though IHEID places much greater emphasis on academic records than US universities. Word is that many more students are accepted without post-undergraduate full time work experience at IHEID than top US schools like Columbia SIPA and JHU-SAIS. I would expect that IHEID's demands for academic rigor and consistency would be considerably higher to maintain its ~30% acceptance rate.

My application has switched to "under consideration" as well. See http://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php?q=IHEID . One was an international economics applicant. 3.8 GPA, solid Q GRE, but lower (148) V score. Many rejected applicants didn't submit their GPA/GRE though. And the I.E. reject didn't submit any comments on work experience--just that "they only accept americans and french people".

Hello all, I applied to the Master in Development Studies at IHEID for their Nov. 15 deadline. In their factsheet, they stated that they have about 1800-2000 applications annually for all of their programs. They admit around 600-650 of those. In 2015, they admitted 647 out of 1864 applicants. Probably about a bit less than half of those admitted students enroll as the total master's student body is 518. While it should be noted that this includes PhD programs as well, this could serve as some sort of guidance for you all on the selectivity of IHEID. The acceptance rate isn't broken down by Master's or PhD programs. Looking at the GradCafe profiles, all of the accepted applicants that reported their results have a 3.4+ GPA, with varied GRE scores. On the other side, some with 3.8s or 3.9s have been rejected. I haven't heard anything on the probability of them informing us of the decisions early, but if they could or if anyone's confirmed with their admissions officers, that'd be wonderful. And yeah, as stated before by another individual, scholarships seem to be both merit and need based. On their website, they state that it's primarily need (note: need-based scholarships still require a strong rationale on why you cannot find the funding this year), but other documents published by IHEID (I can't recall which ones exactly) have stated that merit does play a substantial role in these scholarships.

Does anyone know of graduate programs that provide lots of funding to all admitted applicants? The only ones I know of are Princeton WWS and Notre Dame Kroc, but the former is ridiculously selective and the latter won't be accepting applications for the 2016 cycle.