3dender

This chapter is finished!!! Finally done!  Master Degree completed! Best of luck to those that are still at it and congrats to those that have finished!
 

Sounds like totally normal thumb-twiddling you're experiencing.  I'm going through the same while waiting for the next step.  Funny enough, my WIFE is going through the same, after just FINISHING school and having to wait a few weeks before her job starts.  Totally rational response to moments of limbo, I say.

I have been admitted to a graduate program of choice and could not be more elated about my acceptance. Lately though, I've been feeling rather anxious about starting this chapter of my life. I have been feeling very doubtful of this decision and feel scared that I will spend all this time and energy in this subject, only to receive my Master's and wish to switch to another career. I am a hard worker, love to be intellectually stimulated, and love a good challenge- the difficult part for me is socializing day in and day out with colleagues, especially on days when personal life is hitting the fan or i'm just plain exhausted. It's really hard to fake it, and it makes me feel guilty when mentally I am just not there that day. I think a lot of the anxiety would melt away if I knew I could just genuinely be myself (good, bad, and ugly), but I know that the culture of academia does not really work this way. We must be "on" at all times. I am also nervous that grad school will be so time consuming that it will derail my personal life and leave me feeling isolated from my friends and family. More than anything, I wish to have a balanced work/home life, but I keep receiving messages that it is just not possible in graduate school. Does anyone else feel similar to this or have advice? Thank you!

For what it's worth: 
You don't know if your chosen field/program is right for you until you try. Lots of people come in thinking they want thing A but learn that actually maybe thing B is better suited for them. Happens all the time, but you still have to take the chance, otherwise you'll never know.  What you describe sounds pretty common, and not at all an indication that you've made the wrong decision.  Academia has a ridiculous number of awkward, shy, and introverted people. Academics are most definitely not "on" all the time. Maybe SLPs are different, but I bet that just like any other profession, there are all kinds of people. Everyone has bad days. And while it's generally best to treat your academic program like a workplace and not snap at people in ways you wouldn't treat a work colleague, it's also entirely understandable if some days you're not as outgoing or happy as others. If you make genuine friends in your program, you'll find ways to vent during the days, and if not, I'm sure you'll find your friends and vent in the evenings. This is no different than any other job you'll have. 

1. The idea that you can get into a PhD program simply because you did an MA at Cornell is misguided.
2. The idea that you should do a PhD as some kind of last resort is incredibly misguided. A PhD is a multi-year commitment that's hard to get through even if you come in with all the passion in the world. 
3. The idea that you would then get a job at a North American University with your PhD that you aren't really passionate about and in a field you didn't actually want to be at is just plain offensive. The academic job market is ridiculously competitive. Those "lesser tier" jobs you're describing will still be highly competitive. The idea that you can go into academia as some kind of backup is just so incredibly misguided. More likely, you'll be miserable and depressed doing something you don't want to do, leading to poor performance, and therefore to failure to get a job (or graduate). Sorry to be harsh, but you have no experience and no actual academic interests. You'll be competing against people who actually want to be where they are. It's tough enough even when you have everything going for you, and almost impossible otherwise. If this is your backup strategy, I highly recommend that you go back to the drawing board. 

@MBR given OP's goal is to stay in the States, this degree might as well be art history (which, insofar as "hard skills" go, is not that far removed from policy programs). It is difficult for someone who is not an immigrant to understand how many more problems and how many fewer safety nets F1 students have, to the extent that I think people who are not international students are being irresponsible when giving advice on this matter. The only scenario where OP should "just go" is if this decision wouldn't cause financial strain on his family (i.e. they are very wealthy). Otherwise, no, they shouldn't YOLO because someone who can get their loans forgiven and get a job at any gas station told them to just do it.
OP, I came here on an F1 from a similarly socially suffocating country which has strained relations with the US, studied a similar major to yours, and I now work in policy. I also know a lot of people who are working or are trying to find work in the US, UK, or EU on a visa. I can only speak from experience, which is colored by my individual perceptions, dis/privileges, and abilities, but I hope it helps.
The first thing to realize is that your job search will look nothing like citizens' or green card holders, as will your financial risks. So take any general statistic, from placement statistics to minimum GPA requirements, with a grain of salt - they are not representative of international students' experiences. When it comes to getting an H1B, you face two major hurdles. The first is finding an employer who is willing to sponsor you for an H1B following your 1-2 years of OPT (because any decent school will make it possible for you to use OCT for internships). These employers are mostly big companies with lots of money, lots of lawyers, and lots of experience with the H1B process (though small companies sponsoring because they really like you as an individual and want you specifically has happened once or twice among my acquaintances). They mostly want to hire people with technical skills or at least work experience. Economics is probably the least quantitative that you can afford to go if you want to be competitive, which is why I personally would think twice about an MPA; the mathier, the more opportunities you are eligible for (which is not the same as getting the job, of course). The second hurdle is getting the H1B, where, assuming your company wants to sponsor you (i.e. pay for all the paperwork and go through the long bureaucratic process), you are admitted into a true lottery. I know people who have had to go home after working in M&A at Goldman Sachs because they didn't win the lottery, and rebuild their career from scratch. This was before 2009, when Obama cut the H1B quota to a third. H1B is a bloodbath, no matter where you work or what qualifications you have. You have the same chance as anyone else in that barrel, and if you don't get it, some companies will transfer you to an office outside the US, and some will just let you go.
People who are telling you to consider routes to UN-type jobs are absolutely correct (though a degree from SIPA is by no means a guarantee), because that makes you eligible for a G-type visa, which has many perks beyond the chief perk that it is not capped and makes you eligible for a green card after a certain number of years.
With that in mind, let's discuss degrees. Policy degrees are pretty frou frou, and I disagree that the skills they impart are particularly hard (please, tell me what a ~~quantitative analyst you are when you don't even understand the functional form of the model you are estimating). The problem is that the master's offering in the US is pretty bare - there aren't (m)any quality academic masters in social sciences that are valued by employers, because the market is dominated by professional degrees and there is a tradition for talented undergrads to work in a research position out of undergrad for a couple years and then go straight into the PhD. Then there's the problem that everything is so damn expensive. This is a serious problem, because you can't (imo as a person with a very low risk appetite) justify taking out 6 figure debt unless you are absolutely certain you can pay it back, but you can't be absolutely certain due to the effectively random H1B lottery outcome, and I know of no country in the world besides America where you can pay off that kind of debt, no matter what job you get. In my country, if you emerge with 6 figure debt and no US job, your life is fiscally ruined. For that reason, I wouldn't consider an MBA in America unless an employer were covering it. 
As regards what you would learn in an MPA vs an MBA program, I think you have a slightly unrealistic idea of both as well as an unrealistic idea of the realities of the US academic/job environment. Firstly, whilst I'm sure you learned a lot in undergrad and that the curriculum at Cornell or wherever is fascinating, these are professional programs, the point of which is to get a job. The strength of the curriculum is negligible compared to how effective a program is at achieving the latter. These aren't programs you go into to ~~find yourself or learn about the field. A lot of your classmates will already know 90% of what you're being taught, in technical or content classes or even both, and will be using this time to build their professional networks and work on projects that they can show employers or PhD programs (so, not exactly student work). If you go in without at least knowing what policy field you want to pursue as well as something academic or practical about that field, you will be lost. Secondly, and this probably goes for everyone, but especially for international students who haven't studied/worked in an American environment, one of the things you need to achieve in these programs is learning how to exist in your professional cohort, which includes building a personal brand/niche/narrative. Don't believe anything to the contrary: the US work environment is incredibly insular, and if you do things not how people are used to them being done, people will think you're weird, which will negatively affect your career progression. Another factor is what my foreign family call Americans being duplicitous, which is their naive way of saying that how people express themselves in America and how people express themselves in my culture are different, so unless you've been immersed in this culture for a while, you won't know what your cohort thinks of you, which is bad bad bad in this relationship-based business. There is still a classist, xenophobic notion here for what constitutes educated, unfortunately. For instance, a precious few of my colleagues are sympathetic to people who don't speak/write good English. Few bother to investigate whether an ESL person can't construct an argument or just doesn't have enough facility with the language, and just assume it's the former. On that note, writing well is the #1 most important skill (right up there with presenting/interacting with people well), not Stata. You may think you write well, but policy writing in the US is its own register. This field has a culture, and you will lose out if you don't know what's up. Especially the big players that everyone here wants to work for are snake pits, where no one will give you more than one chance, no one expects less than perfection, and a few people will screw you over just because they can. Don't get me wrong: I have a fantastic work environment with people who are invested in my success, but among my entire acquaintance, I am the only one who is this lucky.
As for what you should do, the main red flags to me are that you aren't 100% sure what you want to study, and that you graduated college last year. imo you need to be about 2 years further along in your career than you are, both so you can get better offers and so you know yourself better and have a better idea of how to make the best of this opportunity. This is a lot of money to spend on something you're not totally sold on, man. My first year out of college, I was similarly discombobulated and unhappy, but I'm glad I rode it out. I learned about how much I didn't know I don't know, and simultaneously I got a much better handle on where I want to take my life and career. GL.

This is SO accurate and so depressing at the same time.

people in general are basics. they go to work in a job they hate, buy things they don't need, in order to afford nice things, so that they can impress people they don't like, and post that shit on social media to make their lives seem awesome. no wonder so many of them are on antidepressants. this is as much true for people in academia as anywhere else. a lot of people stumble into a phd without a real incentive to really be there. I kid you not some of them want to spend 5 years of their lives and opportunity cost from a real job just to have a "PhD" on their resume. interesting people are everywhere though. you just have to look harder. 

I'm actually not sure what you are asking about in your post, i.e. are you asking how to build closer relationships with your cohort given that they are very cohesive and you're not around as much? Or, are you asking for general advice on how to be at peace with the current situation in your program? Most of what I wrote here is for the latter rather than the former. I don't know how to join a social group that is constantly doing things together, but personally, I wouldn't want to be part of such a group! I need my alone time.
(bolded part added by me). I think the bolded statement describes many grad students in most places, including me! It's been over 7 years now since I lived in the place where I developed all of my non-grad-school friendships. But I can provide some general advice, I think!
I also empathize with the first part of what I quoted from your post---not being around as much. I moved to grad school with my spouse and we tend to do our own thing. I would say that my cohort and the other students in my department do many more social things than we do. There seems to be one or two things every week, especially in my first year, and I don't have time (nor the inclination) to be spending that much time socializing! During the first year, I probably participated in about 33% of social activities with my cohort and throughout the five years here, I think I average one thing per month (or maybe 3 things every 2 months). 
This is fine with everyone though---I think it's the right balance of being active just enough that we still get invited to everything, we just decline more often than we accept. And, I stay connected with everyone in the department during the work day by visiting people in their offices, sometimes having lunch with people and other departmental events. Also, we organize/initiate the event once in a while, which I think helps maintain connections even more so than just showing up to things. So, I don't think you necessarily have to be present at every single social event in order to stay connected to the group. Of course, every group dynamic is different so the balance would vary.
Another piece of general advice: grad school is a long process and people/groups/dynamics change over the years. I think the social dynamic of my department was very different in my first year than it is now. And, in my first year, I mostly hung out with my cohort because we had the same classes and stuff but now, my main social group is a mix of people in various years, so that I am able to spend time socializing with people who are more similar to me in terms of what things we do and how often we go do things. I'm sure there are other subgroups that I don't even know about which might do things a lot more frequently, but that's okay, I don't need (nor want) to be part of everything.
So that also leads to the last piece of general advice: You don't need to feel like you must be close friends with everyone in your cohort. If you value close relationships, then perhaps finding a few people that you really enjoy hanging out with and focussing on building good relationships there. I personally find it much easier for me to have 1-3 strong friendships at a time, instead of being close with everyone. Usually, as people change over time, the friends I'm close with also changes; some people go from being very close friends to just regular friends while others who might have been acquaintances before become closer to me. Again, not saying that this works for everyone, just saying how I try to find balance in my life.

I love how a side discussion on Peanut Butter emerged on this thread, which I'm reading while spooning blobs of PB into my face hole.

I decided to chose JHU SAIS over Berkeley and Columbia. Based on program fit.

@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). 

Honestly, I applied to Northeastern as a "backup" school. I was much more interested in other programs, but I really liked the fact that they had some good non-profit/social policy work, so I pretty much declined as soon as I got into another school with a decent aid package. Their tuition cost (and aid, although I didn't try to ask for more) is something to heavily consider.
What area/work are you looking to go into? I did research on a bunch of schools in the area as I thought I would be staying in Massachusetts, but alas. If you message me I might be able to help you figure out some other programs.

Am I the only one who thinks of "Groundhog Day" whenever I see this thread?

It is mostly ants/roaches, along with some small house spiders.  Wolf spiders don't usually get inside but they're around outside.  We have an old house (1961) with plenty of cracks, and the ants can get annoying at times (it's difficult to notice a pattern).  We also haven't gone out of our way to get traditional poison traps just because the idea sort of bothers us. . . but we're getting to that point.  We've been trying homemade remedies with sporadic success.  But you wouldn't need to spend more than $20-30/yr. for such easily available traps.
The roaches are even less predictable.  Do they start coming inside when it rains a lot to get dry? Or are they more active when it's dry and they need to find water?  Who knows.  We get mini-outbreaks every few months (by which I mean we see a roach maybe 4-5 times in one week), at which point we put out fresh boric acid pellets and they go away again.  The Harris Famous Roach Tablets have worked for us -- a box costs $5 and we've had the same one for years.
As for ground v. upper floor, that could very well be a factor that I don't have much experience with.  I've always lived on a ground floor while in NC.  I'm with you on hating roaches.  Haven't gotten used to them yet, though I'm less ashamed of them since most people aroujnd here, even with newer constructions, have to deal with them.  It's helpful to understand that here they're just endemic, and not necessarily a sign of filth or messiness.
 

Every institution I ever went to, there were people who thought it was wonderful and people who thought it was crap. In my estimation, both opinions were based on little if any objective evidence. They were mostly formed on subjective ideas of fit, a vague sense of how their life was going at the time, and general pessimism/optimism. Very little to do with their practical circumstances.
That said, I've never liked people who think that they are smarter than every other person in the room and who dismiss every idea they disagree with as idiotic. Rarely if ever are these people anything other than a vibrant manifestation of the Dunning-Krueger effect.

It is mostly ants/roaches, along with some small house spiders.  Wolf spiders don't usually get inside but they're around outside.  We have an old house (1961) with plenty of cracks, and the ants can get annoying at times (it's difficult to notice a pattern).  We also haven't gone out of our way to get traditional poison traps just because the idea sort of bothers us. . . but we're getting to that point.  We've been trying homemade remedies with sporadic success.  But you wouldn't need to spend more than $20-30/yr. for such easily available traps.
The roaches are even less predictable.  Do they start coming inside when it rains a lot to get dry? Or are they more active when it's dry and they need to find water?  Who knows.  We get mini-outbreaks every few months (by which I mean we see a roach maybe 4-5 times in one week), at which point we put out fresh boric acid pellets and they go away again.  The Harris Famous Roach Tablets have worked for us -- a box costs $5 and we've had the same one for years.
As for ground v. upper floor, that could very well be a factor that I don't have much experience with.  I've always lived on a ground floor while in NC.  I'm with you on hating roaches.  Haven't gotten used to them yet, though I'm less ashamed of them since most people aroujnd here, even with newer constructions, have to deal with them.  It's helpful to understand that here they're just endemic, and not necessarily a sign of filth or messiness.
 

Not to be harsh, but if you don't have at least a vague idea of what area you want to eventually make a career for yourself -- Local Gov v. Environmental Policy v. IT -- you probably shouldn't be going to grad school yet.  Why not just get a job in one of these areas for a year or two to see how you like it?  You should at least know what your predominant one or two interests are before applying to school.

Look what happens - I leave for a month, and come back to see so many people decided on Duke! That's pretty much the most exciting thing. 
This fall, please stay active on GradCafé when the application season comes around again! I think the best thing about Sanford is the community there - it is so strong, vivid, tight-knit, and I miss it all the time now that I've graduated. I like to play up the network, the curriculum, the quant focus, even the weather. But what really made it an amazing two years was the people I studied with and argued with and learned from every day. And I think that's the hardest thing for prospective students to glean from all the online stats and rankings.
So I hope that if you like what you find at Sanford, or if you have valid critiques about it (I certainly have many), please pass on that information here, and in other places, to help people understand what they're getting themselves into. This is a great resource, and we can all pitch in to keep it that way. Congratulations, and have fun in Durham next year! 

It matters not one bit.

Seconding @Nonprofitguy, but taking it broader: networking is important no matter where you want to go, not just if you want to get into some of the big charter school education networks. Go back onto LinkedIn, and see where the alumni of all the schools that you're interested in are currently clustered (cities or industries or even individual firms you're interested in). That LinkedIn search will help you visualize the network you're going to rely on when you graduate (or even while you're a student, for internships and such), so it's a good idea to understand what that looks like right now. 
Speaking of looking at where alumni are, @LaughingCat, your comments so far seem to reflect more a regional understanding of public policy schools, which is definitely grounded in truth and a pretty common belief, but far from the whole picture. Having graduated from Duke Sanford, I pretty much know only one person that's working in Atlanta, but obviously a boatload in NC government, the second largest contingent in DC, and many people scattered throughout New York, Baltimore, San Francisco, etc. The same goes for schools like Michigan Ford, because the alums don't just all flock to Chicago - the geographic distribution is all over, really, as you'll see from LinkedIn. What you may also find is the same organizations or industries popping up time and time again. For example, Deloitte's federal practice makes it a point to recruit heavily from Sanford because of the alumni network, to the point where I remember five Deloitte networking events throughout the year. 
Also, not to quibble over details, but often, it's a friend-of-a-friend who might prove the most useful resource to you, so even if there isn't a critical mass of education folks where you end up, you can still really use that network for your own ends. (Theory of weak ties, thanks core sociology.) Though some alumni I met had very different careers and interests from me, they often knew of where I could find someone/ some org that was a good match. That's how on one occasion, I found the org I interned with between my first and second years, and on another occasion, made friends with a much older alumna. You never know where networking might lead you, which in my view makes it well worth the effort of a little small talk. 

I've lived in CH/Carrboro for 15 years, since undergrad basically.  I know the area well and can answer questions on specific locations.  
In general, grad students will want to either go west to Carrboro - older crowds, less slummy lodgings - or east toward Durham in one of the complexes off of 15-501 or Hwy. 54.  The latter (assuming you have a car), gives you closer proximity to Durham and Raleigh.  You can't really go wrong in Carrboro, though it is getting pricey (up towards $1k for a 1BR).
Feel free to PM me with questions on specific streets/areas within town.

The Sanford degree travels pretty much anywhere domestically, from what I understand just a step below the elites like HKS, Harris and WWS.  Stronger on the east coast for sure with a strong network in DC -- basically like the east coast version of Goldman.  I'll be fine wherever I want to go.

The Sanford degree travels pretty much anywhere domestically, from what I understand just a step below the elites like HKS, Harris and WWS.  Stronger on the east coast for sure with a strong network in DC -- basically like the east coast version of Goldman.  I'll be fine wherever I want to go.

All the school's you've listed are the ones I would suggest for non-DC East Coast.  Sanford is known for its education faculty, and Harris has some good ones as well.  I'm not sure about HKS or Ford.  You might check into NYU -- it's an MPA but I'm not sure how education-focused it can be.
I only have one other suggestion, and it's overstepping my bounds a bit but I'll go ahead and say it anyway because I feel strongly: unless you want to help dismantle public education, please don't work in charter schools.  There are good ones out there, but the movement itself is absolutely a Trojan horse for school privatization.