younglions

I received an e-mail today from a current student at CMU Heinz offering to answer questions about the program. The e-mail also noted that I would be receiving good news shortly. This is only going to make my constant refreshing of the Heinz online application even worse. (To other Heinz applicants who haven't heard anything, don't worry--the e-mail was specifically directed at me because of a few things I mentioned in my application.) Plate or platter has previously mentioned how impressed s/he is with the Heinz community. I'd like to second that sentiment. I know it's a little late to apply this year, but for any lurkers looking toward the next admissions cycle, I recommend that you check out their programs.

Well, that confirms what was already rumored on these boards with 1600+ applicants. With a 35% increase in applicants, the acceptance rate would be a little less than 21%. Good luck to all. Two more weeks and we should have a clearer picture of our futures.

Congratulations on your acceptances. I almost applied to Duke, but decided on Chicago instead due to the perception that it has a stronger quantitative curriculum. I'd also rather spend two years in Chicago than NC. Both programs seem to provide a decent amount of funding relative to other programs. As for specifics, I can't say very much. I know that Duke has a very strong program, and I'd probably prefer to go there over places like Elliott and NYU if location weren't a factor. Those admitted student stats are impressive. I've read that Duke has a strong focus on practical policy analysis and application and does a great job at training capable practitioners.

I'm pretty sure that LSE rate is how many students actually enroll relative to how many apply. In my experience, LSE admissions aren't super competitive (I got into their Public and Economic Policy program as a 20 year old with decent GRE scores and only an internship under my belt). I think the acceptance rate is three to four times that of the matriculation rate. While IR programs, on average, are more selective than MPPs, the difference isn't too great. In fact, some of your schools have acceptance rates over 50% according to Petersons: Columbia 39% George Washington 41% Fletcher 34% Yale 21% (just a bit different than your figure) American 66% UCSD 53% I'm almost positive that SAIS and Georgetown are less than 30%. Also, the two different disciplines' acceptance rates probably can't be directly compared. IR programs typically desire previous international experience, which is usually harder to come by than domestic experience, plus proficiency in a foreign language. Public Policy programs typically desire more quantitative preparation. If I were to crudely rank programs in terms of difficulty of admissions (as in how difficult it is to achieve the "desired profile") I'd probably come up with something like this: 1. Princeton WWS 2. Harvard MPP 3. Georgetown MSFS 4. Stanford International Policy Studies 5. Johns Hopkins SAIS 6. Berkeley GSPP 7. Fletcher MALD 8. Yale IR 9. Columbia SIPA (IR) 10. Georgetown GPPI 11. George Washington I.A. 12. UCLA/Chicago MPP Yale would be higher than Berkeley, but my impression of Yale is that it's very academic and doesn't require the same international/career experience as the top programs in both public policy and international relations. The same could be said about the relatively unknown Stanford program. Of course, these "difficulty rankings" are only relevant if you're interested in an internationally-focused career. They're probably also way off target. And I'm probably forgetting a school or two. It's all just for the sake of discussion.

Crap, I'm making three posts in a row... this is bad news for my mental health. Policy_applicant - thanks for calculating out those possible acceptance rates. However, it seems like you've got your yields listed backwards. A high yield would imply a lower acceptance rate, right?

Just checked Petersons for College Park, since I know some have applied there with admits/rejections, and it's actually one of the more competitive programs with a 51% acceptance rate.

I am just checking the regular Petersons. Some schools have admissions info under the students/outcomes tab and some don't. I'm calculating the yields myself from the available information. For NYU, 61% of students are accepted: https://www.petersons.com/GradChannel/c ... sponsor=13 There is no information for Berkeley, but I bet it isn't much higher than 40%. California is a huge state with a lot of people wanting to get into public administration/public policy. Berkeley is considered the best of the state schools and best public policy program in the western half of the United States (and maybe period). UCLA admits 40% and USC admits 77%, I imagine Berkeley is lower than both of these schools. Some other admit rates from Petersons: George Mason - 64% Johns Hopkins - 60% Pepperdine - 74% University of Penn (Masters of Government Admin.) - 33% William and Mary - 64% Syracuse Maxwell - 44% Michigan Ford - 56% How come nobody ever talks about Penn? Anybody know anything about their program?

On average, MPP programs are much easier to get accepted into than IR programs. That Chicago 60% doesn't seem too out of line with other MPP programs. Heinz is a little less than 50%, Columbia is 50%, Elliott is 64%, Duke is 52%, Cornell is 68%, and NYU is 61%. (All except Heinz are according to Petersons.) That's not to say any old Joe can apply to these programs and stand a good shot of acceptance. I think there is a lot of self-selection going on. Nevertheless, I won't be looking at acceptances as my measure of admissions season success. If I get all acceptances but don't receive a single good offer, this admissions cycle will be a failure for me. (And I'll probably put off grad school until I've got the experience to submit an application deemed worthy of a nice aid offer.)

Unless you're like me. I got my four wisdom teeth out before I joined the Peace Corps and had neither pain nor swelling. I was expecting the worst--when I was around 20 I had my tonsils out and experienced 2 weeks with the devil--but in the end I didn't even need pain killers. Good luck!

Thanks for the tip plate. I do check CMU's applyyourself page twice a day, and I do scroll all the way down to the bottom. Still nothing. Hopefully this week.

Today I received an e-mail from hnzadmit@blahblahblah.edu (Carnegie Mellon Heinz). I got excited thinking it was an admissions decision, but it turned out to be only an invitation to an information session in DC. Everyday I think I'm going to get my decision from there, and everyday I'm disappointed. Come on Heinz, send me some good news this week with some funding info!

I'm reading the document differently. For US women, the acceptance rate last year was 16.6%; for international women, 10.8%; for all women, 15.2%. Sorry women.

For what it's worth, I interned in DC with a Fletcher student in the summer of 2005. He made it seem like there were quite a few other Fletcher students in the area. He's now got a nice gig with the Millennium Challenge Corporation in DC. Also, I think the location drawback for Fletcher is WAY overstated. Medford is 5 miles away from downtown Boston. It seems that many Fletcher students live just south of Medford in Somerville, which is even closer to downtown, and supposedly one of Boston's best neighborhoods. Sure in Boston you won't have access to as many internships during the academic school year as you would in DC in NY, but I don't think too many students pursue semester internships anyways. For the coveted summer internships, I think Fletcher students are competitive against students of any other school. Too add a weakness: - Lack of big money scholarships. It seems like Fletcher offers a very large quantity of small scholarships, but not as many big ones (full tuition plus) as some other schools. That said, it seems like IR schools as a whole offer substantially less than their MPP/MPA equivalents, which is one of the main reasons I diversified my applications between the two disciplines. (In principle the curriculum often overlap and most MPPs offer IR/development concentrations.)

Wow, policy_applicant... thanks for the link to that great document. Perhaps I'm reading the document wrong, but it seems like WWS ranks their admits into a top 1/2 and a bottom 1/2. That's got to be tough to do when everyone who gets in is an amazing candidate. For last year, the yield on the top 1/2 was less than 50%.... where are these people going over Princeton? Who else offers aid packages that include full tuition plus a living stipend? Perhaps they do PhDs instead, or maybe their employer picks up part of their bill... or perhaps they just like other programs/locations more. I'm guessing the yield rate for Berkeley is closer to 40-50%. The only reason why I could see it being higher is if most applicants applying to Berkeley are looking to work on the west coast. Here are some sample yields for other MPP/IR programs: According to Petersons: The yield for Harvard was 60% of the 28% of accepted applicants. The yield for Chicago Harris was 33% of the 60% of accepted applicants. The yield for Columbia SIPA (maybe just IA) was 46% of the 39% of accepted applicants. The yield for Fletcher was 33% of the 34% of accepted applicants. The yield for UCLA MPP is 30% of the 40% of accepted applicants.

According to that Petersons link, about 60% of people accepted into the Harvard MPP program actually enroll. That is a pretty impressive figure--hopefully it means they give enticing aid offers to a nice percentage of students. Or maybe other prospective students out there aren't as cost conscious as the typical poster on here. Does anybody have any more insight on this? In case you haven't checked, it says they accepted 28% of applicants in the reported year and 209 students enrolled. If they're hoping to keep a similarly sized cohort, and expect the same enrollment rate, the acceptance rate this year will be around 20-22%. Not too great, but probably close to twice the rate I'm expecting from Princeton this year.

Sorry to ask an off topic question, but when did you hear about your admission to the MSPPM program? When did you apply? As for Syracuse, I can't provide too much information--I do know it is a less than ideal place to live though.

Foreign Policy/William and Mary recently came out with their new rankings on top terminal masters programs for the IR field. These rankings, like all others, shouldn

Veeraa - You mean to tell me that Norman Borlaug is still active in the field? He must be around 100 years now. Or is there some other person that South Asians recognize as the father of the green revolution? Anyways, like others have said, you've put yourself in a position to get some good news in about a year. Good luck!

I applied to Harvard. If I'm accepted, but without funding, I'm definitely saying no. I would keep the acceptance letter buried away in some filing cabinet for the rest of my life though.

I think it really depends on what you do with your PC service. In my Eastern European country of service, a third of the volunteers did very little, a third did a reasonable amount, and a third accomplished a great deal. Unfortunately, in the PC "accomplishment" depends on a lot more than personal initiative. I was lucky enough to get an assignment where a great deal could be accomplished, and I had the personal initiative to get it done (excluding some periods in the frozen winters). Hopefully that came through in my personal statements. On the other hand, a PCV who spends all his/her time on non-development/international cooperation related issues might not get much of a boost. I do know that a few programs specifically list Peace Corps service as a quality they appreciate in applicants, and many have scholarships targeted directly at RPCVS. If they have the scholarships, it only makes sense that they feel we contribute something to their programs.

Thanks for the congratulations, and good luck with your Fletcher application mags. Where else are you considering? Someone on the results forum asked that I make a post here telling when I submitted my application. I submitted it a few weeks before the deadline, sometime around December 20th. Hope that helps. EDIT: sloth - I'm studying Spanish here.. Right now I only know a second language that's spoken by about 10 million people. I figured if I'm serious about a career in development, it's time to pick up a more widely spoken language.

Just got an e-mail that prompted a jump up and down. I'm in at Fletcher MALD, scholarship details to follow in late March. For those who have also applied, the e-mail contained the following: "While the majority of our applicants will not be notified until late March, the Committee was so impressed with your credentials that we wanted to relay the good news as soon as possible... The Admissions Office will send you a large packet of enrollment information in late March. If you applied for scholarship aid from Fletcher, you will be notified of the decision on your scholarship application at that time." Hopefully this early admit translates into a nice scholarship offer. I really love the Fletcher program, and if they offer a big package, I'll have a hard time not accepting. Two years in Boston would be nice!

Congratulations to all those who have recently received positive decisions. Splic--please let us know how the whole asking for more money thing works out for you, if it comes to that. I'm real interested in hearing UMD's response. As for me, I still haven't heard squat. I'm waiting to hear from CMU MSPPM, Princeton MPA, Fletcher MALD, Chicago MPP, Georgetown MSFS, and Harvard MPP. I'm going to take a long weekend and head to Guanajuato tomorrow. Should be three beautiful days of minimal worrying and obsessive-compulsive refreshing.

Hey microfinance senior thesis buddy. What schools did you apply to? Good luck on your decisions!

I voted international development, but could have just as easily voted international-economics. Policy_applicant - Your question wasn't directed at me, but I'll jump in anyways. Microfinance is one of my primary interests, and I even dedicated a few lines to it in a couple of my statement of purposes. Like you, I don't think microfinance is a panacea, but I do think it can be a very effective development tool, especially when its effects are completely understood and best practices (in context) are established. As it stands, the development community still has A LOT to learn about how to best harness its powers to achieve the best outcomes. When I was an undergraduate I wrote a senior thesis based on some regression analysis I did for a microfinance organization. Basically the data showed that that organization wasn't achieving its aims, its approach to microfinance could be flawed, and it wasn't even targeting its intended clients. This was before Yunus won the Noble Prize. I imagine since then there has been an even greater flood of money into microfinance and results might not be good as they otherwise could be if the practice of microfinance were more supported by a more active research community. Like is often the case in regards to development, one of the big issues is a lack of sufficient and reliable data--especially panel. The Poverty Action Lab has dabbled in microfinance, but I really wish they would do some more comprehensive studies. But anyways, I could definitely see myself involved with microfinance in the future. In fact, right now I am living in Latin America trying to improve upon my Spanish for that very reason.