DogsArePeopleToo
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Posts posted by DogsArePeopleToo
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19 hours ago, EvelynD said:
About 2 years ago when I had just graduated from my MA I was really honest during job interviews because I thought that within a year or so I had found a PhD position. That didn't turn out to be true but, some employers didn't hire me because I couldn't give them a long-term commitment. The same happened when I then said that ‘probably within the next couple of years’ I would start my PhD. And I just wanted to be honest and be transparent about my future goals!
Yeah, that's a tough place to be in. But I have found that unless you have concrete, definite plans, it's best not to give prospective employer a reason to count you out based on a vague potential. For most positions except the more senior ones, it is generally respectable to stick around the job for a year. More is generally good, less not so much. Something about the neat, round figure of one year makes transitions generally OK.
19 hours ago, EvelynD said:Or worse, if they require me to visit for the interviews (I live in Europe so that will take up a week).
Take your sick days all at once
Or plan the trip on a Wednesday/Thursday, interview on Thursday/Friday, return on the weekend. Europe is a nice 8-hour flight and not a lot of jet lag.
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As others have said, work for a couple of years if you can. This will help you really figure out if public policy is for you, and if you decide it is, it will make you a more competitive applicant...work years can help you get into a program and once you're in, it can help you get more financial aid. Public policy programs are pretty big on work experience as opposed to law schools, which rely more heavily on the GPA/LSAT combo.
Your pre-MPP work experience could also make you a more competitive job applicant post-MPP.
Others have said enough about the increase in earning potential from am MPP.
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Prison Break and Homeland.
You can hate me in return, but I'm kind of tired of the hackneyed story-line of the impossibly brilliant protagonist who is also messed up and keeps getting into a world of trouble, only to get out of it with their sheer brilliance. Every.single.time.rinse.and.repeat.season.after.season.
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15 minutes ago, AlexaBarret said:
As for me, if I am in a situation, where I don`t know what to do, I say true every time without any hesitations and I explain everything from the very beginning. People like the truth and they admire somebody`s explanations of the situation because of respect for them. Am I clear?:)
That makes sense, thank you!
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7 hours ago, datik said:
I don't know what to tell you other than you should be confident and honest. You are doing everything by the books and pursuing a higher education. That is quite commendable. Just tell things straight, tell him about your plans and why you are excited. Also, be available to go out of your way to help out smooth things over for your last 2 weeks.
I was on a similar position, having to tell my boss, whom I owed a lot to, that I would be leaving for my Master's. I had the fortune of being able to tell with more time in advance, committing myself to help out for the transition period. She was so excited for me I couldn't believe I was nervous before. She was happy I was going to do my masters, and compunded me to do it no matter what.
Maybe the same will happen to you. Try not to be too nervous as it will botch your delivery.
That's very helpful, thank you. In the end of the day, there's no way but to tell it clearly and honestly.
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Hello everyone,
I am in the dreaded situation of having to give notice to my boss about my departure to grad school. This would have been easier under normal circumstances, but mine aren't normal. Here's why:
- The boss, who is a VP at my organization, went out of his way to hire me as his second-in-command eight months ago
- The boss is a friend
- When I signed on, I was going through the application process, but I wasn't sure I would actually end up in grad school
- I didn't tell the boss I was planning to go to grad school
- I have only two weeks for the "notice" period (boss was away and I wanted an in-person chat instead of a text/email)
I know there's no best way to break the news, but any tips would be greatly appreciated. I want to retain his friendship and goodwill even as I want to pursue my own next big move.
This thread is perhaps a bit out of place, but I figured a lot of you already gave or are about to give notices to your own employers. Please help a friend out!
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17 minutes ago, jellajella said:
What will be my GRE score for the verbal section?
That's impossible for anyone to predict, not least because your score depends on what difficulty level you get for your second Verbal section and how many of the questions you get right in that section. This link here shows how many questions you need to get right in each section to get a particular score (the link also shows your score by section-adaptive scores). There was a similar study done by someone who had a neat table of their findings, but I can't seem to locate it right now.
As for what you can do to improve your reading comp score? A lot of resources out there. Read some of them and do what works for you, which you can only find out by trying a few approaches and tracking your score.
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On 6/2/2017 at 11:01 AM, zucchini said:
I don't understand how this happened or how I didn't see the signs earlier. I don't know what to do - how can I get him to understand that he's completely wrong? Can I change his point of view?
By way of support, you are not alone in the sentiment of "I don't understand how I didn't see the signs earlier." A lot of parents and partners are surprised when they discover their children/spouses go from, say, turning religiously observant to turning up in Syria. That's a simplistic characterization and the radicalization is different to your husband's experience, but that is roughly a pattern that's observed everywhere and across the radicalization spectrum, from high school mass shooters to Taliban recruits.
So you're not alone in missing the signs. Sometimes it happens glacially, so slow that it's almost imperceptible, especially with a loved one.
Nobody has found a perfect way to deal with a situation like that. But I would suggest you seek support. See if you might talk to someone you are comfortable discussing this issue with -- a parent, a sibling, friend or coworker...someone dependable that can maintain confidentiality and has close rapport with him if it is necessary that they talk to him, though there's so much that a 'talk' can accomplish when it comes to radicalization/extremism. The idea is mostly for you to have support from a trustworthy source. Only someone like that, who knows the nuances of the situation better than us here, can help you talk through ideas and options.
I wish you courage.
- rheya19 and ExponentialDecay
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2 minutes ago, pd1989 said:
My visa got approved as well as my husband's. The visa officer did not ask anything related to spouse either to me or him.
The visa officer who interviewed me was a charming lady. She greeted me back with a smile and my nervousness reduced to almost zero. So I was asked the following questions -
1. How many universities you applied to?
2. How many admits?
3. What was your second choice to go?
4. What is the highest degree you have?
5. Who is going to pay for your studies?
And then she approved my visa.
My husband's interview was longer and he was assigned to a serious looking young guy. His interview went like this -
1. Are you going for PhD? Do you have funding?
2. What does your father do? Where did he work (my FIL is retired now)? Which post? What does your mother do? (and other family related information, but asked nothing about being married)
3. What are the other admits?
4. Why are you going to this University?
"Collect your passport in 5 days. Visa approved!" Yaaayyyiii!
@debrak7 Sorry for this late reply! Thank you for your wishes. All the best for your studies and I think your visa for DC next year will also be approved. They don't reject genuine candidates.
Congrats! I suspected they wouldn't ask about the spouse visa thing. Enjoy the rest of your summer as you prepare for your PhD studies in the fall!
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Hi @skwaat, the struggle is real and we all know it. I did the GRE when I was 28 as well.
Except Cliffsnotes, I got all of the other books you mention. I found taht the ETS books are really not that helpful from the standpoint of learning concepts. The quant review in the beginning of the book sometimes made me feel even more stupid because it was written just so...unhelpfully. The ETS Practice Questions books are only helpful for you to get a sense of the difficulty level of the questions, how they are worded, the traps, etc...and to get some practice on the real stuff once you're familiar with the basics. I wouldn't use them very early on in my training. For one, you need to know the basic concepts before you can practice the questions, and two, you will run out of real practice questions if you do them too early.
All good prep companies give you a math grounding, starting from the very basic. I used Magoosh and watched all the math videos, some of them two or three times. It was pretty comprehensive and I felt prepared. I wasn't a 160+ student on quant, and Magoosh was very helpful for my prep.
(I was a 160+ student on verbal, so the content there seemed OK, if you're wondering.)
Magoosh was very, very affordable compared to other prep companies, and its videos are light and can load easily on poor internet connections (I live overseas where the internet is very bad).
I also used Manhattan's math and verbal flashcards. The verbal flashcards come in three sets ("essentials" and then two sets of advanced). I found the two latter sets useful...more useful than Kaplan flashcards. The quant flashcards were very useful too...they essentially gave you more quant questions using intermediary concepts (factorization, circle properties, etc. that would be one part of a bigger package in a question), so you get stuff drilled pretty well.
There's a lot of time between now and October, so you can rest assured that you can improve somewhere between 5-15 points, maybe more if you put in the hard work. The thing about quant is that you learn by doing...watching concepts and other people solving questions doesn't work.
Best of luck!
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I'm also going to grad school this fall. I have friends in the city as well, and I wouldn't go out of my way to make new friends. I hope it will happen on its own, which could save me the feeling of being totally "left out" of the grad school social circle for things like commiseration and reinforcement that only comrades-in-arms can offer, lowdown on how to deal with difficult professors, workarounds for the departmental red tape, etc. - the useful stuff you usually get through informal settings.
And for the record, I don't do bars very well either...it's too frickin' noisy for any normal human conversation to take place in it. As an international student, I spent many precious years of my life looking for "quiet" bars but then gave up. Quiet bar is an oxymoron.
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My fiance and I have been long-distancing for a while, starting with before our engagement. It is not easy, but we feel us pursuing our grad school/career for the time being can give us a solid foundation for a long, fulfilled life that includes professional gratification for both of us.
I know 9 p.m. is pretty late, but I have lived in countries where people routinely have dinner at 9 or even later. This is particularly true in the summers when the days are long and people stay out pretty late. In your case, it would be tough maintaining the stamina after a full day's work and grad school to then have a late dinner and be "with it" for your partner. And there might be the commute home after school. But if your husband can pick you up after school every day, you might then commute back together or get dinner nearby. It'll be a very late dinner, but if there's solace in numbers, millions of people around the world do it
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As someone who studied on an F-1 visa and later ran a program for students who came to the US on F-1 visas, I would say you should remain optimistic.
The two of you are serious, bona fide scholars with competitive scholarships for five years from renowned universities. You probably have publications, etc. You are not using the F1 visa as a shortcut, easy way for immigration to the US because you can't get to the US any other way. You are both going to the US for a serious, legitimate scholarly undertaking. The US is better for attracting highly qualified people like you from around the world.
The visa counselor will probably ask if you have any relatives in the US. They may or may not ask if your husband is also going to the US (they usually don't ask that in my experience
). But if they do, answer that truthfully. If they ask why you didn't book a group visa appointment, answer that truthfully as well (some people just don't know that this option exists - I didn't know about it myself for a long time).
Visa counselors are trained to apply the law uniformly, but sadly, their determinations can sometimes be wildly divergent...part of how a counselor decides on a visa petition appears to depend on the counselor's personal disposition or how they feel that day. I have seen some legitimate visa applicants denied, while people with no apparent chance in hell were granted visas...all this is to say that the experiences you read online are indicative of how things work for some people but not representative of how they turn out for the broader visa applicant pool (for starters, people who are rejected are more likely to post to online forums).
Best of luck and let us know how it goes!
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Hi, @Asthashah - I might not be able to speak about employment prospects, but about scholarships at Australian universities, I know a thing or two...unless you come through an Australian government-funded program like Endeavour or Australia Awards, or you find a niche scholarship program, don't expect any financial aid or scholarship in Australia. Universities (or unis, as they call it there) treat international students as cash cows that can pay handsome money to help the universities balance the checkbooks because Australian students pay so little directly to the university. As a result, getting into Australian universities is very easy for international students compared to admission at US universities...this is one reason why it is common to see well-heeled international students, particularly of Chinese origin, at most Aussie campuses.
Having said that, if you already are a qualified dentist, you might come to Australia using its skilled immigration system...they publish a list of wanted skills each year, and STEM jobs are always there. If I were you, I'd look into this option.
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On 5/5/2017 at 10:34 PM, Revolutionary said:
Every day is hard here though, in Pakistan. I am an outcast to this society. I was born here, but don't believe in the social thoughts, religion and the culture here.
If you can make a genuine case for being an outcast whose religious or political views put him at risk of persecution, you can apply for asylum once you're in the US. Compared to the EU and Australia, the US asylum regime (narrowly defined) is better for people of your background and so far largely untouched by Trump and Bannon. (But you'll need to have better reasons for your asylum application than "no girls, no relationships, just a boring job" - that's half the world's guys in every country, the US included.)
There are downsides to the US asylum regime because you won't have government-provided pro bono legal aid and won't have work authorization until a few weeks to months after your application is in, during which time the government offers you no support...you'd be lucky if you got NGO support for basic subsistence. But if you're at Cornell while you apply, you might convince CIPA to keep you as a student despite your change of status from F-1 or J-1.
By the time you finish CIPA, you will have become a permanent resident. Jobs will have become easier then.
But I digress.
As someone who lives in an Islamic Republic next door to yours - and who lived in your country for over a decade - I would advise you not to overthink the difficulty of your situation. Correct me if I am wrong, but you seem like someone who doesn't have major financial problems, doesn't have 7 sisters to feed and marry off like some young men in Pakistan do, etc. The dust, broken roads and noisy mullahs are irritants but 180 million Pakistanis put up with them. I would imagine you could as well, at least for another year. You're in Lahore, not North Waziristan. Unless you have crippling dust allergies, you can live with it.
The various degrees at the Kennedy School require up to 6 or 7 years of work experience. Your GPA can't be changed, but gaining more work experience will definitely help with HKS or any other school, especially if you can improve your scores by a few notches, which you can because you have a whole year ahead of you. Everyone does it with a 9-5 job or a full course-load. That's just the way it is.
The biggest life advice someone gave me right out of undergrad was not to rush it. Take your time. Go out in the 'real world.' Spend some time in the sun to fully ripen. Then go back to school.
One year out of undergrad, you strike me as someone who is still in his early 20s. If that's the case, I would take a year, maybe two. You're still early in your career. One to two years at a job is ideal at this stage. Change jobs. Gain multiple experiences because this will give you different policy vantage points. It will make you a better applicant and job candidate.
I am sorry if this is a bit preachy, but I was in your shoes several years ago when, after six years in the US, I dreaded returning home for the exact reasons you outlined in your post. Five years into the dust and grime of my country and a few close security encounters later, I'm grateful I returned. I will be going back to the US for grad school this fall, and I am secure in the knowledge that I have real-world experience in a tough country -- knowledge that will enrich any conversation in a policy program (I got into CIPA as well, but I will be going to another grad school).
I would imagine that the beer I'll drink and the girls I might fraternize with will be all the sweeter. And the air...ahhh, I can finally go out running again.
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ADDENDUM: The challenge of the position you're in is to see beyond your current situation, to incorporate contingencies into your planning. Here's one contingency: If you choose to go to CIPA, chances are that your view of Pakistan might actually change. Two years is a long time - you might miss Pakistan, might develop new perspectives. If you get a job right out of CIPA, that'd be great; if not, you can always return to Pakistan to much improved job prospects with an Ivy League degree in hand...and apply for an H1B the following year. I know more than a few foreigners - Pakistanis included - who returned home after a stint in the US. Many of them are happily working there.
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10 hours ago, SenNoodles said:
Hi! MPP at Georgetown here (who's focused on international development/am friends with most of the MIDPs). If you consider math/econ/quant in general to be a strength, I wouldn't worry. There's a math camp during orientation that will remind you of everything you need to know. You also don't *need* calculus, but you're definitely better off if you can remember how to take basic derivatives/integrals and what they mean. This will be reviewed during math camp, though, so there's little need to stress out about it. Technically, you aren't supposed to have to know it.
Micro II is focused on market failure and how government policies come into play when the private market can't provide (largely with social services). The underlying concepts are largely the same between the MIDP and MPP versions though they have different course names, but the applications are much different. On the MPP side, we're applying these concepts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc., while my MIDP friends are more focused on developing country contexts/programs. Quant II is actually far less numbers-y than Quant I was - lots of interpreting residual graphs, learning how to overcome biases/errors in data, plus some slightly more advanced OLS techniques from Quant I as well as learning the basics of probit/logit. As someone who likes numbers, Quant II has been slightly tougher than Quant I because it's more qualitative.
Finally, in terms of the MPP vs MIDP course sequences - overall, the first year curricula are pretty similar in that the foundational concepts you learn in both are pretty similar, but the applications are different (as explained above wrt Econ). The MPPs also take policy process (basically a poli sci course) that's different from what the MIDPs take that semester. In the second year, I'm not as sure of how similar the courses are (since I'm a first year), but I do know the MPPs get an extra elective each semester while the MIDPs don't. However, we have the option of taking the extra MIDP core course as one of our two electives each semester.
Overall, I've worked almost exclusively in development, am a part of development-focused groups on campus, hang out with a good number of MIDPs, and am doing a development internship this summer, but I don't regret doing the MPP. I feel like I get the best of both worlds in that I have a bunch of MPP and MIDP friends, while most of the MIDPs I know tend to hang out with each other and don't really get to know many of the MPPs.
My 2 cents! Feel free to PM me if you have more specific questions!
Thank you! I just sent you a private message.
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This for all of you who have done or are doing your MPP, especially if your school is Georgetown: What level of math/stats skills is recommended/needed to do well in the program? I took intermediate economics courses in college, but I am not sure how different the quant level is for intermediate econ courses in grad school, if at all.
I did calculus 13/14 years ago and remember nothing of it. Is that bad? I am trying be ready for fall.
Separately, I am looking at the MPP and MIDP course sequences from Georgetown. Two questions:
1. For MPP: What quant concepts are used in Microeconomics II and Advanced Regression? Do the courses expect students to be quant gurus?
2. MPP vs MIDP: Some of the courses seem to be the same but with slightly different titles (and maybe content), e.g., Intermediate Microconomics for MPP vs Intermediate Microeconomics for Development for MIDP. Are they interchangeable? I am asking because I am an MIDP student but I want to do a joint JD degree, which is only available with MPP.
Thanks for any insights.
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41 minutes ago, Thanapoomped said:
Don't blame yourself, Bro, I get an offer from ANU and I find that your post is very useful as I considering the offer. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you! I am glad it helped someone!
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17 hours ago, EGSweitzer said:
With regards to networks, I have access to not only CIPAs network, but the entire Cornell and Ivy League network.
Thank you for the thoughtful feedback. I wanted to follow up on this bit quoted above...would you mind elaborating how, as a CIPA student, you have access to the entire Ivy League network?
I have heard a lot of good things about the flexibility of the CIPA curriculum. I think it is a credit to CIPA.
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14 hours ago, ShewantsthePhD said:
This is probably a dumb question- where do most people shop for groceries in the city? Are Whole Foods and Trader Joes the typical grocery stores? Or is it common for people to travel a bit out of the city to get to a Walmart or Target?
In addition to what others have posted, my two cents: I shopped at Safeway when I lived in the Waterfront area. Shopped at Giant and/or Target when I lived in the Columbia Heights area, and used Trader Joe's when in Alexandria. It all depended on which was close enough to where I lived. I never saw a Wal-Mart in DC. Don't believe there is one.
One of the most important criteria in deciding to get a particular apartment is whether groceries are walking distance, since most grad students and young professionals don't have cars (cars are for people with families!).
Some apartments say "walking distances from restaurants and bars." That sounds wonderful, but my personal preferences is that you gotta be close to the Metro (or bus station) and close enough to a grocery store. Bars are secondary.
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12 hours ago, ShewantsthePhD said:
I have lived in the rural Midwest my entire life, but I am going to be making the move to Washington D.C. in the fall for graduate school! I have never lived in big city before. Could you share any general advice you have on city living (apartments, groceries, transportation, must-haves, etc.)? I am pretty clueless, but am trying to start preparing now!
You should visit the Washington, DC page on City Guides. It contains some helpful information.
I moved to DC in 2011 and lived about two years. I've been back to DC on short work trips, which is not the same thing as living there. But off the top of my head, these things seem helpful in retrospect:
Familiarizing myself with the Metro and bus system was very helpful because it gave me mobility.
Creating some friendships outside of work and study kept me sane (a lot of people in DC are for work, grad school of an internship, so the population is always in flux. Everyone wants to "network," so genuine human bonds can be alarmingly rare).
A lot of (new) people go to great lengths to live within the geographic limits of DC, paying exorbitant rent. Some Northern Virginia suburbs and parts of Maryland are easily commutable, so see if you can find something good there (though these areas have also become quite expensive).
Speaking of the Metro, get one of those plastic metro cards instead of the paper ones. They're more durable and more economical in the long run.
Teach yourself not to be an escalefter, especially during the peak tourist season in the summer. DC is full of harried people in suits who can be a bit aggressive as they hurry from one appointment to the next.
Hit the National Mall for all the free museums (and the monuments nearby) so you can familiarize yourself with them for when you have out-of-town visitors. Related to this, keep the cherry blossom season in the back of your mind. The Tidal Basin and the monuments become very beautiful for the short duration when the trees bloom (early April).
Sign up for email services like DC Link Tank to receive updates about all the cool think tank or cultural events happening in the city.
Like @virionoftomorrow said, familiarize yourself with the safe and unsafe neighborhoods which, unsurprisingly, correspond with high- and low-rent areas.
More later when I can think of them. But happy to answer any questions...
EDIT: Oh, and sign up for Alert DC.
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Oops, I answered a thread that's, um, eight years old. Shoulda read the dates. *Blush*
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I have visited both schools and both cities, though I have not studied in either. I know professors and graduate students at ANU.
City: If quiet is your thing, go to Canberra. You can take a three-hour bus across beautiful Australian plains to get to Sydney for the hubbub. Or you can drive 1.5 hours to Hyams Beach in Shoalhaven for an escape. There are lots of small towns with amazing restaurants along the way. Melbourne's weather is considered quite mercurial, with multiple changes in the course of a day, including colder-than-Australian-usual temperatures. But Melbourne has all the culture, architecture and whatnot. Crucially, you'll never get stuck in traffic in Canberra. In Melbourne, all bets are off.
Uni: I sat in on a law class at UniMelb. It was pretty good. But walking there, I was taking photos of the campus on my phone when what seemed like a bunch of snotty-nosed undergrads walked past and audibly mocked my touristy-ness. I have had a bad taste in my mouth for UniMelb since. I know doctoral graduates, doctoral candidates, master's graduates and master's students at ANU. They all seem like a pretty close-knit community. I know a couple of their professors. They're extremely nice and take students down to Shoalhaven/Hyams Beach for retreats multiple times a year. ANU hosts a lot of events and foreign visitors. It has very close ties with DFAT, Australia's department of state. Several ambassadors, directors-general and others are ANU grads, so the ANU-DFAT link is strong...professors offer policy input/guidance, etc. to all levels of DFAT and even DIBP, the immigration people.
People: Canberra is a lot like DC...a city of very educated, progressive young professionals, many of them connected with the government, law firms, NGOs, contracting agencies, etc. Melbourne is one of the two cultural capitals of Australia (along with Sydney), so you'll have a lot of events. It's also a melting pot, so a lot of immigrant communities (visit Afghan Bazaar in Dandenong, for example).
I know it's a tough choice. But personally, I can live in a city like Canberra or DC. I don't need constant stimulation. I'd go with the better university. Purely on the basis of its location and the nice community, I'd go with ANU. It's also a more prominent Aussie uni.
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4 hours ago, SenNoodles said:
I'm at McCourt for GU's MPP and they definitely encourage you to work. We don't have Friday classes to help facilitate this and many students also stack their schedules so they don't have classes several days of the week. However, working is less common in the first semester, and 20 hours is on the higher end of how much students work in their first year (it goes up in the second).
This is useful, thank you. Do you know what kinds of work international students do? I hear they can't work off campus as a condition of their visa, but I'm not sure...
Georgetown McCourt 2017
in Government Affairs Forum
Posted
In case you're considering McCourt/Georgetown and you're in the DC area, you could come to this recruiting event next week (pizza provided!):
https://www.linktank.com/event/mccourt-school-s-dc-area-professionals-recruiting-event
You'll meet director of admissions Adam Thomas, who's a pretty cool guy.
Disclaimer: I'm a first-year McCourt student just passing the word along.