revalith

Worries: I only applied to one school I like to think I'm realistic. Moving away from this city would be detrimental to my career as I can get employment I'm interested in using my undergrad. So I thought I'd only apply to the one program I'm interested in, and here we are. Objectively, I'm fairly certain I'll be fine: my GPA is around a 3.9, I've got ~3 years of relevant work experience, and my LORs are from profs from the program I applied to since I'd previously taken courses with them. But the farther it creeps on into February, the more I start to worry about it. This program releases acceptances sometime around mid-March most years, which really, really doesn't help! So I have another few weeks of anxiously checking everything over again to worry about.

Congrats, EURUS is a great program. My best friend is finishing up there this year (and my supervisor at work right now is actually a EURUS grad!) Feel free to ping me if you ever need someone to show you around Carleton, the offer's open

Longest February ever, and this is still all I see: I've heard from others last year not to expect anything until early March, and that has me all kinds of frustrated. My birthday is in 4 days and yet I JUST WANT THIS MONTH TO BE OVER.

Good lord. I just went to take a peek and wow, the level of toxicity is outrageous. The only linguistics students I've ever met were so nice - who are these people?? My undergrad has a reputation for producing arrogant/elitist attitudes and even so I've never seen someone non-ironically use 'pleb' to describe people. Yeesh.

Congrats! Welcome to Carleton (from a soon-to-be Carleton grad/returning for some reason.) I'm totally biased, but I love this school. Crossing my fingers for you on the NPSIA front. I know I'm certainly waiting rather impatiently for them to get rolling.

We all want to be diplomats. Or something like that. My advice to you (based on the experience I have) is to remember that there's only maybe a dozen openings in the actual foreign service a year, and thousands of people apply, so it's worth looking at how you can gain the experience you want elsewhere. I've seen too many grads (not just NPSIA) waste years on contract with GAC or similar organisations hoping to break through and coming out of it behind their peers because there's little upward mobility at that dept. I honestly think NPSIA is still top for international work generally speaking. It has the name recognition, it's in Ottawa so you can get the experience you need, and more importantly the profs often teach their classes with a very applied lens (i.e. not just "here is a theory of conflict" but rather "here is a theory of conflict, how would you use this?"). It's very much so an international affairs program that's targeted at people who want to be working in an international field, rather than a program for academics. Not that it doesn't produce the latter of course, but it's definitely a different vibe. As for area/region, I wouldn't worry about that as much and do what you're interested in for that aspect. The specializations don't really change all that much for employability - if you have the sector knowledge it'll come out in an interview. I've interviewed for geographic desks at GAC in areas I haven't taken any classes on and did fine just because I had learned about them in my spare time. If you end up at Carleton, feel free to shoot me a message and I can always show you the good spots to grab a coffee or study. I've spent four years learning the campus, might as well share the knowledge lol.

It's really a mixed lot. Public Safety as a department includes work with CBSA (border security, trade/import/export regulations), crime (which sometimes has international aspects), national security and a whole bunch of things. PS is a coordinating department so a lot passes through it. Anecdotally, I worked with CBSA in a regulatory team and that included international stuff too! Like bilateral agreements between us and other countries (especially the US), trade agreements, the works. There's a lot more than GAC out there for international work

Okay here's the honest truth - not to be a pessimistic ass, but the thing is GAC isn't hiring anyone. ANYONE. I have literally heard an executive in HR at GAC say flat out to a hall of ~400 students: "We do not have the money to hire 99.9% of you full time, and we won't until the old guard retires in 10-15 years." Most of the younger employees at GAC are on revolving 90-day/1 year contracts with no job security, and all of them are competing for the same half-dozen jobs in the hopes that they'll be the ones to make it. Of the ones I know who did make it, 1 actually got a trade job and the other 2 got in by becoming IT support. It's theoretically possible to get in and a solid chunk of NPSIA students will do a co-op at GAC in the hopes that they'll be the 0.01%, but the actual likelihood is so small you shouldn't be picking your degree based on whether GAC will bridge you in or not. I worked there on 3 different teams for 4 semesters (support, project management, and trade) and they do not hire basically anyone except on temp contracts. What you should look at is the degree that will give you the best overall opportunities. It is much easier to get bridged in in other departments and deploy into GAC - I jumped ship and have worked at several other departments that actually have the money to bridge me in. My friend is over at Public Safety - doing international work - and she's already got her offer in hand for when she graduates. I personally work at Transport (doing high-level coordination, including intl files) and there's more promise here than there ever was at GAC. tl;dr GAC isn't hiring anybody, NPSIA or otherwise, but NPSIA will get your foot in the door in other depts too.

Yep, that's about right - the vast majority do the coursework option. I was discussing whether or not I wanted to do an MRP with a few NPSIA professors I know and they mentioned that relatively few people in NPSIA do it. In the end it's about priorities - I don't think most NPSIA students are looking to go on in academia so an MRP or thesis is not a useful exercise. Co-op in NPSIA is quite solid. When I was working at GAC I'd say a solid half of the students on my last team there were NPSIA students, and my friends in the program all found work, which is more than can be said about some other programs.

Yes, the opportunities are much better with the federal government staying in Ottawa, which is part of the reason I don't want to leave this city! If you want to work for the federal government leaving Ottawa is very counterintuitive. I actually started working on FSWEP/co-op contracts right from the beginning of my undergraduate degree (the undergrad pay scale tops out at 21$) and I'm on a temp contract now until I figure out where I'm off to. That's how I paid for my undergrad and cost of living. I was lucky and got in on my first contract and from there it gets much easier to get rehired. For me personally the more professional focus NPSIA allows you to have is more important than the research one - I fully intend on completing the degree with coursework and not an MRP/thesis. NPSIA's setup is better for people who don't want to do as much research and are more focused on the professional applications of the degree, which is definitely where I'm at right now.

Thanks for the info! I'm confident in my application, but at least now there's a timeline to put on it. You make a good point about Ford, though, I hadn't thought about the effect on graduate funding packages. NPSIA's tuition isn't that much so it could really be worse even if funding is reduced. My undergraduate tuition was 700 more than NPSIA's this year, and I managed to work enough hours to pay for it. I know some people who are planning on going abroad for their degrees in similar fields and it blows my mind how much they're willing to spend on it - I can't imagine what they're thinking.

Good luck to you too! I was debating applying to multiple schools but I didn't want to leave Ottawa and GSPIA didn't have the same draw for me, so I settled on just applying to NPSIA in the end. At the risk of sounding overconfident I feel pretty good about my chances so I think I'll be okay! Hopefully it all works out.

That's definitely reassuring, I'll have to pass that on to friends of mine whose references submitted late enough that by the time Carleton Central registered it the date had rolled over. They were really worried about this exact issue. One of my references submitted on the day before the 31st as well - seems like it's a trend! Now to wait (who knows how long?) for the offers to start rolling out for NPSIA. I only applied to NPSIA, so at least I minimize the waiting stress, but I definitely am ready for all of this to be over. I submitted my actual application in November so I've been nervous about this for a lot longer than it's worth honestly.