Kevin1990

I was accepted today to the MAGR!
So far I also have offers from LSE for an MsC. in Regulation and from King's College London for their International Political Economy program.
I have a previous postgrad degree from LSE as well.

I was accepted today to the MAGR!
So far I also have offers from LSE for an MsC. in Regulation and from King's College London for their International Political Economy program.
I have a previous postgrad degree from LSE as well.

I'm sure this has been asked before.
I haven't taken econ classes on the college level before and I am a college graduate. I was planning on taking a microeconomics course and a macroecon one this coming fall at my local community college. I might also enroll in a stats class as well.
Is this a safe route to take?
Would any admissions committee take issue with doing these courses at a community college instead of a four year institution?

I'll be a senior next year and I was interested in the Boren Scholarship for undergraduates(if it isn't too late and if the extension of my undergrad career wouldn't be costly) or failing that even the Boren Followship.

Now since its language critical, I was planning planning on taking Persian this coming spring(or maybe Russian should I change my mind) and ether way I should have intermediate flunecy by the time it come's to applying for it in the winter of 2012-13.

However, I had a couple of questions about the scholarship in relation to my competitiveness and the obligations for the scholarship/fellowship.

1, My gpa is currently 3.3-3.4, do I stand a shot at it given how competitve I hear it is? Would my language and culture choices help add to my app?

2, I know there is a federal service obligation should you win the scholarship, I would like to eventually serve in the military ether through Navy OCS or Army ROTC in grad school, and work for a 3 letter agency someday. Given that all of those are federal in one form or any another would these furfill those obligations?

Thank's in advance to anyone who comments!

I live in the Washington DC area and know some things about College Park.
 
College Park has a higher crime then average and Prince George's County MD has some of the worse crime statistics in the country. IMO you should def avoid housing in the areas within the Southwestern or Southeastern areas of Prince Georges County inside the beltway. As these are the some of the worst areas of the state in terms of crime rates and overall quality of living. The cost of living within these areas are cheap, however keep in mind they are cheap for a reason.
 
Even though PG has it's problems and College Park is not excluded from this, many college towns around the country( such as Berkley, New Brunswick, NJ, and Cambridge, MA) have similar urban problems and this doesn't prevent them from having vibrant student oriented environments in and around their campuses. The only area within the vicinity of college park that has the most issues is Langley Park(and the worst parts of this area are on the Montgomery County side), most of the communities around UMD tend to be quiet suburban areas.
 
All this being said, you should experience no problems in College Park if you just take the typical precautions one would take in any area. I.e. being aware of your surroundings, keeping valuables hidden from plain view in your home or car, and not going for lengthy strolls around isolated parts of town late at night-you will be fine.
 
College park does have plenty of housing options both in and around it although much of this tends to be oriented towards undergrads like mentioned above or in nearby areas if your looking to get away from that(Greenbelt, Takoma Park etc). College Park also has pretty good public transport access as well, the local metro(subway) station is not too far from campus, and there are plenty of metro bus/local one's ad shuttles linking all around College Park too. College Park unlike the rest of the Wash DC area actually functions as a college town in the true sense of the word as there is alot of bars, clubs, restaurants , and businesses around the campus catering to UMD students. Don't be discouraged about the undergrad centered nature of things though as there is a pretty active Grad community in College Park too(a grad student studying for his Phd was elected to the town council).
 
This is what insight I have to offer about College Park I hope it's helpful to you!

http://www.amazon.com/Discovering-Statistics-Introducing-Statistical-Method/dp/1847879071/ref=pd_sim_b_1
 
Andy Field also has a stats book for R if you prefer that statistical packate.
This is a good basic stats book. quant_liz will be able to provide you with more books for more complicated statistics. Multiple regression is pretty basic as well. At least it is on par in terms of difficulty level with factorial and mixed-factorial ANOVA.