mapiau

You might want to look into large rent hikes that were just announced for UCSD grad housing (though my understanding is that students and faculty are unhappy about them so they might be reversed or reduced) -- I don't know details, but this might change the cost/benefits for you.

I knew what industry I wanted to focus on before I started the program, which I think really benefited me. I spent a lot of time while in the program doing projects related to the energy industry and doing informational interviews with alumni jobs I was interested in. I found this to be really helpful. I think the strengths of the program are a strong focus on job placement and relationships with some major employers (primarily in California). The energy-focused courses at GPS are also as strong as any other program and there's a large alumni network in that field. I found career services to be excellent and very attentive to students, though there has been some staff turnover since I graduated. I think the weaknesses of the program are the California location if you're interested in working in DC (though students do get jobs there) and the relatively young student body. Career services is very helpful in helping students get internships but you definitely have to hustle to find something and not all students are able to. The same is true for jobs -- career services can make lots of connections and help with resume writing and interview prep but it certainly helps to have a clear goal of what field you'd like to work in from the start and focus on building connections within it during your time in grad school.

I'm a GPS alumni who gradated with an MIA a few years ago, focusing on the electric power industry. While my knowledge about the program is getting a bit stale I'm happy to answer any questions people may have. (I'm a US citizen so can't speak to some questions from international students.)

I was in a similar situation to you, and when you are a few years out of undergrad your GPA starts mattering a whole lot less than when you are in school. I don't remember my exact GPA in my first two years of undergrad, but I failed advanced calculus twice and got Cs in two spanish classes. I also freaked out about how these bad grades were going to stop me from getting into any grad school. I ended up graduating with a 3.5. I only worked full time a year between undergrad and applying to grad school, but with similar GRE scores to you got into AU SIS, SAIS, Syracuse Maxwell, Fletcher, and UCSD GPS. I got significant aid at most of them and a full ride and stipend at GPS, which let me graduate with no debt. So I don't think your grades are as big of a barrier as they look to you today. Sure, there are some elite programs that a low undergrad GPA can be a major problem for. But I personally have a nice life after attending an "average" program, so it's all what you make of it. If you're dedicated to Asian studies I would recommend devoting serious effort to language practice outside of the classroom (I never learned anything in formal language classes) and finding relevant work opportunities after you graduate.

The GPS courses are for the most part very practical. The school seems to pride itself on being professionally oriented, and I do not think it is a good fit for people who want to go on to PhDs. Many courses teach practical skills (the data courses for example, or case studies in the international management courses), many have very valuable presentation requirements, and the capstone classes are explicitly professionally focused and work with external clients. The curriculum is also pretty open, and within the MIA/MPP degrees the individual career tracks don't have very many course requirements and there is a lot of room to take what you are interested in, though this is easier if you test out of the language requirement and have more room in your schedule. Career Services is one of the major strengths of the program. The GPS career services team had four full-time staff members when I was there, which given the program's relatively small size made them very accessible. The career services staff knew most students' names and career goals, and would review cover letters or arrange coaching sessions on a day's notice. The career services trips to major job markets were also very helpful, though students do have to pay for the travel costs. Most students got summer internships, but you have to hustle and be proactive to get them. I've heard that the longtime head of Career Services is retiring though, so unfortunately the department might not be as strong in the future. They're fine social opportunities and I guess can help you network, but don't count on participating in student orgs to help you get a job. The prep program is six weeks, with courses throughout the day. Most students are required to take prep and I thought it was very useful, particularly if you haven't done calculus for a few years. It's also a good opportunity to meet the other students early on, and career services has seminars interspersed throughout. I would realistically say that the student body is one of the weaker aspects of the programs. Students are generally smart and motivated, but the student body tends young, with a significant portion of the cohort either with only a year or two of unrelated work experience or straight out of undergrad. There are many students with impressive work histories or life experiences, but it has to be said that the student body feels younger than I assume you'd find in some other programs. I did not find it to be cutthroat at all, though I suspect that this varies by cohort. Very few students in my cohort wanted to do PhDs and most did not care about grades. Students were very collaborative, and professors encouraged working together on assignments -- this is basically the only way to make it through QM II. There is a big focus on group work in the program, which is another way the courses are professionally-orientated and less academic.

I think energy and environment is one of GPS' strongest fields. The program has been increasing its focus on this area recently, and there are a lot of alumni who get jobs in the field afterwards. This is also one field where the California location is an advantage and not a disadvantage. There are several GPS faculty who specialize in energy and environmental policy, with David Victor, Joshua Graff Zivin, and Kate Ricke being the main ones. I found the energy and environment course offerings to be strong. GPS is also adding new classes and faculty in the energy area especially. Additionally one of four MIA capstone options is a consulting class focused on energy, where students work with external energy companies. I found this course to be very useful in my career and definitely helped me get a job coming out of the program, but like all consulting classes the attention from the clients can vary. It's a very useful learning experience though. MPP students can take this class but I don't think it counts as the MPP capstone. If you take Quantitative Methods 1-4 and the two GIS courses I think the GPS data offerings are also head and shoulders above other programs, which could be a big advantage on the job market. I'd encourage you to look at alumni in the energy/environment space on LinkedIn. I can speak less to environmental policy, but in energy there are a ton of GPS alumni at California utilities, independent power firms, and other roles. I can't speak to the other programs, but I also got a full ride from UCSD and not having debt to pay off is just very, very nice. I think the chance to avoid debt matters a lot more than program fit, since these programs are really what you make of them anyway.

Hey everyone, I graduated from the GPS MIA program last year and am happy to try answering any questions you have about the program. I'm an American and work in the energy industry, so I can't speak to the international student experience, the security/international politics side of things, or continuing on to PhDs, but can probably answer some more general questions.

Which region interests you the most? Selecting which region to focus on based on its desirability to admissions committees is getting it backwards -- you attend grad school for a few years, but your career is decades.

When talking to current students I found it revealing to ask what the worst thing about their school was. I'd also ask how effective the career services department actually is, which seems to be highly variable between school and makes a big difference in the job hunt.

Won't let me edit, but I checked and the GIS series lets students do their projects in groups.

Yes, the core classes are held in an auditorium-style lecture hall and are large. These classes usually have homework assignments and midterms and finals graded by TAs. For example, QM2 has 4 pretty intense homework assignments that are done in the statistical program Stata (students turn in their writeups as well as their code), as well as an individual final project and in-class written final. Policy-Making Processes (PMP) has in-class tests, 2 individual policy memo homework assignments, and cold calling. (Cold calling in such large classes is kinda challenging and some professors manage it more naturally than others.) It depends, but group papers are pretty common. Just the other day I was wondering whether I had a good qualitative research paper to submit for a writing prize and realized that I'd only written one research paper by myself in two years at GPS, and that was supposed to be a paper authored by two students but there was an odd number of students in the class! There are a good number of courses with individual paper requirements, but I would say that in the school overall the emphasis is more on shorter policy memos and group projects. Of the MIA capstones only QM4 has an individual paper requirement (not sure about the MPP or MCEPA capstones), with the international politics capstone is a group research paper and Strategy & Negotiation and the new energy capstone is a group consulting project for an external client. Especially during the second year there are more final projects than final exams: I think during fall and winter quarter this year I've only had three finals but six final projects of varying intensity. (For example, one of these was a capstone group consulting project with a 20 minute presentation, one a group quant research paper, one an individual corporate strategy proposal.) Quant courses tend to have individual projects. QM2 and 3 both have (kinda hectic and rushed, since you do them during week 9 and 10) individual final poster assignments. QM4 and the GIS series all produce single-author papers.

Yeah, most of the first year curriculum is filled with core classes, with electives and the capstone during the second year. For the MIA a typical first year is: Fall GPCO 401. Microeconomics for Policy and Management GPCO 412. Globalization, the World System, and the Pacific GPCO 453. Quantitative Methods I Language Winter GPCO 400. Policy-Making Processes GPCO 415. Accounting and Finance for Policy Makers GPCO 454. Quantitative Methods II Language Spring GPCO 403. International Economics GPCO 410. International Politics and Security Language Elective Of course, if you're in the MIA but don't have to take language classes this opens up a lot of slots for electives. Some people also waive core classes, but this is pretty hard to do. (For example, I was an econ major in undergrad but was only able to waive QM 1.) Last year a lot of people wanted to waive International Security but weren't allowed to. The career tracks usually only require two required classes and three electives (from a broad list), so there's a lot of room to customize them. While there is no waitlist for any GPS course unfortunately classes are only offered once a year and sometimes not every year (this is pretty rare). In a two year program this means that scheduling conflicts may mean you miss classes you want, and I wouldn't recommend choosing to attend GPS based on one specific course you want to take since you might not be able to. I only took one Spanish class at GPS so can only speak to that. I *believe* that Spanish and Chinese are only offered at GPS from the intermediate level up, so if you are just starting you would have to take undergraduate classes. Otherwise you would take the intermediate+ courses at GPS. I've heard complaints about the undergrad classes from people in my cohort (the undergrad language classes are five units and like 6 hours per week, more than GPS language classes), and personally had bad experiences in UCSD Spanish classes years ago as an undergrad. Your experience in other languages may be different, however. If you really care about the language course offerings I would encourage you to ask admissions. One thing to potentially be aware of in the MIA is that international students can only waive the language requirement if they are native speakers of a GPS "Pacific" language—good news if you're from east Asia, not great if you are from Africa. I don't know. The hands-down best instructor at GPS is Craig McIntosh, who teaches QM3 and QM4 and some of the development courses. Jennifer Burney who teaches QM2 is also good, as is Stephan Haggard who does Globalization and Asian security stuff. In environmental and energy policy David G. Victor is very famous and is a good lecturer. I haven't had either of them but I've heard good things about the new economics and marketing professors Uma Karmarkar and Renee Bowen. Bill Bold, who was a former VP at Qualcomm, just started teaching business classes and is a great lecturer and assigns lots of assignments with real-world feels. I've taken mostly energy and business/finance, so only know those professors personally. Aside from these standouts most GPS professors are good-to-average. Unfortunately some professors are boring or bad lecturers, and there are two or three older professors who are disorganized and poor to very poor teachers. Aside from them I have been pretty satisfied with the overall quality of the teaching, though some students disagree.

Yes, while a few GPS students are admitted to PhD programs (and there are more who come in wanting to pursue a PhD in the future) it is a professional program and is not focused on preparing students for PhDs. The various capstone project options also are professionally-focused rather than an original research thesis. If you strongly want to pursue a PhD other programs may be more relevant. I think there are a couple things going on here. First the GPS employment outcome statistics do not include MPP students since the program is so new. Second is that the overall program's high share of students going into the private sector may be due to the MIA degree's International Management career track offers more MBA-like courses than other International Affairs programs (this track was originally established before UCSD had a business school, and remains separate from it today). Third is the West Coast location, which in my mind makes it a bit easier to apply to employers here than in other parts of the country. While the Bay Area has a big tech-funded philanthropy cluster the West Coast has nowhere near the same number of nonprofit or government jobs as the East Coast. As I've said before while many GPS students intern and subsequently get jobs in DC if you know you want to work there GPS may not be the program for you. There are resources to help DC focused students like the annual career services trip to DC (students have to pay for this; not an insignificant expense), a government-focused full-time career services employee, and I *think* a new option to do a quarter in DC through the UC-wide UC DC program, though I don't know the details and you should definitely ask admissions if this is important to you. But job hunting in DC from San Diego is definitely puts you at a disadvantage compared to programs located in DC. Other financial, academic, etc. considerations may outweigh this downside for you, but it is real.

I live in on-campus grad housing. When I moved in in Fall 2016 the grad housing was significantly impacted and students in my class often remained on the wait list through their first year. (I was able to move into grad housing in August by saying I wanted to move in during July—I paid for an extra month, but since most students want to move in during August I jumped to the front of the line.) This fall a large new grad housing complex opened (Mesa Nueva), and while I don't know the details my understanding is that the wait list is much shorter now. Most of the first years in the program now seem to live there. The grad housing is fine. It is very subsidized: doubles are around $600 per month per person, and you'd be hard pressed to find comparable off-campus housing that is reasonably close to the university for under $1,000 per month. The apartments are for the most part comfortable and pretty new (the Mesa apartments are much older), and have full kitchens and shared laundry facilities. They are also close to campus, about a 15 minute bike ride or 40 minute walk. There's a regular shuttle, but it isn't much faster than walking. The downside is that the surrounding area is mostly office parks and malls with few restaurants or bars and not much of a city life feel, and are about a 20 minute drive (without traffic) from the more exciting SD neighborhoods. Some of the One Miramar St apartments face Interstate 5 and have lots of highway noise. Also between the new grad apartments, San Diego trolley expansion, and other projects the East Campus grad housing will be surrounded by noisy (24 hour a day for the trolley) construction sites for the next few years. Most of the apartments aren't furnished either.

When I took the GPS prep program last year we had two weeks of math camp reviewing high school math and derivative calculus, followed by three weeks of introductory Quantitative Methods and microeconomics. The QM and Econ classes are taught by the professors teaching those classes in the fall quarter, so these prep classes are basically extensions of those classes. Prep is roughly four hours of class time a day, and the QM and Econ classes have finals. Grades aren't recorded however, and it's a good opportunity to get back into the groove of school if you've been away for a few years. There are also various orientations scattered through prep. Career services does a mandatory orientation covering things like how to format a resume and business etiquette, which is pretty basic if you've worked in the US before but is useful for international students or people straight out of undergrad. I haven't pursued TA or GSR positions at GPS, so I'm not sure. I regularly get emails recruiting for these positions, though.