hahah2020

thank you so much! i definitely needed to hear that to know i wasn't going totally crazy stressing about hypotheticals definitely a tough situation (especially bc 99% of the government jobs i'm interested in require at least a master's) but i guess i'll have to figure something out

hi everyone! long time lurker, first time poster. i'd love to hear any advice or my chances :) long story short, i'm a canadian student of getting two undergraduate degrees (BA in polisci, Bachelors of Business), and while I wanted to do grad school a few years down the line after acquiring some work experience, 2020 has really thrown a wrench in my plans and significantly reduced the amount of available jobs, especially those aligned with my goals, and i was thinking of going straight to grad school right after my undergrad. i'm interested in working on the international level (think igos and or international ngos), rather than domestically. some background info: schools and programs: yale jackson, princeton spia, columbia sipa, uchicago harris mpp, duke sanford, john hopkins sais undergrad institution: top canadian school undergrad gpa: 3.78/4.00 (3.84 for the polisci degree, 3.73 for the business degree). gre: 160Q/165V (unofficial, still waiting to get results back) quant experience: macro/micro, stats, analytics, finance, operations, and machine learning/data viz in R courses international experience: worked in a european country for a year, interned in an african country for a few months, had a course in asian country/my exchange cancelled due to COVID; born outside of canada, lived outside of canada till i was five (which barely counts i know) languages: english, french, two local languages (from my ethnic groups), a some of the local european/african languages of the places i've worked at years out of undergrad: 0 (yikes) years of relevant work experience: 1ish work experience: took a gap year to work internationally, interned with the federal/provincial governments in economic strategy heavy roles, and interned with an education non-profit. did pro-bono consulting for local and national non-profits, impact investment funds, and social enterprises. SOP/LORs: fairly strong for both other: i'm mostly worried about my lack of work experience and whether or not that'll be the death sentence for my application. no one has the answers, but even if i get in, i'm also worried about funding, which i know is a lot less generous if you don't have experience. finally, i'm concerned about being able to take advantage of the internship/job opportunities these schools tout considering i'd be an international student. also i'm a woman, immigrant, and ethnic minority