juilletmercredi

It's so confusing because University Park is also the postal address for PSU! But it's not a real town.

Five to six years is the norm in my experimental social science field, but I've talked to some professors and they have mostly said that they don't really care how long it take you to finish the PhD. They have told me it's not something they consider when hiring, and many times, they don't even know. You're only supposed to put the end date of your PhD on your CV - so for example, my CV might say "BA, 2008; PhD, 2014." That could mean that I spent 6 years getting my PhD after my BA or that I took 2 years off after the BA and got my PhD in 4 years. I mean, they might be able to piece it together from the rest of the CV but I doubt harried professors on search committees are going to take the time to do so. I agree with the advice above that you need to enlist allies. Your committee is an obvious point of entry since it is also their job to help you finish. Do you know what your advisor's specific concerns are about the paper? Take those concerns to your committee (neutrally) and ask if they share them. If there's a sympathetic mentor you have, ask them how to navigate this situation. Get the director of graduate studies involved. If your paper is truly in good shape, and you're ready to graduate, and your advisor is unethically and unnecessarily holding you back - your DGS should know, particularly if she has a pattern of doing this. I would argue that your PI's reasons absolutely matter, because you need to understand why she's holding up the paper and what you can do about it. Is it that she wants stronger, but more unrealistic/elusive results? Is it because she thinks the writing needs to be improved? Is it because she realizes if you graduate she'll lose a highly trained lab worker? All of these are different reasons with different solutions, so understanding her motivation is important to moving on. As for your relationship with your PI...people have recovered from these before. I agree that you shouldn't burn the bridge if you don't have to, but if you have another mentor or close committee member who can delicately address the situation in a strong positive recommendation letter, it might be worth bombing the bridge if it means you graduate. A glowing recommendation from the PI means nothing if you are still wallowing in ABD-land years from now. FWIW, I also became very cynical about the future of academic research and academia as a whole, which is why I left. (I have a non-academic research job at a private company; I start on Monday.) Like you, it wasn't imposter syndrome. I felt like a very smart, competent, competitive PhD-holder. The problem was that I felt like that wasn't enough to secure a good tenure-track job, given how scarce those positions are; furthermore, I was pretty sure I didn't want to do the work to get tenure, and the job of a professor didn't sound appealing to me. Geographical location was also important to me - I didn't want to live in a small town in the middle of nowhere. (Tried that for a year. It got old.) The much higher salary I was offered in the private sector didn't hurt, either.

I used to start with "Dr. X" or "Prof. X" in graduate school until otherwise corrected. However, that got weird real fast, since it was an institutional and field-wide norm for grad students on up to call professors by their first names, and we were treated like junior colleagues. I felt like running around calling my professors "Dr. X" beyond my first year infantilized me somewhat, and set me apart as a graduate student instead of someone thinking of herself as a junior colleague and a working professional in the field. So I just switched to addressing everyone by their first name unless there was some kind of cue indicating otherwise. I especially do it now that I'm finished with the PhD and have a full-time job. These people are my colleagues; they call me by my first name, so they will also get called by their first names. I always feel weird when people call me Dr. (or Ms.) anything, so I just asked my students to call me by my first name.

I didn't. Actually, I was a student primarily at the medical center campus, so I was not eligible for Columbia's Morningside Heights housing initially. Their medical center campus housing was either more expensive or crappier than what I could get myself, so I rented my own place with a roommate. I didn't move into Columbia's housing until my husband became a student at the Morningside Heights campus and secured some Columbia graduate housing. But yes, it is so beautiful - I used to go running in Riverside Park, and would walk my dog through Morningside Park. Lots of great restaurants and shopping in the UWS too. It's a shame everything is so expensive. I knew a lot of Columbia students who lived in Harlem, including the 140s-150s - particularly med center kids. It was pretty cheap to live in West Harlem and there are some nice renovated buildings in Central and West Harlem popping up. South Harlem is becoming really expensive, though; a friend of mine owns a 2-bedroom apartment in South Harlem that I think he bought for $250K when he first moved in. They're selling it for like $1.2 million now. Fordham's main campus is so pretty.

My parents were relatively anti-higher education. They belong to a religious sect that discourages college and beyond for various reasons, so they encourage their young to just go to vocational programs and/or try to get a job straight from high school. So my father, especially, was disappointed when I decided to go to college (especially when I didn't study engineering). He was downright baffled when I decided to get a PhD, and actively tried to convince me to drop out, arguing that I was wasting my time in school when I could've been working and making money. That didn't stop him from bragging about me to anyone who would listen, though. *eyeroll*

Karen Kelsky has said that a "good advisor is not a nice advisor." I didn't understand what she meant, but I thought about it. A good advisor is someone who doesn't try to beat around the bush with you and be "nice," thereby avoiding telling you the awkward truth. A good advisor tells you what you NEED to hear and pushes you to your limit to achieve. Anyway, she told you straight up that you're a good writer. That's a good sign. But, as was already mentioned, academic writing (particularly thesis-writing) doesn't come naturally. It's a skill to be learned, and a really excellent writer could just not be great at that particular kind of writing straight out the box. I'd say it's pretty normal - you're still getting a handle on the conventions of academic writing, and you need practice. We all do in the beginning!

I think Arizona State's program is also pretty quant-heavy. The faculty in that program are heavyweights in the fields wrt developing new methods and such. I also think that you can decide how quant-heavy you want your program to be, depending on who you work with and what classes you take. My current mentor is a quantitative psychologist, but she got her PhD in human development and family studies at Penn State. They just also happen to have a fantastic methodology center and lots of stats-heavy mentors, with the option to earn an M.A. in applied statistics in their top-ranked statistics department.

I went to graduate school and the $13,000 figure for Fordham just seemed outrageous, so I checked it out. Fordham's website reports that their studio apartments at the Lincoln Center campus are about $10,310 per semester, and that includes 5 months (August through December for the fall; January through May for the spring). That comes out to $2,070 - a bit expensive for a studio, but they ARE in Lincoln Center, so that explains the cost. The one-bedrooms are $12,715 a semester, or $2,543/month, and that's to be expected for a one-bedroom in that area. In fact, that's actually relatively inexpensive for that area. I lived in Columbia's housing (my husband is still there) and we pay $1400-1500/month for a jr. one-bedroom/two-room studio. (It's going up this year, as usual, which is why I gave the range.) Anyway, it really depends on the university housing. Columbia's Morningside Heights (main campus) housing is very nice; it's well-maintained, we had a doorman and package receiving in the building, we live a block away from a great park and a block away from the campus, so we could walk to class. It's small, but not any smaller than anything else we could find on the market in the same neighborhood and way cheaper - plus we save on commuting costs being so close. However, Columbia's medical center campus housing was not great. Most their apartments didn't have ovens in the kitchenettes, which was an absolute deal breaker for me. They also had a lot of railroad apartments. Plus, that neighborhood (Washington Heights) is a lot cheaper than the neighborhood in which the main campus is located, so it was easy for students to find cheap(er) housing in the same neighborhood outside of the university. That's what I did for my first 3 years of my PhD program - shared an off-campus apartment with a roommate. So it really just depends on the housing. I'd ask some current students; ask if your department can put you in touch with some current grad students who live in the housing. Also, check the terms. IIRC our university housing only required 30 days' notice of moving out and didn't hold you to a very specific lease, so if it's awful you could always find something else if you have a similar agreement.

You just posted this yesterday. Give people a chance; it's a weekend in August. You said a research internship; what does that mean? Do you want to find out whether these professors are taking graduate students, or are you trying to get a position in their lab as an undergrad research assistant? If you mean the latter, you do't need to include any technical ideas or questions. You can just email the lab manager (ideally), explain that you are very interested in X (X being whatever the lab is studying that you're interested in), and ask them if the lab is accepting undergraduate research assistants. You don't need to come up with any new ideas yet; you'd be hired/accepted on to help them complete the projects that are already underway. Only after you've begun working in the lab would you propose any new projects. The answer's a bit different if your goal is to be a grad student in someone's lab.

These things are not mutually exclusive. Considering legacy status does have the effect of being racist and classist at elite schools, since non-white students weren't admitted to most of the ones that care about this until the 1960s at the earliest, and even now non-white students represent a minority of students on campus. It's classist because elite universities that care about this are typically very expensive and the ones who tend to have legacy also come from wealthy families. However, I'm pretty sure it's true that legacies do give more. I don't have proof for that, nor do I want to find it, but the reason I'm pretty sure it's true is that universities wouldn't offer legacy preference in admissions if it didn't benefit them in some way. Some schools are open about this; Stanford, for example, checks to see if the parents of legacy candidates have "maintained their connection to the school," i.e., given money. Aaaand that in turn engenders more money. If your son or daughter attends your university and is reliving all the same traditions that you lived XX years ago, then you relive them too, and maybe your nostalgia motivates you to donate. Does that trump the disadvantage that legacy preference puts non-white students and poor students at? No. Am I saying this to defend the practice of legacy admissions? No. Of course university admissions are unfair; they would be even without legacy admissions. That doesn't mean it doesn't have some advantage for the student body lucky enough to be there, legacy or no. Anyway, the answer to the original question depends entirely on the university. At most universities, I'm guessing the answer is no, postdocs don't count. The reason is embedded in the above - legacy admissions exists primarily to drum up more monetary support and preserve traditions (which may also drum up that $$$). Undergrads obviously are the focus of that experience, so undergrad legacies are important to many elite schools. Graduate students at some elite universities may also feel strong ties because their experience, in some ways, mirrors that of the undergrads. For example, elite law and business school grads often form tight-knit networks and have traditions of their own that may engender giving, so universities may see an interest in extending a slight bump in admissions to the kids of grad student alumni, although it's probably not as big as if you were an undergrad. (This is exactly what Columbia, my graduate university, does - small bump for kids of grad alumni; bigger bump for kids of undergrad alumni. And honestly, I have to say that I do feel a certain kind of connection to Columbia, even as a grad alumna.) But postdocs are far more like employees than students. I'm a postdoc at Penn State and I don't know much of anything about their traditions and experiences, nor do I really care that much. I am not inclined to donate money to Penn State, and I don't feel warm fuzzy feelings towards PSU as a university. It's a great place to work! But I don't have nostalgia about it. And they probably know that, so why extend legacy preference to my kids when they're not going to get anything out of it?

I think any kind of sneakers will do. You'll see New Yorkers walking around in all kinds of shoes. Personally, I prefer light shoes so I'm usually wearing Keds or ballet flats in the spring, summer, and fall; in the mid-to-late fall I start mixing in some riding boots, booties, or wear tights with my flats. In the winter I usually wear boots or booties - Uggs particularly when it's cold. You will want a good pair of waterproof shoes for days when it rains; I have a pair of rain boots. I will say, though, that I pretty much stopped wearing most heeled shoes in the city. You walk so much that it's simply not practical unless heels are very comfortable to you.

It might seem counterintuitive, but I always write my literature reviews after I write the methods and results. The reason why is because your lit review is supposed to situate your work in the larger literature, but it's difficult to do that until you know what kind of results you've gotten. So I work out what my results are and then I tell my story in the lit review, alluding to what's missing and how my work fills that gap. I organize literature using a citation manager - I use Sente (a Mac only program), but a lot of people swear by Mendeley and Zotero (I also like Zotero). Mendeley and Zotero are free; Sente costs some money. All of these programs allow you to organize and tag your literature by subject so you know where to look for related articles. Also, I outline my literature reviews before I write them. That gives me a roadmap for what I'm going to write and how I'm going to organize it. It's a lot easier than starting from a blank page. As for figuring out gaps - that's easier for me. When I read papers, they raise more questions than they answer. The discussion also usually suggests areas for future research. Then you do another search to see if anyone has answered some of those questions. It takes some time - it took me several years in graduate school to feel like I knew enough about the literature to know where the gaps were and where I wanted to establish my research agenda

I hate EndNote! I recommend Zotero. If you have a Mac, you might want to try Sente - that's the one I use now, and I really like it.

I don't understand the question - R is a statistical software package. And no, it's still tremendously useful. Most people in your program may use SPSS, but at least in my experience that doesn't mean that you have to use it especially if you want to do any advanced analysis - and it may benefit you if you can branch out. I stopped using SPSS and started using a combination of SAS and Stata in graduate school (and learned bit of R later), and it meant that I was the go-to person for analysis questions and started working as a stats consultant in grad school. R is excellent because it's free and open source! As for programming languages - well, I've been working on learning Python because when I look at job ads that are appealing to me, that's the programming language they ask for most often. Ruby will be my next project because that's the one I see second-most. Python is also easier to learn and very similar to the SAS and R language I already know, so it seemed like a good place to start.

I can't remember whether this happened on my GRE since it was years ago now, but I will say that you should ignore things like that. The GRE isn't designed to trick you with tiny little things like that. Pick the best answer and assume that the "a" would become "an" if it needed to.

HopStop is really good for subway directions. Accurate timing and gives you several different routes; it'll also change routes in case of subway construction and gives you the taxi price, too, in case you were thinking about maybe taking a taxi somewhere. I also like the app NextTrain because it tells you how far away the next subway train is from your station. It's relatively accurate. There are several apps that give you a subway map. I used NYCMate. If you search "NYC subway map" you'll find one; they're all pretty similar. Try to find one that allows you to store the map(s) on your phone, though, so you can use it underground. One that has a map of the bus system (or several) is also a good bet. Each subway car also has a map posted nearby the door. It's pretty difficult to get lost in New York, especially once you learn the subway a little. Uber will let you hail a yellow cab. You pay the yellow cab a metered fare, not the Uber prices. You can also hail a regular UberX car with it too, of course, but some people prefer taxis. Of course normal apps like Yelp work in New York - great for finding nearby restaurants or other venues to chill in that are tasty/good.

Hmm, I have a slightly different perspective than some of the comments here. I do agree about flexibility, and I do think that you should - in an ideal world - go into a PhD program where there is more than one person you can work with potentially. But I also think 3-5 is an unrealistic expectation for most departments. 2-3 is a good sweet spot; if there are more, that's great, but you don't have to look for more. The other thing is that you have to think about those 2-3 people broadly. It's unlikely that there are 2-3 people working on the exact same thing in a department, but they may be working on similar enough things that you can approach your interests from different angles. For example, there may be the Perfect PI who is working on evolutionary neuroscience in marine mammals, and then two other PIs - one who is doing evolutionary neuroscience and the other who is doing sensory neuroscience, both in humans or other non-marine animals. If you are okay with the prospect of working with one of the other two, then you're golden. How far afield you are willing to go also will influence that. Beyond, that, though, I think you should follow your passion. I think it's okay to be interested in a sub-sub-field now if you are open to change (which it sounds like you are). When I first started grad school I was interested in a sub-sub-field as well, one that I eventually ended up straying away from. Having that passion and fire doesn't mean that you will be uninterested in other things or unwilling to change, but you can frame it a certain way in your statement. For example, I used two connective statements in mine that emphasized my larger interests (HIV prevention in ethnic minority adolescents and young adults) and then my sub-interests (how sexual media consumption influences sexual behavior in African American adolescents). I got picked up by a mentor who did the former but not the latter. There are ways to indicate flexibility in your statement without abandoning your sub-sub-area. And yes, there's always an inherent risk in attending a program with just two or even one person with whom you can work, but we assume risk in everything that we do. Meet the PI beforehand and have a good chat with them about their mentoring style and work style, and chat with their current graduate students. Of course you can't find out everything from a one-hour meeting, but things can go south in a department where you have lots of people who can mentor you too. Only you can decide if this is a risk you want to take, particularly if that PI's research is just peeerrrrfect. (Also realize, though, that I firmly believe a good mentor who is a bit further afield from your interests, but is willing to support you, is far far better than a bad mentor who does exactly what you want to do.) Honestly, in your case, I would go for what lights your fire. What point is it doing the grueling work of academia and graduate school if not to do exactly what you want to do?

^ I came to say the same thing as rising_star and avflinch. Money is often tight in graduate school, and the small stipends don't leave a lot of room for unexpected expenses and emergencies. I set aside money every month for those things - there was always something. In addition to what rising_star says ahead, there's also reimbursable expenses for school - like maybe your program will pay you to present at a conference, but they'll only reimburse you, and you have to pay out of pocket at first. A lot of people put that on a credit card, but I couldn't get credit cards in the beginning of graduate school so having a little reserve of money was goo for that.

My training was in social + health psychology.

OP - at most doctoral programs, you can work with an advisor or mentor in different departments. I'm not 100% sure about Christian Grov, but I know that it's possible at Columbia and at Michigan, and I'm pretty sure it is at Yale. For Christian I'm willing to bet the answer is yes. Yes, I wasn't sure whether you were specifically committed to doing psychology only or whether you were open to doing a PhD in a related area. For what it's worth, I got my PhD at Columbia in a joint program between sociomedical sciences (which has lots of LGBT scholars there) and psychology. My advisor is one of the folks on the list

Yeah, I have also been a GRA on a grant and was an hourly employee. You're usually not paid for project-specific work as a GRA - in that you're not paid to complete specific tasks. You're paid hourly, and it's up to the PI to give you tasks that will be useful to the project. If you show up 8 hours and the PI doesn't give you anything to do, they still have to pay you for those 8 hours. I agree with both rising_star and bsharpe - they're not mutually exclusive. On the one hand, if you were paid upfront for work, you need to complete the work or repay the money, and the professor is really under no obligation to make it easier for you to do this remotely. On the other hand, the professor does bear some responsibility because it's not your fault the project stalled and you can't be held to the terms of your agreement indefinitely. GRA work is usually technically contracted on one particular grant, but projects falter all the time, and usually prudent PIs ask their GRAs to do work on other projects in the meantime because GRAs graduate. Furthermore, I think it's incredibly rude when academic professionals ignore emails and phone calls, and that really gives the PI even more culpability here. If you want a student to work for you, you'd think that you'd respond to their requests to - you know - work. It sounds to me like what happened is Professor B finally got his/her ish together and "panicked" when they realized you were about to move away, so they contacted you at the last minute to try to get that work out of you. Again, technically this is your obligation, but it's unfair to you because poor planning on B's part shouldn't constitute an emergency on your part. What I would do? 1) Have a chat with Professor A, apprising them of the situation. If you are on good terms and he supports your PhD plans, he should be understanding. But you want to give them the heads up. Be clear and straightforward and mostly unemotional. You just want his support, and want to give him the heads up before Professor B comes to him. He might even have some suggestions for what you should do next. 2) Have a non-confrontational chat with Professor B, being clear about what you can and cannot do. I personally would not make any arrangements to fly back and forth between campuses, because that sounds time-consuming, exhausting, and unhelpful for either of you. My offered options would be i) agree to stay on for one additional week and work 6 hours a day to complete the tasks requested, if this is possible for you; ii) offer to do all or part of the work remotely from your new location, with regular contact with Professor B and a plan to protect data security that you will create and send in advance of the work; or iii) repay the money. Obviously modify these options however you see fit and will work for you. Repaying the money does need to be on the table, though. Honestly, repaying it just seems like the easiest solution. It might help if you can get Professor A to help you suggest some other students who can do the work for them.

In celebration, my favorite piece of media about a thesis defense: "FAQ: The 'snake fight' portion of your thesis defense."

If you're in your fourth year then you have some time to start investigating other careers. It's quite common for doctoral students to realize several years in that they no longer want to be academics, that they're uninterested in their research, etc. Since you've made that discovery, your next step is to figure out what you DO want to do. What I found is that doctoral programs give you a tremendous about of flexible time to discover other things that you might like to do so that you can make the transition from academia to a non-academic position. I agree with rising_star that the first question is whether or not to finish, and that if you can envision any careers in which a PhD would be helpful for necessary, you should probably stay. I grappled with the same question in my third year, and ultimately decided to stay because I knew I wanted a research-related career, and a PhD would help. I'm tremendously glad I did because I've secured a non-academic position that requires a PhD in my field. However, I also came across lots of research-related jobs that I could've done with an MA in my field, too. So I think the first step is to start poking around - do a job search for positions that sound interesting to you, and see what kinds of degrees they require. -I do agree that if you decide to stay, you can start treating the PhD like a 9-to-5, and make plans to complete the minimum requirements. However, how successful you are at this will really depend on your advisor. Some advisors will not be satisfied with the sort of 'least defensible unit' type of dissertation. So plan accordingly. -Separate interests from things you want to do in your career. You like to spend time around animals; that doesn't mean you should make a job out of it. Think about the skills that you have and what kinds of tasks you actually like to do every day at work. -Ironically, connecting with the reasons you came to graduate school might illuminate some fields for you - but at a higher/more macro level than your research area. For example, in my case I remembered that I loved thinking about the ways in which people behaved and thought and felt, and how those affected their decisions. I'm also highly analytical, and I love research as a practice (although not the way it's done in the academic world). So I knew that I wanted a career that still required insight and some research into people's behaviors, but what the topic of that research was wasn't so important to me. Introspecting into your own motivations and likes and dislikes may uncover some connections like that. -Poke around on career resources and see what PhDs in your area have done, if you want to finish. You can stalk people on LinkedIn. Your university's career services office might be good. You can also join VersatilePhD and read some of the bios. VersatilePhD is probably the best resource out there for non-academic careers for PhD holders. -Once you have some areas picked out that seem interesting, you can do some informational interviews with PhDs (or MAs) who work non-academic jobs. You will quickly become surprised at how many of them are not only willing but overjoyed to spend a little time mentoring and talking with current students to help them out. Many random acquaintances/semi-strangers were willing to chat with me for 15-60 minutes about their careers. It's delightful - you get to meet lots of people and also learn useful information. -If you can, try an internship or a part-time job that's non-academic and allows you to develop skills. I know that my internship and some of my part-time jobs were attractive to the jobs I applied to (and ultimately helped me get the job I got). Employers like to see that any student has some experience, but for academics it's particularly attractive because it shows that you can work in a non-academic setting (and aren't the stereotypical antisocial egghead that people like to paint on us academics) and it shows that you have skills and experience that you can deploy in a non-academic setting. Sometimes it's difficult to get this approved by advisors or work it in, but try anyway. -Think really carefully before you go to school for anything else. Read up on their educational crises, too. For example, I'm not very familiar with the vet field, but I have read some articles that have indicated that vet med is in a little bit of a crisis, too. Vet salaries don't seem to match up with the average debt for vets coming out of vet school, and in desirable areas the field is saturated. Admission to vet school is also really competitive - fewer than half of applicants are admitted. You don't want to fall from the frying pan into the fire, so to speak. Similar problems have abounded when PhDs have left the field and decided to go into law, for example, or into librarianship. I'm not saying don't go into another competitive field if that's your passion - but don't assume that anything is better than academia, because there are a lot of other fields where you might be in the same boat only with more debt.

Is this all hypothetical or are there actual universities involved? Why are you already thinking about leaving university A? I'm assuming that you haven't begun yet. If this is just a contingency plan in case, then that's one thing, but I personally think it's a bad idea to attend a doctoral program with intentions to drop out. Your situation with university B is simply that they keep applications on file for one year. Most colleges do this; in fact, I think it's a requirement of a law. It doesn't make you more or less competitive for future application cycles; it'll be like applying for the first time all over again. If you got in once you'll probably get in again, but it's no guarantee. Leaving a PhD program for another is not like applying the first time. The new program (B ) usually wants some kind of confirmation that you are leaving voluntarily - not getting kicked or forced out because of poor grades or interpersonal issues. That usually means they'll want a recommendation letter from someone at A - usually your advisor, but another professor could work too (although it is often a red flag if your advisor doesn't write you a rec and the other recommender doesn't explain why). The rules might be a little more relaxed for an MS program, although it depends. Some smaller academic MS programs might be similar to doctoral programs and others may not care as much. Also, remember that if you are planning to leave a PhD program after 1 year, you'd have to start applying in the fall, before you've spent very much time in the PhD program at all and before you've given it a chance. If you're planning to leave after you've been in the PhD for two years, then it might be more prudent to finish an MS along the way at the PhD program and drop out (assuming that your doctoral program gives MS degrees along the way - most do). If your other topics are any indication you're an international student studying on a visa, so transferring/reapplying also presents issues with that, too.

A few things, but basically, my advice is to listen to your gut and at least consider it. If tuition and fees are $32,000 a year, and let's assume living expenses in Knoxville are about $25,000 per year to live frugally, that's an expense of $57,000 per year. If the program is two years, then that's $114,000 we're looking at. If you have no funding, that means you will have to borrow that entire amount. Even assuming you have no debt from undergrad, you'd need a pretty large salary to repay that debt - at least around $75,000 to repay with some hardship, but probably closer to a six-figure salary to make it really work. UT doesn't publish salary data for their MPPA graduates, but given that it's public sector work I don't expect that too many can expect to make enough to repay $114K in loans. An MBA is not a magic bullet, either. MBA programs from top schools do usually come along with very high salaries, because those students are able to get into jobs at top firms with big salaries. However, the average MBA graduate doesn't necessarily boost his/her earning potential much over a bachelor's. UT actually does pretty well, with the median starting salary of their graduates being $76K. Every business program has to publish salary and employment statistics to stay accredited, so you can check out MBA statistics pretty easily by visiting the website of a program. You don't have to have lots of business or economics classes before you get an MBA. Lots of social science, humanities, and natural and physical science majors get MBAs who have never taken a business class before. What you do need is some experience; successful MBA applicants usually have 3-5 years of experience. It sounds like you have 2-3. Top MBA programs like high-profile experience that shows quick progression to leadership. As a note, you can take an MPA into the private sector. I have a friend who got her MPA and works for a financial services company. You'd only want to borrow an amount that you can comfortably repay. I think a good rule of thumb is not to borrow more than you'd expect your first year's starting salary to be. You can try to find a job that will pay for some or all of your MBA, too - a lot of employers do tuition support as a benefit.