DogsArePeopleToo

I am working as a software engineer in a small company and our company just survived a huge turnover  (I was amongst the ones who stayed because I know that when I leave I will leave for  a PhD scholarship ). Anyways , I have an idea of Dos and Don'ts of giving notice (my manager told me the details because we are friends). 
Yes I totally understand how you feel because the boss is a friend and a part of you is wondering what he will do after you leave , have no worries , he will survive , the whole organization will (even if they don't tell you that )
You need to give your notice face-to-face considering the notice period (I guess it is 2 weeks for you). It is very important to give your notice not less than 2 weeks . 
ask for a meeting with your boss and tell him that it has been a pleasure working with him and you learnt a lot (even if this is not the case)  but you need to move on and it is time for you to go to gradschool to get your degree (if you can link things you learnt in job that can benefit you in gradschool , that would be fabulous , if you can't then don't ) . the most important thing is to be authentic.
It is very important not to burn the bridges because you might want to work in the organization after your degree or might need a letter of recommendation from your current boss. 
Just be calm and try not to be emotional (I know it is hard because the boss is a friend ) but you need to always remind yourself that this is your dream to go to gradschool and your boss might be upset for you to leave but he will survive eventually (just don't tell him that he will survive directly because it will be considered rude)
and  you can plan the handover together or when they are calm.
I am so sorry for the long answer 
Good luck in your gradschool
 

I recommend that you be prepared to answer the question "Why didn't you tell me before I went out of my way to get you this job?" (If you're not asked this question, think hard about volunteering the information.)
I also recommend that you have in hand a document listing all the work you're currently doing, the important dates for deliverables, and your ideas on who in the organization can take on your tasks. In the event that your boss/friend handles the news well, consider the merits of doing everything you can (including working extra hours, maybe even on your own time) to make sure your team will thrive after you leave.
Also be ready to handle gracefully the conversation going sideways quickly. As your friend, he may feel that your non disclosure constitutes a betrayal of his friendship. As your boss, he may feel betrayed and overwhelmed by the prospect of having to do your job and his until he finds a replacement, as well as the prospect of catching heck from his bosses for hiring you in the first place.
If the conversation takes this unfortunate turn, do your best to respond professionally. Focus on doing your job the best you can while you're still there. Down the line, you can repair fences as friends.
Keep in mind that as your boss, he may have to follow a policy on handling employees in your position who give notice (such as showing you the door then and there). That is, he might fire you on the spot and have you escorted out the building. 

I would just say I hate 24 episode television seasons.

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.

That makes sense, thank you!

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?:)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.  

Yay! I graduated from my BSW with Distinction!
 

I'd be less confident about WWS/HKS just because historically they scrutinize the numbers, and whilst your story is compelling, it is not unique. I'd also be less confident in getting major scholarship money from prestigious schools. That said, the SIPA/SAIS/Fletcher/whatever tier at full price and anything below should be open to you.
Do get 320+ on the GRE.

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

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.
---
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.

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.
---
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.

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.
---
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.

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.
---
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.

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.
---
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.

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.
---
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.

So I have been reading different posts about grad school - way to feed anxiety! I worry about relocating, I worry about archery clubs near the place where I'm going to live (what if there are none?), about free time (what if I forget what it is?), etc, etc. And on top of that you get posts like this one when you try to calm yourself where the author tells you there no fun will be had in the next 3+ years. None. Still, I do believe that grad school is great. However, I have no personal empirical proof. So, dear grad students, please, do share all the reasons why you think grad school is fucking awesome. Why do you find it fantastic? What do you love the most? Why would you never trade it for anything else? Thanks. We, new grad students, will be grateful for our anxiety being replaced with excitement!

@Mr. Government wrote a very comprehensive answer. Just to add on to that, I think the value of the program is the people in it. A rigorous program, good professors, research opportunities, and being selective all serve to attract students, which are really the important thing. Not only do they elevate the discussion in your classes and make your experience really rich and worthwhile, they constitute your network after you graduate, and your degree will be worth whatever your fellow alumni can prove themselves to be. So program rankings and all the things that constitute them (whichever way the causation goes) are important insofar as they can attract the type of people you want to spend one or two years with. 
Placement is also a sensitive topic here. Placement seems to mean different things to different people, and I think that's because placement is ultimately about ending up where you want to be. Plenty of people want to go work for State Dept as an FSO, in the big management consulting firms, or for World Bank, Brookings, Pew, and other NGO think tanks, etc. But what if you want to work in local government? Or in a smallish non-profit? In another country? I ended up doing my internship in a small country in East Asia where no one else had gone, and I was really happy because my career advisors had the network to put me there, and it's been very good for my career because I came back here after graduation. It's not just sour grapes that I didn't end up at Deloitte, which takes 4-5 interns from Sanford every year. It's because I wasn't interested. So think about what kind of placement you want, and see how many people at your program of choice has been ending up in those sorts of sectors. Or if you don't know what kind of placement you want, find a school that has a fair bit of alumni in all three sectors (private, non-profit, and gov't). 

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! 

Ha, it seems I have just what you might be looking for. I have these notes from 2016 when I did my own interview (I'm a principal candidate about to finalize my placement).
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1. Why Fulbright?
2. How would you contribute to [country name] upon return?
3. You're already very familiar with the US, how do you think spending more time stateside can help you contribute more toward cultural exchange in your country? (I had been a US undergrad 7 years back)
4. What is the biggest compliment someone can pay you?
5. How are you going to overcome ethnic prejudices to get a public service job upon return?
6. What would you do if you were placed at a university you hadn't even heard of?
7. What adversity have you overcome and how?
8. You went to [US undergrad school name]? How did you end up there?
9. Do you have relatives in the US?
10. What qualifies you to study public administration?
11. Your English seems perfect. Are you better skilled at your native language or English?
12. You work with XYZ, a respected US organization. What would bring you back after Fulbright when you could continue with XYZ in the States?
13. What universities would you like to go to?
14. Have you applied to the DV Lottery?
15. What countries have you been to?
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In my case, the panel consisted of five people: two Fulbright administrators from the respective embassy, a State Department official flown in from DC, and a Fulbright alum.
 

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.