PaoloC
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Posts posted by PaoloC
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As a current WWS grad student, absolutely no brainer here - take Princeton!
The program is great, and you'll practically the same learning opportunities as HKS. While you may find some benefits in one over the other, at the end of the day the learning outcomes will be fairly similar. $200k in debt is a couple of lifetimes of repayments if you plan to work in humanitarian aid.
Even if the Harvard brand is stronger internationally, it certainly isn't $200k stronger. Most importantly, the value of your degree (and of the brand) diminishes quickly after graduation. By the time you've had a job or two, your work experience will count for way more than the name of your grad school. And you'll still be stuck with a mountain of debt...
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On 5/4/2019 at 7:35 PM, samaasl said:
Hey there! I will move to Princeton for my PhD and planning to bring my dog. I am worried that I will not get pet-friendly graduate housing which would be amazing. As I am in Europe, I cannot visit other housing options... do you already know where you will be staying?
I'm in EXACTLY your same situation, and panicking mildly about what I'd have to do if pet-friendly graduate housing wasn't available! I started scouting around for accommodation elsewhere as a backup, but it's really hard as an international student.
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MPP at Princeton's WWS! Super excited to head across in just a couple of months.
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On 3/21/2019 at 10:08 PM, somewhatslightlydazed said:
Bumping this up for 2019
I'll likely be starting Princeton next year (a 2-year MPA through the Wilson School). This thread has been really helpful for giving me a sense of the Princeton community!
I was curious, is it still the case that non-married incoming students have almost no shot at getting a studio or 1-bedroom? I'm coming from DC so the idea of paying $900-1400 to have my own place is super exciting. If I don't have a chance at my own place, I'll probably try to reach out to potential roommates to share a 2 or 3-bedroom because the idea of going back to dorm living is not at all appealing to me.
Glad to see you're leaning Princeton/WWS
I'd love to hear from anyone familiar with Princeton how pet-friendly it is? I'll be bringing my two dogs along, so trying to get a sense of what that would look like.
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To me, it's just different names for the similar programs. Policy schools aren't standardized like, say, business or law schools where an MBA or JD is the universally recognized degree program.
The one-year MPP at WWS is almost identical in its flexibility and entrance requirements as the MC/MPA at HKS; whereas MPP at HKS is a two-year program. So, don't read too much into the titles of the degree and choose a program that aligns with your learning priorities.
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4 hours ago, backbackagain said:
Any other admits having trouble accessing financial aid information?
Website is down for maintenance until March 16th, 14:00 eastern time. Before the maintenance window, no troubles accessing the offer information.
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Accepted to the MC/MPA but disappointed with absolutely no financial aid. With a Princeton/WWS offer on the table, making a case for HKS at $90k/yr is very hard!
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Admitted post is up: http://hksadmissionblog.tumblr.com/post/183424346238/2019-application-reading-and-decision-process
Note the last paragraph: "When admissions decisions have been released, a post will be published to this blog. Will this be today? No."I think this is Matt's nice way of saying "stop emailing us!!"
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This is the true meaning of Einstein's theory of relativity: time slows the closer you get to March 15th.
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4 hours ago, coolguyz said:
Long time lurker, hello everybody big fan and what not. I just got a CPL finalist interview email for the Black Family Fellowship. Wondering if other people are seeing theirs. Anyone know if you can be a finalist for multiple CPLs or do they coordinate so as not to overlap? Good luck folks!
Congrats!! I went for Dubin, so here's hoping they didn't send out emails yet. I just spent 20 minutes re-reading every sentence of my application essay and second-guessing every word choice. Does anyone else do that???
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15 hours ago, Lalavita said:
Heart skipped a beat when I got the “Harvard Kennedy School MYFAID Financial Aid Portal Login Information” email today.
I like that they included this at the bottom of the email.
Disclaimer: Receipt of this email should not be construed as providing any information on your likelihood of admission.
You and me both! ?
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4 hours ago, Lalavita said:
Counting down to CPL interview invitations by this Friday.
I applied for Gleitsman and Dubin.
Best of luck to everyone who applied as I know funding is always a hot topic with HKS.
Same here! It will be a painfully long four days...!
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On 2/9/2019 at 9:04 PM, MPPhopeful322 said:
Thanks!
I just found my notes from that call - 22nd February was their target date for interview invitations.
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On 2/8/2019 at 6:20 AM, MPPhopeful322 said:
Does anyone know how soon interview invites go out for CPL fellowships? I know the interviews are at the end of the month. Just wondering when we'll be notified if we've been selected to interview.
I was on their webinar a couple of weeks back. I recall something about third week of Feb or thereabouts for the interview invites.
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16 hours ago, SpaceCowboy113 said:
Thank you very much for your opinion. Ill definitely take it into account for my essay practice. Did you already take the gre?
Pleasure! Yes, I took the GRE last year.
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On 1/2/2019 at 3:53 PM, brenomumic said:
The following appeared in a memo from the director of student housing at Buckingham College.
"To serve the housing needs of our students, Buckingham College should build a number of new dormitories. Buckingham's enrollment is growing and, based on current trends, will double over the next 50 years, thus making existing dormitory space inadequate. Moreover, the average rent for an apartment in our town has risen in recent years. Consequently, students will find it increasingly difficult to afford off-campus housing. Finally, attractive new dormitories would make prospective students more likely to enroll at Buckingham."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The director of student house at Buckingham College made a lot of assumptions without having real data and information to prove his points. Saying that the quantity of students will double in 50 years, that the students cannot afford to live in an off-campus apartment and that new dormitories will attract more students are merely vague assumptions and theorys without proofs. Let's discuss each of them in the next paragraphs.
First, the director stated that based on current trends, the quantity of students will double over the next 50 years and then the existing dormitory space will be inadequate. But the question is: How does he know that 50 years from now the quantity of students will double? Things change over the time. Maybe, according to current trends there has been increasing the number of students living in the campus house, but it does not mean that every single year, upon the next 50 years, this number will increase as well until it doubles. In order to streghten his argument, he needs to show all of his numbers, based on his trends and also predict some improvement over the next couple of years. Predict something in a long-term with current trends open space for a big standard deviation, which weaken his argument.
Second, the director assumed that all the students will not be able to afford living in off-campus apartments due to some rise in the rent of the apartmentes in town. The director did not say anything about how much the rent in town apartements has risen over the years, he just said that the students will not be able to rent an apartment off-campus because is too expensive these days for them. On the other hand, the director should have shown the average of cost to rent an apartment in town nowadays and that, according to the financial situation of some of the students - and now all of them- will not be able to move there.
I'll comment on your argument essay.
You're not really answering the prompt. Throughout your response, you are judging the director for the position he has taken (arguing that he hasn't provided enough information to justify his claims). That's not what the prompt asks you to do; instead, you're asked to "discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument."
You've basically provided just two answers to this prompt:
- "needs to show his numbers" by which I assume you mean details of how future trends were calculated
- "average cost to rent an apartment vs financial situation of students"
In the rest of the essay, you're basically just challenging the assumptions of the director's memo -- which is not what the prompt asked you to do. Try to keep to the prompt, and keep emotion out of argument essays (reserve them instead for issue essays). You want to take a neutral position and provide evidence both that could support and undermine the argument.
Other pieces of evidence you could have asked for:
- evidence of enrollment trends over the past couple of decades, to determine whether it's reasonable to assume current growth trends will continue for next 50 years
- evidence that the increase in enrollment can reasonably be expected to cause a corresponding increase in housing needs (i.e. that in the next 50 years increases in enrollment won't be driven by online learning or by people commuting from nearby cities)
- evidence that students make enrollment decisions based on attractiveness of dormitories (you could even take it a step further and ask for evidence that good dormitories are more influential in enrollment decisions than availability of off-campus housing)
I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Good luck!
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On 1/5/2019 at 2:13 AM, karish10 said:
I have a couple of questions about the writing section of the GRE:
1. Does it have to be in either American or British English? Does it matter whether I say programme or program, colour or color?
2. What is the average / expected length of the Issue and Argument tasks?
Singe it will be reviewed by American readers, I'd say better drop the extra "u" !
On length, ETS doesn't provide any specific guidance but I'm pretty sure more is generally better. If anything, a longer essay gives you a chance to develop the argument more. I was targeting the 650-750 range during practice tests.
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I'd say maybe a 3.5. Your position is not clear, and there doesn't seem to be a unifying thread throughout the essay. Your opening sentences in both the first and second paragraph seem to imply you mostly agree that major cities are a good indicator (which is also what you mentioned in your outline notes), but then the rest of the essay shifts towards "actually, major cities only give you part of the story and you really can't tell anything about a society without studying the smaller cities."
The second paragraph goes onto a tangent, arguing the original essence of a culture is lost when traditions mix. I cannot see how that adds to the argument.
The topic sentence of paragraph 3 makes me wonder where you're going with this:"religion has been shifting greatly in the last few years" does nothing to advance your argument. Sentences 2, 3 and 4 of that paragraph are generic statements and again I can't follow how they help your argument. Only towards the end of that paragraph do you get to your idea which basically is "the influence of religion on a society's values is much stronger in smaller towns"; the missing piece here would be "...and therefore using large cities as a proxy for society as a whole would be inaccurate, as it would fail to take into consideration nuances only visible in small towns."
Paragraph 4 could be strengthened by adding some more context. For example, define why you believe political views are part of "the most important characteristics in society" -- and, again, make a statement to link it back to the original prompt.
Finally, your concluding paragraph again makes me wonder where you stand on the issue. In your opening you implied you were mostly in agreement with the essay prompt; here you conclude by saying that you cannot truly understand a society without considering the small cities.
And a final note: you use a single example throughout (Colombia) - that's not necessarily bad, but if you're going to build your entire essay around a particular example you need to make a much better case as to why you think that example is sufficiently representative (and why you can use it to generalize and support the essay prompt).
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There's another thread on this, with answers from a number of people who heard back (with and without aid information) - might want to look at that.
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To me, this should be a no-brainer: The application form asks a question, so you either lie (and undermine your integrity) or you answer truthfully. Only one obvious choice here.
As to why schools ask, there are probably various reasons. Mostly, though, I guess they want to see whether you have some sort of coherence in your applications or you're just applying to 25 different schools to up your chances.
Most programs (particularly the competitive ones) have low acceptance rates. The schools obviously know that, so they KNOW you will to be applying to multiple schools. Virtually everyone on this forum has put in 5-10 applications - just read the footers on posts. If you apply to a school with 15% acceptance rates and say that's your only choice, an admissions officer will likely question whether you're being truthful.
Note that I've never worked in an admissions office, so this is just my interpretation!
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Also got the acceptance for the MIPP in Bologna, with a 50% tuition cover! Deadline for acceptance April 20th.
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12 hours ago, invincible49 said:
Yeah you are right, but I just read on the blog that they've completed one round of all applications. If thats the case wheres my GRE score? I submitted it on November 16 but still doesnt show in the portal. Started to get a little freaked out. Dont know if I should resend my score to the school. Double and triple checked on the ETS website that I've code the right
Personally, I wouldn't resend or even contact them about it. Their admissions blog is full of pleas to not email them with queries on status of the application, that if there are issues they will reach out, and that if you made a good faith effort to get info to them on time (and it sounds like you did) they would not hold it against you if scores happened to get lost somewhere along the way.
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (TSFKAWWS) MPP Courses
in Government Affairs Forum
Posted
Correct -- you can take any graduate courses (course numbers 500+) from the course catalog: https://registrar.princeton.edu/course-offerings