Amerikanets

Program Applied To: (MPA, MPP, IR, etc.) MPP, MPA, MALD Schools Applied To: Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MPA), Tufts Fletcher (MPP), Chicago Harris (MPP), Georgetown Mccourt (MPP), NYU Wagner (MSPP), Princeton WWS (MPA), Duke Sanford (MPP), GWU Trachtenberg (MPP), LSE (MPA) Schools Admitted To: MIIS (15k), Fletcher (10k), Harris (20k), Mccourt (15k), Wagner (0), Sanford (24k), Trachtenberg (0) Schools Rejected From: WWS, not a surprise, I knew they were a long shot Still Waiting: LSE Undergraduate institution: Private school ranked in the bottom half of the top-100 Undergraduate GPA: 3.67 Last 60 hours of Undergraduate GPA (if applicable): Undergraduate Major: International Relations, French 2nd major GRE Quantitative Score: 170 GRE Verbal Score: 162 GRE AW Score: 5.5 Years Out of Undergrad (if applicable): 0 Years of Work Experience: 2-ish depending on what you consider to be “work experience” Describe Relevant Work Experience: I took two years off of undergrad to work as a full-time volunteer in Russia. While I was there, I worked a lot with African immigrants who had usually let their visas expire by helping them to stay safe, get food, and get back to their home countries. Not sure if this really counted as work experience to most schools because it wasn’t after graduation. I have also worked as both a teaching assistant and a research assistant while pursuing my undergrad. Two years as a French and Russian TA for online, high school level courses, two years as a TA in the Economics Department, with half a year in an introductory course and a year and a half in one of the upper-division electives, and one year as an RA in the Political Science department. Strength of SOP (be honest, describe the process, etc): I’m not very good at writing about myself, but I had a few people look over it and they seemed to like it. I’m honestly not really sure how good it was and so it probably wasn’t great. Strength of LOR's (be honest, describe the process, etc): Two of my recommendations were extremely strong and one of them was good, but not as strong. Both professors I work for wrote letters for me. I have worked for one of them for a year and a half and took a class from him, I took four classes from the other and I now work as one of his RAs. The third letter was from a French professor I have taken classes from and chatted with after class, so she knows me decently well, but not as well as the other two. Other: I ended up applying to a lot more schools than I probably should have (If I could do it again, I would NOT apply to MIIS or Wagner) because I wasn’t sure how schools would consider my work experience, which made me worry that I couldn’t get into one of the top schools I applied to. As far as my strength as an applicant, my GRE scores were better than I hoped for, especially my Quant score. My GPA could have been better, but it would be closer to a 3.75 if it weren’t for the fact that I got a 3.0 my first semester. I think that my lack of a solid third recommender hurt my application a bit, but the strength of the other two probably made up for that. In addition to all of that, the International Relations major at my university is very quantitatively heavy, so I have taken almost as many econ classes as an economics major.

Applied for early notification, they pushed back my decision into regular decision, but I still got in with a $10k scholarship. I was surprised to say the least.

I just heard back too and I was accepted with 24k and a TA position. @Guesswho From what my letter says, it looks like the offer will be extended to the second year conditional on academic performance. My letter says the second year would also be for $4000, so, unless I am misreading something, I assume you are correct with the $8k total across the two years.

I just got an email and I've also been admitted with no funding. i have a couple other offers from schools that came with funding, so I'm definitely leaning more towards those schools at the moment.

@FujiShe I haven't heard back either for the MPP program. When I log into the portal, it says that my application cannot be submitted because the deadline has passed, even though I have received several emails from GWU saying that my application was submitted and under review. Does anyone else have this problem?

Congrats to everyone who has already posted! I got my call this afternoon too and was accepted to the MPP program. They told me that I would get 20k in scholarship money, but I still want to see it in print before I completely believe it.