betun

That's your call but from personal experience there isn't anything wrong with asking directly but politely. Had considered SNRE but did not apply as I did not have official transcripts available from my university on time. Otherwise I would have applied. I only applied to Duke Nicholas among the three you mentioned and got selected. However, I am also considering public affairs programs with environmental concentration at a couple of ivies and the MDP program at Berkeley; as they have given fellowship offerings within similar range, decision is tough. Would be finalizing soon.

If you cannot afford it and would like to receive more funding, state that in a professional email or call one of the persons in the admission committee. There are several threads on negotiation where people have successfully increased funding by just asking for more.

Six. Accepted in four. Would ideally have wanted to apply to two others as well and dropped one of my actual applications to make it seven. I could not apply to those two mainly because i had technical issues getting my official transcripts ready from my university and I ran out of time. None of my applications were to safety schools and I could join any of them. Hence I am having great difficulty selecting the right program for me at this time. Decisions. Decisions.

I cannot claim to be an expert in this regard. I am just putting my opinion here for all its worth. The MEM or equivalent programs are suited for practitioners. It is true though that the course content might be more generic but if the program is flexible in choosing courses, a student could specialize by choosing PhD level coursework provided he/she meets prerequisites. I think that you should scrutinize the curriculum and speak to students to get an idea of how much depth the masters program would go into in terms of research and whether the courses are meant to give an overview of give expertise. These programs are meant to be platforms to a professional career and not designed for further research/ academia. However, based on previous background and coursework undertaken, these could serve as platforms for a PhD. It is just that the aim of these programs is to impart adequate skills for working competently in the field. Whether an M.S is considered professional or not is dependent on what its graduates do after graduating. A program being professional does not mean that its research quality is the lesser for it. Would prefer more expert opinions on this though. P.S: I too got into Duke.

I do not think GRE scores are as important to the file as may seem so. The writing samples plus LORs carry greater weightage. Except in some highly technical or quantitative programs, scoring a decent high score is enough.For eg, SAIS as students scoring very high GRE scores with third quartile scores in the 160s. Scoring above 150 is usually ok enough for most programs even in the topmost universities as I have seen very a great range in GRE scores on websites of the programs I applied to which were all top varsities. Usually 70th percentile scores are good enough. Having said that, GRE is an area which could be used to add weightage to an application, especially for international students whose universities are not very well known and with no GPA system for easy transcript evaluation. It was my GRE score which motivated me to apply to the universities I finally applied to. However, I should have worked on my writing samples sooner and I would suggest applicants to read up more about programs and get great writing samples through rather than fret too much about GRE. As I am working, I could not put much time into GRE preparation and I did not attend any GRE tutorials. I just tried to improve my aptitude in general through test and non test-material and this I did for quite a few months but very sporadically. Worried about the unstructured manner of my GRE preparation and the fact that I did not want to take a single mock till I was 'ready', I did not take GRE until October when my mother literally forced me to take it immediately. I got a great score but thinking about the GRE made me think less about what schools should apply to and why. That is far more important. I did not get into one program because I did not fit a prerequisite requirement( most probably). In a couple of others, I could not apply as I could not arrange official transcripts on time. My delay in taking the GRE made me think about writing the actual application much later. I could not apply to two because I did not discover the program till after deadlines. I applied to every program on deadline day and pretty much wrote my SOPs in a day or two or even less though you could say that my mind must have been working on them before I put pen on paper. I would highly recommend not having such a stressful application process as mine due to a GRE focus. I scored 170 VA 167 QA and 5.0 AW and it was my first attempt.

@pecadoIs your statement pertaining only to Philosophy applications or to any discipline?

Yep. Very late results.

Congratulations to everyone who made it. @jpfreeman4 weeks would be a dashed long wait for me as I got an acceptance mail only three days ago. My fault of course as I finished my application with the interview only on 10th Feb. @OpusMPAGood to hear that fellowship awards aren't etched in stone. So far I have received quite limited fellowship funding from the programs I have been accepted into.

I got into SIPA in the ESP program and CIPA. Just Chicago Harris decision pending now among public policy programs I applied to. I wonder why I haven't come across CIPA in the forum thus far.

Thanks. 15th January for Columbia. 8th January for Berkeley. Both on deadline days.

Thanks. I have a Columbia MPA-Environmental Science and Policy admit as well plus some more results expected in March. Decisions will need to be taken. Which country are you from?

Ok. Best of luck. I got into the program and am scheduled for a funding discussion. Was informed by email in last week of January but admission letter from the Berkeley Graduate School is yet to be received.

Got a mail from columbia SIPA that my decision is ready to be viewed online. Then I logged in and downloaded the letter which was shown as an account update.

Applied to MPA-ESP( Environmental Science and Policy). Very pleasantly received an online admission letter with $5K on 25th Jan, a very fast response as I had applied on the fellowship deadline of 15th January. Even the snail mail arrived in india at my residence today. The alacrity is tilting me towards this program. Have not seen anyone else applying to this program this year on the forums. Anyone?

Ok I will try to be as objective as possible and remember I critique my essays the same way, though I wote very few. I scored 5/6 in Oct 15, my primary weaknesses being slow typing speed and proclivity for typos. It is hard to get 6 without doing a 650+ word essay. Yours is a fair essay and would merit 4 most probably. The structure is good and what ETS wants. It is too short though, inside 400 words. There are some spelling mistakes which aren't typos and need to be corrected. Run the essay on spellcheck and you will see. The high scoring essays are ones with insight and topic development. This is missing here. You could have given more examples. Even in the example you mentioned, you could have further clarified what you meant by contrasting viewpoints. The terrorism example is way too short and poorly developed. Insight means thinking more about the issue in greater depth. You are also making unwarranted assumptions in your essay. For eg. 'The dicision may have been bad, but this will only be reflected in the future, when even healthy babies die due to mutations which were not analysed throughly before passing the bill. This can be totally prevented!' This statement is stated as fact, not conjecture. You are also calling something preventable without presenting supporting evidence. Something wrong can get through after analysis as well. You could have instead made the same point with 'this may only be...., when even...may die...the bill.Such a happening could have been prevented/could be preventable. 'This dichotomy' is not following from the previous para. It made better sense if it followed from the para before that in which a dichotomy was actually pointed out. I could analyze this essay in greater depth if you want but another essay would be better practice. That's what I did.

Applied. Dec 15. Fingers Xed. No environmental experience bugging me in my application.

Did you apply? What other areas of application do you consider your strengths?