@DevinMiles I don't have debt. I don't believe I ever referred to the ease or difficulty of living in DC with debt, or to debt at all. I wouldn't know.
My problem with these kinds of posts is the mix of accurate and inaccurate information, like I said. If OP wasn't shitting on rich international types, making vast but unsubstantiated claims about everyone's ability to afford some unquantifiable standard of living in DC, and complaining that the work doesn't suit them and therefore shouldn't suit anybody, I'd have no issue with it.
If my "rantings" are not helpful to you, you are welcome to ignore them.
I am actually extremely surprised by some of the responses to Elmo Says. As someone who has worked several years in the DC area, I can say that the depiction of the work/life/post-graduation scene in DC is extremely accurate. Those who say, "nahh... it's not that bad.. " with a load of debt are not being honest. Yes, YMMV with your graduate degree, but this is overall a very truthful post.
ExponentialDecay's rantings are not helpful. It portrays living in DC with debt as far easier than the reality. It portrays everyone as knowing exactly what the outcome of their degree will be. And attacking the person posting is certain never helpful. Having that rant as the first response took this thread into a weird direction since this is a very helpful post.
Thanks a lot, Elmo Says. It's unfortunate that you had to put up with some odd behavior on here, but your comments are appreciated and will likely be of great help to new applicants.
@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.
Hi @cbx2v, I'm also accepted. Though I have a small question, hope you don't mind. Was the financial aid/scholarship mentioned explicitly in your letter?
My acceptance letter doesn't mention anything about it, so I assume it means that I didn't get any funding? Thanks a lot in advance.
lanhoang got a reaction from nuhanzi in Georgetown MSFS 2017