GradSchoolGrad

You have to realize that not all of this will go into scholarships. A lot of it will go into capital plans.

Most policy schools don't do interviews - especially with the rush of applications they have now - they don't have the the bandwidth for it. The only exception is for special scholarships.

Don’t go to CIPA... military affiliated ally here... it is a new program and has no idea what it is doing... Batten is an amazing program!

from a brand perspective - you may likely be correct. However, opportunity matters more than brand. If you are interested in IR and take advantage the connections in DC. SPIA obviously has IR connections, but they are mostly academically based. The aperture is much larger at SAIS than SPIA.

I think Top 3 really depends on what you want to do. If you want to focus on Data with an IR flair - SAIS is #1 Local & State + Non-Profit - Sanford #1 Focused Research Opportunities - SPIA #1 I would avoid American period. McCourt is complicated. If you care about padding your resume and learning applied data - it works for you - just be prepared to go alone. The culture of McCourt is professionally terrible and policy areas outside of their core focus areas can be difficult to build a career off of.

Word to the wise. If you seek to get a professional master's, please think more than about what doors the degree may open up for your first job. Think abut what it does to boost your career in the long run. Georgetown's MPP for example has brand cache and connections to open numerous doors. However, the program is problematic in that it doesn't prepare people to have a professional mind set and striver's culture. So many of my classmates have struggled professionally in the first job and beyond their first job because the school did terrible job for professional preparation or have settled. Many other MPP schools actual make a sincere effort at hoisting a professional culture and their graduates don't often struggle as much from such issues. No matter if your choose a professional master's or PhD, culture matters. I recommend you make sure it serves you well!

It might help if you knew that Sociology PhDs are rather super marketable these days outside of academia doing customer experience / user experience work. You are leagues above History or English PhDs in non-academic career opportunities.

Have you thought about applying and then deferring for a year? Then you might not have to tell them they wasted their tme. LOR are hard to come by.

Yes, your prior professional experience can be the most important factor if you a. aren't really making a career pivot post graduate school or b. you have an illustrious prior professional experience and your grad school is essentially time to recruit for a new job. HOWEVER... if you are trying to make a career pivot, the direction you take can be heavily influenced by the portfolio of opportunities afforded by your graduate program. This is everything from research opportunities, experiential leaning, alumni base, and etc. At the end of the day, everybody makes their future from the opportunities available. In the longer run, alumni bases can still matter, if you choose to leverage them. I know security analysis firms that have target recruiting goals for SAIS alums for example. The experiences your grad school afford you (and how well you to take advantage of them), can also determine how well you pivot for grad school. For example, my grad program was clueless on guiding a former wealth management advisor on career pivots, so he ended up in a data analysis shop (not one of his desired options), making 50% of his previous salary after graduation. However, because my grad program has lots of urban policy advocates trying to upscale, one of my classmates was able to increase her salary by 40% using our school's connections to the top echelons of DC government. The bottom line is that it helps if your school has a strong history of supporting people like you and your career goals.

Admissions has lives... like reading applications. I have seen the pain of admissions offices before.

Funny. As much idealism there is in American Universities, I actually find them to be relatively focused on career opportunities, especially compared to European counter parts. American schools spend so much time and effort on career services programs and experiential learning that ex-North America schools don't do to the same scale.

So, you have to realize, Non-Profit is actually a super large category. This includes medical centers, foundations, and etc. (AKA: places with money) I knew people make 6 figures going to Gates foundation

Happy to answer any questions regarding MBA vs. more policy/IR oriented professional masters.

I mean so many people going to these programs were Peace Corp, entry level teachers, or English instructors in Asia, so a 15K increase is pretty easy.

You have it backwards. There is actually a shortage of top MBA candidates, as you see 97 to 99% job placement at pretty much all top 30 schools. Policy schools don't advertise their job placement rates for a reasons (or put lots of qualifiers on it - a popular one is among those that responded). About a 1/3rd of my MPP class graduated with no job. I often meet MPP graduates as my waiters (just recently while out door dining). The reason behind this is that MPP suffers from supply and demand problem. In regards to demand, it suffers from increased competition from other degrees encroaching on their space (J.D.s, MBA, other grad, data science, and even undergrad. Although MPP has only marginally increased their value in the private sector. The size of US government also hasn't changed since the Obama administration, so its not like there are more government jobs to cater to MPPs to float around. On the supply side, there have been class size growth among MPP programs like at CIPA in Cornell and UVA Batten. The only reason why this is such a big deal to me is because I meet so many people like you who think an MPP is rising demand (for various reasons) and find that their career and salary prospects to be absolutely disappointing because they never took stock about the economics limitations of an MPP.

So I can only access CNBC and The Atlantic since I ran out of Forbes subscriptions. You need to understand these articles in context. CNBC - Elon is essentially saying the there is too much hiring of MBAs. That is basically saying hey, MBA demand is super strong right now, and he disagrees with it. Funny - Tesla does directly MBA hiring all the time despite all the talk about how they don't care for the degree (I have friends who worked there), so that isn't stopping Elon. The Atlantic - That is from 2013. Yes, the was height of MBA excess. But that changed. MBA schools became decommissioned (such was Virginia Tech's full time program) and Tech companies began recruiting for MBAs. The reason why MBAs are so valuable is that although the economy has grown, class sizes for the top 30 or so schools haven't really. However, MBAs have so many more recruiting opportunities now than they did 7 years ago. Government and non-profit now aggressively recruit for MBAs (and often prefer them over MPPs/MPAs). Of course, the big change is Tech. They started off as anti-MBA, but now can't get enough. I should give credit to how MBA schools have really expanded their curriculum and experience to cater to a wide audience as well.

1. Yes, MPP can be a stepping stone to PhD, but that is not what the program at most schools (including top schools) have it designed for. This includes UC Berkeley Cal - Goldman School. It is rather rare each class of MPP's to follow up with a PhD - no more than 5% of each class. My class was about 2%. 2. True, I should have given more stats, but I was hoping that it is so plainly obvious how not valuable MPPs are compared to MBAs, others would chime in and help me. So boiling it down too basics - an MBA at a top 15 program (using UVA Darden as an examples can rake in on average 135K + sign in bonus after graduation. https://www.darden.virginia.edu/mba/career-support/employment-report Most MPP schools don't even publish earnings, because last time a top one did (Harvard HKS about 5 years ago), it $65K after graduation. Even if you bake in inflation, you aren't matching 135K. You might see one thing, but the market says so differently. It is true that some mid-level to bottom level MBAs aren't worth much, but the same is true for corresponding level MPPs. Oh and yes, I used to do education outcomes research + I have 3 degrees on this stuff - so I'm not pulling smoke.

It doesn't impact you chances of getting accepted, but it can (in most cases) impact your chances of getting scholarship (assuming you do well). Schools will give scholarship money based upon high GMAT scores - because that is listed on rankings. GREs do nothing to help advertise a school.

I actually knew people who took a salary cut to go to grad school. Like Consultants, Hedge Fund folks, and etc. who wanted to "make a difference" and have better work life balance going to grad school to transition into a more public service role. Their pay cut was $20K to $100K at times.

If you do the PMF program and you are coming in super experienced 90K sounds right with cost of living adjustment in DC.

Georgetown's MPP is good if you want to avoid the student body and do stuff in DC + focus on quant. if you care about the Student experience + learning meaningful professional skills, there are so many better options. I wouldn't hire 95% of the people I went to school with.

So much of what you write in your first paragraph is wrong and misleading. 1. MPPs are not supposed to be research based, but practical application based. They can definitely have a major research component. 2. No way in hell are MPPs becoming more valuable than MBAs.

Adjuncts have no power. The only people that matter are those who are in the admissions committee - which is usually select staff, tracked professors, and the professor who is rotated in with an admissions responsibility. Now, it is hypothetically possible for an influential professor vouch for you to the admissions committee if he/she thinks you have potential for his/her research purposes. I have seen that happen. However, that can't be done last minute. Usually times come from a pre-existing research relationships (for example professional or from undergrad).

Bottom line - Heller School is basically Brandeis' way to make money (Grad schools are profit centers for Universities, whereas undergrad is generally a loss area). They also stuffed a bunch of random things into one graduate program (also a bad sign). What does this means from a student experience - an over stuffed school that tries to be too many things and is great at nothing. Also, from an anecdotal perspective, I have never met anybody from Heller school in Ed Policy - and I did both national level + Boston area research. I'm sure there has to be bright spots in Heller somewhere, but I never encountered them. I focused on Ed Finance and Technical education - so two very hot areas in ed policy - not small niche areas. As for HKS MPP - granted your being from West Virginia adds some regional diversity, it is probably neutralized - if not reversed by being an Ed Policy person. Ed Policy is a dime a dozen. HKS tries to build a diverse class of policy interests. That being said, given that you will be coming in with nothing super outstanding + low GPA, I think you will have trouble getting in. If you were interested in something more rare, like infrastructure of healthcare, you might have higher chance of getting lucky. For my application year (which had really weak competition and sub 3.0 GPA people got scholarships at 2nd tier Policy Schools), I knew people with 3.4 GPA, quant, and awards for teaching rejected from HKS. Basically, usually the Ed people that end up in HKS are the sharpest of the Ed policy interest cohort because of supply and demand + interests in diversity.

It is too early to tell how competitive next year's cohort will be. I think you will be fine with B.U., Tufts, and Heller. It doesn't make sense me why you want to do the HKS MPP over Harvard School of Education Master's (which does make more sense to me). If I were you, I would focus Harvard School off Ed over MPP, assuming you want to focus on education and Youth development. I would skip out on Brandeis Heller School - honestly, it doesn't have the best rep in the education world (I came from ed policy).