Nicole03

Last year, acceptance notifications were released on March 4th around 5:45 pm EST. If I were y'all, I would read through the HGSE 2016 thread. We had a really good group of people who shared a lot of helpful information. Some information was not helpful, but passed the time . We ended up with 34 pages of comments. I'm sure you will have a better sense of this admissions process if you just start with page 1 and read through the whole thread.

Thanks for starting this thread aina7! 
Program: IEP
GRE Score: decent (except math, which was very average)
GPA:  3.83
Work Experience: six years teaching Spanish (public and private, elementary and secondary), a summer leading professional development for teachers in technology in Peru, a year working with immersion programming for domestic secondary students, a year working at a student exchange non-profit, three years working in an international program at a high school (of which I have been the director for the past two years). I've lived, worked, and studied in 20+ countries. (That being said, a lot of these experiences overlap)
Undergrad Institution (Public, Private, Ivy, etc..):  UC 
What Other Schools Are You Applying To: UPenn, Columbia, Stanford, NYU, USF and possibly George Washington or American 
 
Let me know if anyone has suggestions of other schools to apply to for international education, international education policy, etc. I am on the west coast and am unable to make it to any open houses on the east coast, so I would very much appreciate any and all information.
 
I'm also happy to help others in any way I can.
 
Thank you!
 
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@Gabrielle, HGSE's masters acceptance rate was 53% a few years ago when I was admitted. I don't remember whether that was on the HGSE website or on US News & World report, but it was a credible source. Nevertheless, it's comparable to other top-tier schools of education. The fact of the matter is that there is less reason to pursue advanced degrees in education as compared to many other fields, making some of these programs less competitive. Moreover, often the masters programs are bulked up to fund doctoral work, resulting in a lot of acceptances. This, of course, means that many will look down their noses at the ed school, but if your goal was to gain prestige and feel superior to others, my guess is that you wouldn't have chosen this field either. So, I don't let those comments bother me. The PhD and EdD programs at Harvard have lower acceptance rates than many of Harvard's other schools, and there are plenty of people in them who have perfect GREs + amazing intellects. 
The last two quotes you shared don't actually seem derogatory to me. I'm glad we have gritty (as in, perseverant) 30 year olds trying to change the field of education, and OF COURSE professional experience is considered along with academics. By considering professional experience, HGSE admits many who were perhaps undermatched in undergrad, but have proven that they are tremendous leaders, genuine doers, as well as transcendent thinkers. ALL of the graduate programs at Harvard consider professional experience in tandem with academics. 
You will certainly find people who want to assuage their personal insecurity by belittling the ed school, but it is a great school, full of incredible people who do go on to change the field of education. Congratulations on your acceptance!

Prestige can be a never ending cycle. I've  seen STEM students put down arts students as a whole, med students put down business students, business students put down law students, law students put down public policy students (I've  also seen Yale law students ridicule HLS students, most of whom didn't  get into Yale) , and policy students put down others, all based just on faculty/ school. Things can then be broken down within schools, with some people looking down on certain concentrations and programs, and then of course after graduation the focus shifts to job prestige.
I think it's true that education isnt generally  considered  as  prestigious as some other areas, but HGSE is a great school and the people who are going to look down on it probably aren't  worth impressing in the first place and would not limit their concern with prestige to which school someone attended. Besides, I think that most people (and most people can't rattle off various Harvard acceptance rates) would automatically be impressed by the Harvard label and wouldn't  think much about breaking prestige down within the university.
I must also say, and this is just from my experience, that education students as a whole are some of the most friendly. If that's  because the ultra competitive, prestige driven type A's are more drawn to other areas they consider superior then I'm glad that happens.