aslabchu

Not yet, but it's looking pretty likely.

Yeah? I know the cost of attendance puts the entry-level rent at $600. Somebody told me that the de facto "grad student areas" are to the south and east of the university, and that those are usually cheaper. Some even give a discount for being a grad student. Oh, and supposedly apartments are cheaper and cheaper the farther away from the university you get. So if you're planning on driving (and I've heard grad assistants get an upgraded parking pass), that might be the way to go.

Bump. Anyone else considering a SPEA offer?

Even if you won't make it in time to qualify for your first year, if you can show you were already there before you sent in your application, it'll be a ton easier to get in-state tuition for that second year. Some might even say that's the ideal situation, because many schools give less aid to in-state people. You could get the aid package, but then drastically cut the price of your degree by going in-state for year 2.

Advice: do some serious research on your #1 reasonable school and move there right now. Few offers are as good as in-state tuition.

I just got a Service Corps offer. They're a little vague about how the process pans out. My understanding is that you get "matched up" with a particular organization at orientation. How exactly that takes place? It's a little unclear. My guess is they try to match interests, and it's likely that organizations get to pick from a list of resumes/student profiles. They also mention placement interviews, so that's in the mix somewhere.

Unfortunately, most rankings are this way. I was thinking pretty hard about doing philosophy, and their ranking is very much a similar system, where prominent academics rank schools based on faculty and reputation. The only real "thinking person's ranking" I've seen for a discipline has been law school. They take their ranking systems very seriously, I guess. It would be interesting to see somebody devise an employment-oriented ranking, though.

Ha, IUB was certainly not waiting to tell us all about it. They included their new rank in an email this afternoon. Congratulations to them, though. That's quite the marketing coup.

Nevermind! Got my answer.

Somebody should try this and let us know how it went. I've never heard about doing this for MPA programs.

Just got my email from them. Waitlisted for funding, though, so that's not going to work out. They're just too expensive for zero funding.

I hate to be that guy, but it's not always about this kind of raw biographical and statistical data. (I know law school tends to be that way, but MPA/MPP seems different.) We're talking about the very best schools, and it has a lot to do with how you presented yourself to them. It's very easy to get put in the "high achieving empathetic white dude" pile and never find your way out again. Did you have a solid narrative across all your documents? Did your letter writers back you up on it? That kind of thing matters more than you'd think.

When did you initially apply? Jan. 15?

But on the other hand, a PharmD is a tremendous way to save up those funds. You'd be financially prepared in a way that most of us never could be. Sometimes I wonder how applicants hope to pay for a program like SIPA or HKS, but you could reasonably hope to do that. It's certainly a unique position with some very real benefits.

If you do a PharmD straight into an MPA, there's a chance you could seem disconnected and too academic for the higher tier programs. You might have to take time to refocus on public affairs, particularly to demonstrate that that's where your head is at, and not necessarily just pharmacy stuff. You might have undergraduate quality experience now, but this will be 4 years down the line, and that's a different kettle of fish. You'll be much more distant from all that nice resume material. You'd probably have to replace it. It's not clear to me how interested an MPA program would be in your hard science research and so on. It would certainly set you apart from your fellow applicants, but not in exclusively good ways. A great question committees will have is: is this person dedicated to public affairs? In particular, is this person still going to want to pursue this career path when they realize that they could have a significantly higher standard of living using their PharmD? We all say we've got passion, but it's a whole different scenario when the student loan bills start coming in. The extra money would seem tremendously appealing. Another concern: why do you need your PharmD if you want to work on public policy stuff? Why not do a MPA/MS dual program? It seems like for most policy purposes, that would be more than enough. Anyway, my overall point here is that getting a PharmD might not be the pure, unqualified admissions win that you think it is. The more credentials you amass, the more people wonder how focused you are on their particular area. Academic and financial exhaustion are real things when you start getting into second graduate degrees, and they might be a concern for committees.

Another thing to consider: number of classes. There are programs with lots of classes, but also some with fewer. For example, Washington Evans has 18 classes, and, say, American University has 13. If you're the type of person who wants your program to really train you (like, say, you're a liberal arts major trying to transition), the 18 classes will be better for you. But if you're just in it for the credential/pay bump, the fewer classes might just be less work. Addendum: I'm sure this will be music to some people's ears, but beware: some of these programs are really easy. If you look at the syllabi, you'll see 20 or even 30% of the grade as "participation" and that kind of thing. Lots of softball assignments like "take a paragraph of notes on each reading assignment and turn them all in at the end of the semester" and that counts as your final project. That's probably not the kind of program you want, as you won't learn much of anything. And you'd better believe employers will catch on after a while, which could potentially devalue your MPA. I'm not naming names here, but I've seen this from at least 2 schools in the top 15-ish. They're big name schools that people love to mention on here. So: be proactive. Check out syllabi. Make sure you're getting your money's worth, and not just a training wheels guided tour of the public affairs world. Networking is important, but so is actually being competent in your field.

AU is trickling out their letters in the last week or so, so stay tuned. That said, their funding decisions won't be released for couple of weeks, so you're not missing the party quite yet. My understanding is that Maryland's process is concluded later than most (late March, early April).

For anyone else wondering about Minnesota Humphrey: I called up their admissions department today just to make sure my application wasn't lost in the e-mail or something. They told me that they're hoping to have their acceptances sent out by the end of March. Could be a long wait! I didn't ask if that would delay their funding decisions (they've previously said they're due on March 16th), but I would assume so.

Figured I'd make a thread. Who's been admitted and is thinking about attending? I suppose I'm in that group, myself, but I need to hear back about funding first. It's a three-way battle between IUB, Evans, and AU for my heart (which is conveniently located in my wallet for this analogy). I do like that IUB has tons of different funding options between Service Corps, a bunch of fellowships, what sounds like a bunch of assistantships, non-assistant jobs with tuition remission, and the usual scholarships. Who knows how those actually pan out, but there's a lot of potential there.

Heard back yesterday. Hopefully this means they're starting to send them out for everyone. Funding decisions aren't until late March, though, so I suppose there's no real hurry.

1. Funding Public affairs is not pay to play (except maybe for a small subset of Ivy students). I have more undergrad debt than I'm happy about, so I wanted to make sure my program of choice wouldn't make that situation too much worse. Hats off to the Columbia/Harvard/etc folks, though; they must have stronger stomachs. 2. Location I think incredibly ambitious students give the exact order of rankings too much attention. What's most important is a school's ability to affect your chances in your location of choice. In a sense, I think it's similar to how it works for JDs: there are some overridingly good schools that will carry you wherever you go, but most areas have a real soft spot for their state/region's "big school." Berkeley might be higher ranked than, say, Chicago, but try telling that to Chicago employers. And so on. 3. Reputation/institutional "reach"/alumni networks. This part is so subjective and elusive, which makes it not very useful (for MPA, at least). I get the impression that, ultimately, this is not as huge a factor as some people make of it. Every school claims they have an extensive and incredibly helpful support system for their new grads, but nobody's really calling them on it. It's probably enough that you go to one of the well-reputed top 15-ish schools. My guess is the one closest to the place you want to work will be able to help you the most. (Special exceptions for Harvard and Princeton, I imagine. But you're also paying a premium for it!) 4. Specialty I'm keeping my mind open on this one, but I'm a little skeptical that any given school within the top 15-ish has the secret sauce in a particular area. I do pay attention to schools that have better/more intensive programs for interaction and placement/intern work in their industry of specialty, though. For example, something like SPEA Service Corps (it's basically an assistantship, but you go work for an employer instead) could help to justify why they're #1 in Nonprofit. (As long as you get to work with a nonprofit, anyway.)

LBJ all the way. People in Texas aren't necessarily going to know that Wisconsin is a good school, and they probably aren't willing to take US News and World Report's word for it, either. But they'll know LBJ, and they'll know tons of LBJ people. And your career services department there will probably be able to refer and vouch for you. Wisconsin's? If you're lucky, they might know somebody who knows somebody. But odds are, they won't have any kind of connection there, and you'll be just another solid looking resume... in an entire pile of them. Plus, I imagine you'd have a good shot at work-study or a GA position, which would do a lot to reduce that living cost. But even if that doesn't happen, your loans won't be that bad. (People are tip-top end schools are paying out the ears!) In your shoes, I would definitely take out a loan to attend LBJ instead.

I applied on Jan. 15th. I guess they were taking a very literal line with the word "beginning" here: Application Decision Timeline We hope that your winter is going well. In the Office of Admissions, we are reading applications and admission decisions will begin to be sent out no later than next week for applicants who applied by the December 15th deadline, with decisions beginning to be sent in mid-February for those who applied by the January 15 deadline. Thank you for submitting an application; we look forward to being in touch with a decision soon. (This was Jan. 27.) As in they're beginning in mid-February, but they're not actually saying you'll hear back in mid-February, and maybe not in February at all.

Has anybody heard from Minnesota-Humphrey? It's been over 6 weeks now, and I've heard exactly nothing. They're actually going to announce funding information on March 16th, so they're really cutting it close here. Granted, there really aren't many entries on the results page (fewer than 10 across the last couple of months), but I wonder what is going on.