GradSchoolGrad
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Georgetown (McCourt) MPP 2022
GradSchoolGrad replied to GradSchoolGrad's topic in Government Affairs Forum
Students straight from undergrad are probably over represented in GradCafe for MPP. This is based on my time active on this forum. -
A few things. 1. Look, I think you are generally competitive, checking the quant box and being diverse. However, for Princeton purposes, I am a bit concerned your verbal is on the lower side. I hope you have something to counter balance that (maybe being published or so). 2. What I hope you really have is a really good story on what you want to go to policy school. If you have that, you are doing okay. 3. Your school choices really confuse me. Bottom line is that you might want to really figure our what flavor of IDEV you want to get involved in. It feels like you just reached for basket for schools you thought are good without diving deep into what they are good at and not so good at. a. Princeton SPIA MPA - I get it - top program for basically everything b. Penn Fels MPA - I am really lost by this. Its really a lower tier program despite the Penn brand. It also tends to be better for domestic US policy not IDEV. c. McCourt MIDP - very program evaluation based program. If you want to focused to being really good at one lane of IDEV, that works for you, but I hope you are comfortable with it. d. Columbia SPA-DP - strong program, but angles more towards the non-profit/IGO/NGO side of the house in terms of opportunity. e. JHU - SAIS - also strong program overall, but I wouldn't exactly say it is the best for IDEV unless you want to approach it at super analytical angle d. Syracuse Maxwell - great overall policy program, but IDEV is not their strength. Its good for very process/research oriented domestic policy stuff.
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It probably won't have a greater effect than pre-COVID (okay maybe a minor bump). There are obvious preventative measures against COVID, but HKS is having in person classes and unless something drastically changes, that isn't expected to change. Now when COVID first came into the gate (so applying for Fall of 2021 entry), there was a lot of deferrals for people hoping for a better experience in person.
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If you want to do intelligence work, Elliot has better connections than SIPA. SIPA might be a better brand overall. However, it isn't exactly the best for intelligence or defense.
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I don't think the biggest issue are the academics or even the administration (at least directly). It has to do with the market (which are students). Universities are being treated as consumer product now. This is why by in large, universities often come off as eco-chambers (be it with a liberal slant or a conservative slant - and yes there are conservative slant Universities or programs) because students are to a certain extent self-segregating to the University culture they want to be a part of. The University of Austin is essentially appealing to an untapped market of those students (and their parents) nostalgic for a more open University experience.
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I think you are super competitive, and I recommend for you to shoot higher as well (like throw in HKS in there). This is due to: A. Your diversity of experience B. Your interest in less academically popular policy focus area (believe or not housing policy, is not that popular in policy schools because of the amount of intersection with real estate business understanding that is required to fully understand everything) C. You got quant down (I'm assuming you went to Boston College). One thing I recommend you think about is if you want to go to a California school or not. Yes, the California schools you mentions are good schools, and they won't exactly limit your opportunities outside of California, but they are optimized for California. California in many ways is a country within the US with decently different politics and processes for policy. If you want to go to California from a non-California policy school, its possible, just harder. That being said, in the area of housing policy, the most creative solutions IMO are not from California. If anything California is playing catch up, and you might be best served to go to a school that specializes in housing policy at large + has decent international student population (this means a diverse one, and not all from one country). The most innovative housing policies being experimented upon are actually from Europe + Japan.
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So one big deciding factor that neither I nor anyone can know is how competitive the next cycle will be. It is way to early to project that. I am saying that right now, in a less competitive cycle, even as a US student, you should struggle (although not be precluded) to get acceptance - even if you get a promotion to management. I think you have to appreciate the 3 core issues to your HKS application. 1. You need satisfy doubts about your ability to graduate. Your grad school program sounds non-quanty, and given the number of diploma mill grad programs out there (even among name brands), HKS will use that as validating factor, but not a key contributing factor. You main issue isn't exactly your GPA per se. If you had a 3.15 GPA but As in all those first level quant classes, you are probably fine. If you have had a 3.15 GPA and As in those quant classes + advanced quant + rock star GRE score, then your problem may essentially be solved. I have family members that went to HKS and the quant classes at HKS are not a joke. Even people who took advanced microeconomics in undergrad and could be exempt from them at HKS are strongly recommended to retake it. 2. Your diversity in terms of career. Being a government employee actually makes you non-diverse - especially if you are coming as an international student. You would then have to compete against all the international students who are government employees 3. Your diversity in terms of policy focus area - we already covered this. Now if you are ethnically diverse (by American standards) + fix your quant/GPA/GRE problem, you might have a shot now actually. Otherwise, you need to fix your quant/GPA/GRE problem and then come up with a better story that at least makes you more unique in terms of policy focus area.
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Generally speaking - yes this is expected to be an easier year for policy school applications for US students. However, there is an expectation of the mass return of the international students. I don't know how they would bucket you coming from Canada. If you they count you as an international student, the odds are against you because most international students have academic marks better than that of the average American. If you they bucket you with the Americans, you would be going uphill, but it would be as challenging. Your low GPA could have been a reason why you were not accepted. Your quant is okay, but I don't see any advanced quant classes which would compensate for a way below average GPA. Had you had a strong grade for a more advanced quant class, that could be a reason to overlook your undergrad GPA, but it doesn't sound like it for you. For Blavatnik school, they have GPA minimum requirement for US students (I think it is around 3.7). You might want to check if you even qualify. Another thing that hurts your application is your lack of diversity in interests. Yes your interests sound super niche specific to Canada. However, they fit under the general bucket of gender and identify. Policy grad programs are already vastly over-represented in the people interested in that area, so basically by being interested in an identify focus, it ironically hurts you in terms of diversity in social policy interest. If you have a more niche policy focus area (like housing, transportation, labor economics), it helps with your diversity in policy focus area.
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If I were you, I would look into schools that have recently got massive donations - funding, but may not be as established as a top brand yet. Again, I don't know what they are targeting, but both Yale - Jackson and Georgetown McCourt got massive amounts of funding. Be warned, these are programs trying to be a top brand, but they have different issues for a reason.
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Its being pigeon holed by career services I was speaking to. If you come into MPP/MPA with no (or less than 1 year) full time work experience, you get bucketed as the same as a straight from undergrad. Then you would be pigeon holed for straight from undergrad career opportunities (can apply for research or graduate school support job opportunities as well). You do not want to pigeon-holed with the straight from undergrads, because for the most part, they are targeted for jobs that don't require a masters (although there might be master's pay bump or bonus, but that is increasingly going away). Simply put, if you get pigeon holed with that group, your return on investment for grad school is not going to be great. It is essentially paying for 2 years of grad school for a job with others from undergrad. If you really want your master's to be a career booster, it helps to have 2 years experience (at least 1), so then career services can guide you to much better opportunities (in terms of pay and level of responsibility). It is true that you can hypothetically network your way into jobs outside of what career services guide you for. However, the less work experience you have, the more dependent people generally are on career services (obviously, many exceptions are abound).
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I am very uncomfortable with this question at large because there is no real way to rank schools like that. 1. Schools are rather secretive about what their strategic scholarship spending plans are 2. What was relevant last year may change the next year. 3. Even the stingiest schools may put aside money for specific people they are looking for (for example, I know of a graduate program willing to give Indian/Latin American students more scholarships one year in order to grow the Indian international student community to avoid being to Chinese international student exclusive). The stopped it for the next year. 4. That being said, schools tend to be reluctant to give entry level applicants scholarships unless they fill a targeted diversity category of interest. The reality is that entry level applicants tend to be higher risk (everything from bringing credit to the program, enriching the classroom experience, and post graduation career opportunities). There are exceptions for when grad schools are trying to grow their program with entry level applicants, but they prefer to pick from their own undergraduates generally speaking.
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Ya even though you went to an awesome school and all, not having a job for 6 months is not a good look. I recommend you do well on a full time job for a year (pref 2) and then apply to max your chances of admissions plus funding. Even if you do get in, not being able to get hired is not a good look to career services and I am afraid you might get pigeon holed.
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I think you should have no problem getting in. The issue is funding. That is all tied to how diverse/unique you are given other people like you.
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Do you currently have a job? and what is it?
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The right answer is I don't know because I don't know how they will value your diversity. If they value it a lot, they might overlook your work experience and give you some funding. If they don't, they might just give you a little. Not only are schools different, but they change regularly.
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The issue is not the lack of your work experience, but the prestige/quality of your work experience compared to the competition (at least how you describe it now).
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Sooo, I wouldn't be completely sure that you are hitting #2 or how hard you are hitting it. Hitting #2 isn't competing against the entire class. It is competing against those that the admissions office equated to be of a similar diversity group as you (I am not sure how each school would designate you to be honest). That being said, 2 years of work experience by the time you start isn't that low. The issue is that unless there is something you aren't fully explaining, your work experience isn't anything too glitzy (I call it the cool stuff to publish on the alumni magazine standard). Schools will give scholarships to people they can brag about.
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So when admissions offices evaluate candidates, there are 3 mile markers. 1. Shows ability to graduate 2. Shows great potential to be asset to the school (this can be due to many different reasons, career potential, diversity, unique story and etc.) You hit this mile marker, and you'll get some scholarship 3. Rock star candidate, needs to be considered for full scholarship. I'm saying you obviously hit mile marker 1. You have the foundations for mile marker 2, but I'm struggling to connect the dots. You ain't hitting #3. I think your biggest challenge is that given your lack of work experience, you aren't gonna get that much scholarship
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Very rarely have I seen a case where a MPP or MPA combined with an IR masters as a dual degree makes any career sense (I mean I know people who did it for Ego reasons, wanted more time in grad school, or etc.) In terms of checking the box of being able to graduate - I think you got that. That might get you into some of the less competitive programs like UCLA Luskin or NYU Wagner. As for the more competitive ones like Harris - you need to have a good story too. Right now I see awesome bullet points, and I'm sure the story is there, but you aren't telling it. BTW... Stanford MPP is a joke of a program. I would avoid it. It is like Harvard Performing Arts program - one of the worst programs in the country for its graduate studies.
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Georgetown Security Studies is essential the top Security Studies program in the country, and GWU's is probably #1. Security Programs are super fickle. The reality is that they are essentially money makers for Universities. It is really hard to predict the chances of anyone getting in. As for going to a traditional IR program (like SAIS MAIR and SIPA MIA) - yes it can be a pathway to security, but that school's bread and butter isn't security. I'm not sure how much you'll really enjoy it. Also it makes no sense to go to New York only to try to shoot for a jobs in DC (where most Security jobs are). In terms of jobs. There is a huge demand for security jobs. I would look up the biographies of the McCain Fellows. They are the benchmark of the top notch grads. An interesting issue for you is that you already have spent time working on a political campaign. I'm not sure how that will be viewed. It might be seen as a handicap in some circles. Its more like I am raising an open question and don't now the answer to it. Career wise, it can be an issue depending on administration.
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Yes, there will be one quant oriented class that will be challenging for you (probably the Strategy class or marketing class - depending on program where you at least have to conceptually understand derivatives). However, in terms of getting in, you know stats, and that is far better than many applicants. Your biggest weakness is that you haven't taken a standardized test yet. GRE or GMAT (for MBA, I do recommend GMAT because if you score well, you can get scholarship).
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I think you would be better off going to an MBA program and focusing on social impact / non-profit. Yale School of Management actually does a lot of Ed non-profit stuff.
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I don't doubt that each spot seems to think you can accomplish your goals within those degrees just like you could probably accomplish your goals without a degree (granted it would be harder). I just don't want you eat the marketing and get the constipation later. Grad schools (unlike undergrad) are profit centers for Universities and have recently come under a lot of pressure to grow their class sizes to help boost their financial intake for the University. More often than not, the after the admissions come in triangulation approach forces people to think about how they fit a school rather than how a school fits their life trajectory. I seen this movie too many times after people get excited with the scholarship money + brand + fun of orientation, they lose sight of their career trajectory and just eat up the rosy side of marketing. Ultimately, you do you and you seem pretty convinced you got the right way. Not trying doubt you, just seen this movie before - a lot.
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The number of schools you are applying to is a bit out of control. Not only is it a lot of schools, you are applying to 3 different types of programs (MPP, MPA, and Data oriented policy programs). I don't think you completely though through what programs best serve you and you are going the shotgun approach. More often than not, people I know who do that approach end up in grad schools that doesn't necessarily fit them well. Not exactly sure what side of software you did at FANG, but if you know data science already, a data programs makes zero sense for you.
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You are asking a really good question. And my recommendation is this. Unless you really really really need to be guided by someone and struggle to independently come up with your own course of research/study, it makes sense to go to a program for its functional capabilities over the specialization that offers AS LONG as the specialization isn't nothing (or next to nothing). The reason is because in IR - region, absolutely matters... BUT I will argue that for career purposes, its better to be grounded on functional area first (e.g., Trade, Security, Development, and etc.) and then region second. So what that translates into is that in my opinion is this: Don't Recommend: - MASIA - I recommend against because its a super small program and you are narrowing yourself. You would be better off Going to Georgetown MSFS program - where you would have much more exposure to a broader range of functional experts Think Very Carefully - SIPA - yes SIPA is rather strong on all things Asia, but be very careful with SIPA because they have an arguably less than welcoming community culture (lots of NYC distractions) and have lots of functional areas they are not strong on. - Fletcher is interesting because they have a lot of strong functional areas, but you don't have academic resource access diversity (in comparison to Harvard or Georgetown - granted Fletcher tries really hard). I know people who do China stuff there, but not so much Japan stuff. Recommend you Think About It - HKS - yes they won't have as much Japan/Asia focused stuff in their core curriculum, but it will be relatively easy for you to get involved. Even if there were 0 other Japan/Asia resources, the functional excellence of HKS along gives you a strong place to support any research you want. - Georgetown MSFS - They got a fair amount of Asia/Japan and a broad scope of functional excellence as well (not as broad as HKS) - SAIS - same as Georgetown MSFS, but somewhat different portfolio of strengths (and much more quant oriented program).
