Dreams

Machiatto or something

Congrats. It appears your worrying earlier was in vain

I say go with Hopkins.

I say go where they are giving you the most money. We all know Social Workers do not fetch much money, so graduating with as little debt as possible is a good bet. I personally prefer urban locations because of the greater choice of field placements. While Albany is a capital city, the options would still be more limited than Philly. You will likely need a car for VCU to get to your placements so that will be an expense if you don't already own a car. So far UPenn looks like your best bet financially. They are also pretty supportive of their students. When I was accepted there, I got a similar package and the folks took interest in my career goals. You will want to be somewhere similar where the program is looking out for you both while you are there and as you are preparing to look for jobs on the market. The true mark you should gauge a program by is how many graduates go on to pass the licensing exams. If students are not passing the exams, then that should send up an immediate red flag about the program. Unfortunately I had to rescind a hiring decision to a person who failed her LGSW exam. When I did some research, I found that a great portion of this school's graduates took way longer on average to pass the exam. I will not name the school, but this is something you should look at carefully.

Search for an on campus work study or assistantship if there are any. Some assistantships come with tuition remission. If you are interested in languages, you may want to look into an FLAS for next year.

There is no need to post this in multiple sections. viewtopic.php?f=8&t=17536

In answer to your last question, your record is fine. Mine was somewhat similar and I made out ok this year. I think this is not something that should discourage you. It happens to the best of us. I applied to several doctoral programs before and got turned down by all of them, citing the need for more experience. How much relevant experience do you have? One thing that may help you is getting more research experience in the field you want to study. Call up the universities and ask for advice on how to improve you application. When I did they gave me invaluable advice on how to improve my application. You may want to do the same.

You already posted this in the Government Affairs section. viewtopic.php?f=15&t=17529

Are you also looking at schools of Education such as Teacher's College? Some public policy schools with a Domestic and Education Policy I know of are University of Georgia, Carnegie Mellon, and Princeton.

Based on your interests, I would say SIPA is the better bet of the three in my opinion because you could take a few classes focusing on African Affairs and Urban Planning. I don't know how much of an area studies component the other two schools will give you in that regard. I also think it is fantastic that you got funding to attend two of the schools.

Hmm, I say if your goal is to do a PhD, then I say shore yourself up so your application can be more competitive next year. I would opt to do some sort of research or writing for publication over the next year in areas that you would be focusing on in the PhD program. I don't think doing another MA would be worth it, especially if you are coming out of your own pocket to fund it. Also why go through the trouble of transferring to another school. Even if you did go that route, there is no guarantee the other school would take the classes. Have you contacted the universities you were rejected from? It might be a good idea to call those departments and ask for feedback on your application. You may in addition want to see if they will allow you to reuse your transcripts and LORs if you say they were really good. Finally, please do not apply to any program where you feel you would not be happy. If you feel you will only be happy at top programs, then focus only on those programs and making yourself competitive for them. Same for the MA level. If you do not think you would be happy at ODU for the MA, then do not do it. If you browse this site, you will see countless posts from people bemoaning the fact they only got in to universities they really don't want to attend. So, do only what makes you happy.

Being admitted from a waitlist can sometimes take months, if at all. If you were waitlisted, you should contact the school that put you on it to find out several things: including whether it is ranked and your place on it. You should also find out when and how many people they anticipate admitting from the waitlist. In any event, you should not expect to hear back by April 15. If you have a firm offer from another school, it might be wise to accept it. However, if you are pretty set on going to the "reputable" university and are not successful, then build up your application for next year and reapply.

Congrats on getting at least some funding from them! Stafford loans now have a fixed 6.8% interest rate. Be careful though because while interest on subsidized Stafford loans are paid by the government, interest on unsubsidized loans is not. So you will have the option to either pay the interest yourself or let it compound. The standard term of repayment is 10 years, though you can stretch it to 25 if need be. Grad PLUS loans have an 8.5% interest rate and also has a 10 year repayment rate. You may want to inquire whether HKS gives out Perkins loans. The interest rate on those is 5%, a bit cheaper than the other two. You will need to file appropriate paperwork through the school and sign a promissory note before the loans can be disbursed.

Hmm are you sure it's zombies? It could be a certain kind of fiend

I got official notification of acceptance yesterday. If anyone on the waitlist is still looking to get in, then there is hope. I will be declining my admission next week.

younglions, you have such an amazing story and experience that I think any school would be a fool not to admit you. Those top schools fortunately look past gpa and gre combos, otherwise many people I know would not have been admitted. linden, have you and others thought about contacting other departments, or even some professors at HKS to see if they were looking for research, teaching, or program assistants? Hell, even a work study library paging job would help cut that hefty bill you are facing.

I would suggest at this point finding the email of the program assistant for your track and emailing that person about your status. If that fails, then give them a call and ask for an answer over the phone. Let them know politely that time is running out and you would like some indication of your status so you can make a sound assessment of all of your offers. I plan to follow my own advice in a few seconds.

Hmm Sec Gen eh? Hope you are not American. If so, then you can kiss that dream goodbye.

I would say that it would be pretty easy to get one. Especially if you want to do something policy related with the many organizations in the city. There are a lot of things you will be able to tap into once you are able to access JHU's internal network.

There is already a thread like this one. viewtopic.php?f=15&t=16905

I will likely see both of you then since I plan to take classes in both schools.

This is correct. The orientations are grouped by region. And IIE covers the roundtrip transportation and hotel (really nice hotels at that) for the applicants.

Unless there are compelling concerns about a particular applicant's suitability for any reason (health, financial, etc.), the Commission will typically go with the host country's decisions.

If you want to do international work eventually, I personally would lean towards JHU. They have a host of projects in many countries around the world that you could potentially work on as a student there. They also have a high absorption rate of their own if you ever wanted to work directly for them after graduation.