ellien575

Lol, I found what you were referring to-- tbh for CAPP specifically it seems like there's one main person who really wanted CAPP to be something it is very honestly not. If all you want is a cutting edge ML job... go elsewhere? Do you have any other programs to leverage in the negotiation/to attend otherwise? If attending CAPP requires you to take out a crippling amount of loans vs. attending a different program doesn't, I'd go with the other program. If your goal is data analysis at an NGO, you might be able to get by with some online coursework on data manipulation, especially if you're self motivated to learn and have experience in the NGO world. Everyone I know eventually landed somewhere that fit their interests broadly, but what different people consider 'decent' is sometimes challenging to define! Salary-wise, I think some folks were disappointed because they were switching careers and thought the Masters would give them more of a salary boost over someone entry-level than it did. Content-wise, I think most people got in the general zone they were interested in, especially if they planned ahead (networked in the field, did internships, etc.)

Yep, I graduated last spring (2021)! I did end up getting a good job after graduation-- I didn't really utilize the broader Harris network for my job search, although I did talk to CAPP alumni at adjacent companies to the one I work at now. Harris sponsored my internship at a non-profit, so I utilized their career services in that respect (the posting for my internship was through their job board and the financial sponsorship was through them). I will say that Harris is very well set up for more standard MPP job searching, I utilized them less than I might have otherwise because I had more work experience and was looking at software engineer roles (albeit at mission-focused companies). Harris Career services is more and more helpful the fewer years of job experience you have. I had 4+ and so they were less well set up for that than they were for folks with 2-4 years. I started thinking about my post-grad career late my first year, and really started job searching and narrowing things down in late Winter, early Spring of my second year. Depending on the kind of roles you're interested in, you may be fine skewing early or later there. Consulting/banking/etc. requires you to interview earlier than anything else for both internships and jobs (think fall term). Government is probably second-earliest, and private sector/non-profit generally don't seem to be interested in talking until spring.

Hey folks! Reviving this for this next year's round of applications. Anyone have questions on CAPP, feel free to drop them by.

No problem! This is an interesting question-- I think there's a few aspects here that I'll address individually: Does the program prepare you for a data scientist position? Definitely yes-- I would say this is actually the thing CAPP is set up best to do, because you do stats in Harris, basic CS, machine learning, and databases in CAPP, and then you can take whatever machine learning, data viz, etc. classes you want in the computer science department as well as other causal inference or other stats classes at Harris or other departments and it makes for a pretty well-rounded deep data science education if that's what you want to make it. Is it worth it to do the public policy side? Depends on your background and interests. If you have an MPP from another school, I could imagine it would feel repetitive. I've actually quite enjoyed my MPP classes, and if you want to make them more technical you can definitely make choices that reflect that. (ex. my climate policy class actually involved a fair amount of work in climate models in R). What are the trade-offs between a 1 year DS masters and CAPP? I definitely also was mulling this over when I was doing my grad school decisions. I think there's a few pieces here: Curriculum: Do you care about your DS problems and curriculum being oriented around policy? I personally really struggle with quantitative coursework when it's abstracted from the concepts I care about, so for me this was a big decision point. If you just want a straight dose of DS curriculum and you don't mind making the connections from a marketing case study to your policy interests, that piece might not be as big of a factor for you. Classmates: Do you want to be surrounded by policy-oriented people? Or do you want more private sector folks to get exposure to that side more? CAPP people do sometimes go into more commercial work, but the curriculum is structured around policy and that's what most folks are oriented towards. If you want more of a business side and/or that's not a concern for you, then this might tip the balance. Money: Tbh not much to say here. CAPP will probably be more expensive especially with 2 years vs. 1 and debt is a very individual calculation. I will say there are opportunities to make money on the side while at CAPP, but they're definitely not equal to the money of another year working at full salary Hope that helps!

Yeah, I hear that-- I was in a very similar situation. I'm honestly not sure if there will be a different result if you just ask them to get closer vs. ask for a specific amount. Though the form they give you may ask you for a requested amount? I forget. I think the most I hear of people getting is ~$25,000 per year but you might find more if you search the thread history/historical results on here. That's just from my small sample size of people I've talked to that were willing to give a number. I do think it's worthwhile to think about what number is the inflection point for you and why-- it's up to you whether you want to communicate that to them or not, but I think choosing a time to do some thinking about that and ideally talk it through with someone is really helpful. Ultimately, it's a big financial decision and it can help to describe your rationale to a friend and get their more detached thoughts on the whole process.

Mostly just be straight with them-- they'll be reading a ton of these as they do every year. The most important factor is the amount of money Heinz offered you. The other stuff is fine to mention, but they generally know that. I think I ended up asking them to make up half the difference between the two scholarships and they got closer. Honestly not sure how much you ask for matters so much as the delta between the two offers. Pittsburgh is definitely cheaper, although I've been pleasantly surprised with the cost of living here (caveat, I was coming from DC). There's a pretty wide range of apartments/rent amounts people pay depending on their budget. If estimated the range, I'm pretty sure I know people paying $700-900 and living with roommates and others paying $1500-$2000 for living alone in a fancy building. And no problem! Grad school is an expensive investment and I feel like the lack of campus visits this year has made it harder than usual to get a real sense of each program. On the bright side, you won't have crazy amounts of branded water bottles everywhere from campus visits lol

Would add, the Heinz program is much more established, McCourt's program is only a few years old. However, if you really want a federal career, you will have good internship opportunities at McCourt and if you're interested in a future in the federal cleared space, the potential to get a clearance in your first or second year through an internship could be very helpful for job apps after.

Lol very real consideration. From what I hear from people, Harris tends to come in between Georgetown and Heinz in terms of aid (it certainly worked that way for me). I think there are a fair number of people who have a strong or mild preference for Harris and end up weighing if the dollar differential between their Harris and Heinz scholarships is a worthy amount (of course there are also students who like Heinz more than Harris, but I haven't heard of Harris offering someone more than Heinz).

No prob at all! The first-year CAPP professors are great-- Anne Rogers, Lamont Samuels, Aaron Elmore, and Nick Feamster are like, the dream team. Nick has some areas of research that I think are especially interesting to CAPP folks because he has some work looking at the homework/broadband gap in Chicago and is really interested in integrating his more traditional CS and Networks background into policy. They're all very approachable too.

Most: Definitely the community. Harris students are very, very friendly and I've met people with really different interests here who have fundamentally influenced my views on different social issues. I went to undergrad in DC (international affairs & econ major) and though the internship opportunities were excellent, I got a very federal-oriented view of policy and my classmates were very focused on that (and a bit overly competitive). Harris students have a pretty wide range of focus areas and it's much less federally-oriented than I was used to which was something I wanted from my masters. Least: Harris can feel big if you struggle to find your niche. TBH the first years have my admiration, because I do not envy the struggle of making friends mostly remotely. Harris also has a larger core class component than many other programs-- I found all my core classes fun, useful, or both, so I didn't particularly mind, but if you don't want to take those classes, it's pretty hard to get them waived. I'm a huge proponent of waiting to go to grad school until you feel like not doing so is an active impediment to your career. I almost applied to grad school like 2 times before this and each time realized that I wasn't really sure what I was trying to do or that I was sure that was the path I wanted. For me, I was reaching a point in my career where there was a natural inflection point (I was going to either leave my job or go to grad school, I knew I wasn't staying) and I was trying to do a soft pivot into more software eng oriented jobs. I was going to either have to self-study or bootcamp a bunch of skills to get my technical skills up to a better level, and I knew that I would probably eventually need a Masters to be more competitive if I wanted to go into gov eventually, so it seemed to be a good time where all those factors coexisted. I think the pandemic also makes now really really weird. I don't know what life will look like in the fall, but I don't fault anyone for putting grad school off a year to try and get all-in-person teaching and/or because your job is particularly interesting right now. MSCAPP was really important for my career pivot, but self motivating and studying during a pandemic can be rough depending on how you learn, your ability to self-regulate your work, and a lot of other factors.

It's super person-dependent! For a sampling, of my closest five CAPP friends, one is looking at data journalism and journalism in general, one is interested in data engineering roles, one is interested in software engineering roles with some data science mixed in, one is interested more in ethics of AI in policy and AI applications in government, and one is more data-science oriented. I would say the CS curriculum will be more than you need to engage with the Harris policy evaluation coursework, but if you're interested in policy eval particularly focused on new technologies and algorithms, it will prepare you really well to see through the bullshit screen that programmers sometimes put up around actually telling you what they're doing. So this one really depends on department and prestige levels. Harris people 100% definitely, although super fancy Econ profs might take longer to get on their schedule. I've emailed profs after talks they've given to chat more and they've been super open to talking more. Computer Science faculty maybe, but ideally leverage an intro from another prof. That being said, if you talked to Anne Rogers (or any other CAPP faculty) about your interests, they would def refer you to the right people around the department. Gotta admit, I laughed out loud at this. This is def a bit of a Harris bias-- because UChicago has such an econ rep and Harris in particular has a bit of an econ rep among public policy schools, it sometimes feels like literally everyone has an econ degree and did econ or management consulting. (I include myself in that as someone who has an econ degree and did public sector consulting...) I would say CAPP has intentional variance on that front and I haven't found it to be an overwhelming number of people. I think the early-admit sample skews high because the performance management cycles of those companies skew towards encouraging earlier applications. I would put the actual % somewhere between 20-30% for Harris and CAPP, maybe up to 40% in Harris if you count people who have done international finance or some such. Very back of the envelope estimate though. I would also say that people self-sort via student orgs into those who are planning to return/enter those fields vs. those who never plan on doing consulting and/or left consulting to do something else. (I would put myself in that group-- I have no interest in going back).

Yes! I myself did this-- I leveraged my Heinz offer to get more money out of Harris. I don't know if they've already done this, but Admissions will send out a form when they're doing negotiations and you can list your other offers, personal circumstances, etc. Would also add that there are a looot of opportunities to make side $$$. I know a lot of people who do paid research, TAships, grading, etc. 15K is reasonable, but if you have other offers, it's worth asking. They don't have as much money as Heinz, but they'll try and make it work for you. Yes! Harris admissions doesn't know as much about the CS side of things so sometimes they're not sure what to say lol. There are a bunch of people more focused on the software/data engineering route in my class. For example, my coursework this year has included Big Data Application Architecture (CS), Web Development (CS) and Discrete Math (CS) (I got too tired for Algorithms this term) so far, as well as some policy classes like Climate Policy (Harris). But I also have classmates who have taken things like iOS Development, Math for Machine Learning, and more advanced classes in the statistics program.

Hello! And no problem-- I understand it's much harder to get a feel for schools when campus visits aren't really a thing this year! I think my program outcome ideas have stayed mostly the same. I came into the program really interested in the intersection of data science and software engineering, but more on the software engineering side. While at CAPP, I've realized I'm definitely more on the software/data engineering side and even less on the data science side than I had previously thought. Many of my classmates are pursuing data science/machine learning careers though! I was! I got into all three programs and my considerations more or less came down to: Curriculum: I really liked that CAPP is dual administered with the computer science department and focuses on computer science fundamentals in the first year (alongside MPP coursework). My CS I, CS II, and Databases classes with my CAPP classmates were my most formative in terms of helping me decide what I wanted to focus more on, and I write so much better code after going through CS I. As a CAPP student you get equal preference with computer science masters students for classes, which has also been awesome. An alumna of Heinz had told me she sometimes had trouble getting into upper level analytics classes there, because they weren't technically for her program, so the idea of being in both departments at UChicago was attractive. Location: I was moving with my partner and job opportunities were a consideration. I'm fond of Pittsburgh, but Chicago just has a lot more opportunities in different industries. Outcomes: I'll be straight up here-- I had lived in DC for 8-10 years before grad school (including undergrad). Georgetown's location was not a draw for me, I had a pre-existing DC network and didn't feel a deep need to stay in town. I looked at Heinz and Georgetown's outcomes and saw a whole lot of Federal consulting and in general, jobs I had either had, or knew how to get. Harris is a lot more varied (IMO). There are people who go the federal consulting route, but there's a lot of interest in non-profit and community work around the US that I didn't see as much in other programs, and I really wanted that. Tbh, if you want a direct funnel into federal consulting, Georgetown is your bet, with Heinz a close second, and Harris at the bottom. If you have no DC network and you want to be deep in federal policy, go Georgetown. If you want a strong analytics flavor to your masters and have zero desire to explore more traditional computer science or software engineering coursework, Harris or Heinz are both good bets (obviously I have a Harris bias, but I'm trying to be objective here...). Will also take a moment here to plug CAPP Slack-- I love the CAPP community and one of my favorite things is alums are still really active posting jobs they come across that are a good fit for CAPP students/alums and also just... hanging out and giving advice. It's not publicly advertised or publicly visible, but when you enroll you are added and it's just the best community I've ever been a part of! That got super long, but hopefully it was helpful!

I used this a lot when I was having my many grad school crises (shout out to all my folks that had a PhD-or-industry crisis). Current MS-CAPP student, second year (so I had around 2 terms in person before we went remote since UChicago is on the quarter system). Ask me whatever you want!