k1lgore_trout

I appreciate your reply, it's given me a number of things to reflect on. I take your point about think tanks, IMF, World Bank, etc. and I completely agree with you that I should narrow my policy focus and look at other career outcomes before even starting to think about applying. That said though, I can't help but feel as though you're projecting you feelings about starry-eyed white-savior do-gooders onto me. My listed work experience has been entirely in domestic policy at the local, state, and federal level. Of the policy interests I listed, two were on the international level - international trade and national security. I listed those areas specifically because international relations was my undergraduate subfield and I thought that I could maybe make use of that part of my degree. The other three policy areas I mentioned are domestic and if anything, extremely local issues. My one mention of refugees was in reference to my parents and my socioeconomic background; immigration and refugee policy is important to me insofar as I think it's important to be an informed citizen, but I never said anything about wanting working in that area. Again, I want to emphasize that I genuinely appreciated your feedback - because I was spitballing as I typed in the words "think tank" and "World Bank," and a career in this field requires more thought than that. But I also have to push back against what I believe are some unfair characterizations.

Hi everyone - I'm still about 2 years out from applying and haven't taken the GRE yet, but I figured I'd post to get a sense of where I currently stand and what goals I need to accomplish before applying. Schools/Programs: MPP programs for U-Chicago Harris, U-Mich Ford, Georgetown McCourt, Duke Sanford, Carnegie Mellon Heinz, GWU Trachtenberg Undergrad: UC Berkeley, transferred from a community college Degrees: Political science, minor in public policy GPA: Cumulative 3.77 (Community college GPA: 3.92, UCB GPA: 3.61) Work Experience: 2 years of full-time experience as of writing, 3-4 years by time of application 2 years as a full-time research assistant at a public opinion research firm, working on polls for various candidates and ballot measure campaigns 1 semester as an intern for a labor union 2 months as a summer legislative intern on Capitol Hill 3 months as an intern in a different congressperson's district office 6 months as an intern for another public opinion research firm Policy interests: transit, urban development, energy, international trade, and national security LOR: Current supervisor(s) (has the potential to be strong, but who knows, I might screw things up in the next year) Former professor (assuming strong) Former grad student instructor who now has a PhD (unsure about this one based on their credentials/experience, but they certainly know me better than the professor does) Quant experience: Quantitative Research Methods (B+), Intro to Microeconomics (A), Intro to Macroeconomics (A), International Political Economy (A), Intro to Public Policy Analysis (A), Intro to Statistics (A), Game Theory (B), and College Math (A, but not sure I should even bother counting that one). Over the last year, I also went back to community college and took Trigonometry (A) and Pre-Calc (B) in an effort to work my way up to Calculus 1 and eventually Linear Algebra, but got burnt out with work and decided to drop Calc 1 one week into the class. Would the fact that I took Pre-Calc after obtaining my BA, without following through to Calc 1 hurt my application? My current job has me constantly immersed with numbers and data, but not sure if it will factor in heavily for me because the math isn't exactly complicated. Leadership/Extracurricular: Served 1 year serving on a City advisory commission Spent a semester volunteering as an after-school tutor at a local elementary school Writer for the community college newspaper (won an award at one point) Other involvement in school activities include: College Democrats, undergrad polisci association, club wrestling SOP: To explain my commitment and motivation for pursuing public policy, I was thinking of discussing my background as the child of refugees and growing up in relative poverty, making use of various social programs throughout my life to get me to where I am today. I was also thinking of discussing career aspirations for think tanks and the IMF and World Bank.