ZeChocMoose

Is your program in Education? If it is, I assume then you are using the USNWR rankings since there are not many rankings for Education. I would be more interested in how they rank your subfield in education then the overall school of education. (I assume that you are citing a school of education ranking since USNWR usually only ranks the top 10 in each education subfield.) Even then, I am not sure I would value "the rankings" over more practical matters such as job placement, research opportunities, and program reputation. Program reputation might sound like rankings, but it is less arbitrary than a specific number each year. Basically, what is the program known for, who are the most recognizable faculty, and what types of jobs are graduates offered? I also would make sure there are multiple faculty members that I would want to work with in case one or two leave while you are still a student. If this all seems good and you are only hesitating due to rankings-- then I wouldn't worry. Unless, it is is not really rankings you are concerned with and instead this low ranking (you feel) is a proxy for low program quality or weak academic rigor. I would say if you suspect a low quality program then that is a concern. How you figure this out is talking to current students and/or people in the field. I would also suggest doing more research into the program and the requirements to get a degree. If you find that the program is substandard (i.e. weak methodology requirements, course offerings do not offer breadth or depth of knowledge in field, dissertation requirements are weak) then I would suggest not going there. For the master's program, I would not advise taking out 100K in loans for a master's in education. You will find that difficult to pay back.

cheese whiz

computer chip

If you live in Rockville, you'll need a car because it is on the other end of the red line. I am not that familiar with the Rockville area since I didn't have a car while I was in grad school at Maryland. I think it takes about 1 hr or so depending on the traffic to get to CP from Rockville. If you are okay with that then you'll be fine. Traffic in the DC Metro area is just bad-- you just need to come to terms with it or take the Metro. I enjoyed my experience at Maryland a lot. The faculty and the students in my program were amazing. I recommend trying the Diary's ice cream-- they make it themselves and there are a lot of creative flavors. I also like the CO-OP (in the Student Union). They have a lot of yummy food for a good price. Although the Diary and the Union is a bit far from the Smith School...

It sounds like this decision may really come down to the week of April 15th. I don't think there is really anything you can do except present yourself well at the open house and ask for an update periodically. Are they waiting for people with funded offers to decline? Or have they just not made financial decisions yet? Ultimately you have three choices assuming nothing changes by the time you need to make a decision: (1) accept the unfunded offer, (2) accept the funded offer, or (3) walk away from them both. If I was in your shoes, I would go with either #2 or #3. Good luck!

back door

Hi hajile, I did my master's at College Park and you are correct that there are some security issues. When I was there, the crime tended to happen in the areas where the university meets CP and not generally on campus. (There was some reported crime on campus of course but it tends to be slightly off campus.) Also crime unfortunately is a trade off you get from being close to a big city. I never felt unsafe when I was on campus, but I knew not to walk in CP at night in unlit areas. When I was there, the crime usually consisted of muggings, robberies, and 1 car hijacking. Will you have a car? If you have a car, your housing options are a lot more flexible. When I was a master's student, I lived in downtown Silver Spring. It was less than 10 min walk to the Metro and my apartment complex was really close to a grocery store. SS is on the red line and I find that line easier to go into DC and the VA suburbs than the green line. (CP is on the green line). There is also a free UM Shuttle that picks up in the back of the SS Metro. I usually didn't take it to campus because I didn't trust it would arrive on time, but I usually took it home. I did pay a premium price for my apartment (due to its proximity to the Metro) and it was only affordable on a grad student stipend because I had a roommate. The grad students that I knew usually didn't live in CP because there were a lot of undergrads there and other nearby communities are better in terms of things to do on the weekend and are quieter. Some areas to check out are: Silver Spring, Takoma Park, and Greenbelt. You may also want to look into Columbia Heights in DC (but that could get pricey). My best advice to you is to get a roommate. I am not sure what your stipend is, but it is going to be challenging to find a one bedroom under 1K in a good area. Mostly likely it will be in the $1100 - $1400 range. If you have a car this is where it comes into handy. Prices of apartments will decrease the further you get from a Metro stop. Also beware how far you get from the university-- because traffic can be brutal during rush hour!

That's a tough choice HREeducation. I assume you are looking into the education field for a job after your master's degree. Are you going into teaching, policy, admin, or research? Different jobs, have different entry salaries-- although finding any to really off-set the 100K will be difficult. Can you find a job now w/o a master's? Sometimes working a couple years may help you save and be competitive for funding when you apply again. Can you go part-time for your master's? For the schools that offered you half funding, can you make them work? I was faced with a similar situation when I applied for my master's programs. I applied to 5 schools and got full funding at 3 and no funding at 2. My top choice (when I was applying) was one of the schools that I received no funding. Since the prospect of going 60K in debt for a master's degree did not appeal to me, I quickly shifted my priorities to the 3 schools where I received full funding. After the campus visit, one of the schools out of the 3 really stood out. I enrolled there and had a great experience for a master's degree. Therefore, sometimes you can make a 2nd or 3rd choice school really work for you. Good luck!

From my friends who are applying, enrolled, or alumni from MBA programs, I understand why you place that much emphasis on standardized tests. For PhD programs (however), standardized tests don't get you into your program of choice. Instead admission committees are more concerned with the notion of program "fit." Therefore, you really need to seek out faculty members who research what you are interested in and apply to those schools. (It is unclear to me whether you have done this homework or not.) Then, I recommend contacting faculty members and current students in the schools that you are interested in to talk more about the program and the opportunities available. If it sounds like the program is a good fit for you, apply. If not, keep looking! I researched about 8 programs this way and only applied to 3 schools where I thought there was a great "fit." It is time-intensive, but hopefully it will give you good results. Good luck!

I have to disagree with you again, Polly_Sigh. Please don't bypass federal student loans to take out private grad school loans, warpspeed (or really anyone!). You can't discharge private grad school loans like you can with federal student loans through programs like Public Service Loan Forgiveness or through education awards from programs like AmeriCorps and Teach for America. Also, a lot of them collect interest while you are in school unlike the subsidized Stafford loans. Also the interest rates can be variable and can increase over the life of your loan whereas the Stafford loans have a fixed interest rate at 6.8%. (You can argue that is a bit high, but they can't increase it on you if you miss a payment unlike private grad school loans.) Sometimes there are hidden fees in private grad school loans that will charge you extra for paying them off early. And those private grad school loans may or may not be eligible for in-school deferment if you decide to do a PhD after your master's degree. I have witnessed and read about people who get into some serious financial trouble with relying on private loans to fund their education. Before you take out any money for school (federal or private*), please really understand the terms and conditions of the money that you are borrowing because you are going to be stuck with paying it back. * I don't advise taking out private loans because the terms and conditions are favorable to them not you. Please be very careful if you decide this route.

I am not so sure that warpspeed will have 20 years to repay the loans, Polly Sigh. From what I glean from the federal financial aid website, you need to borrow more than 30K to be able to extend your payments longer than 10 years. So if you borrow 28K, you'll have 10 years to pay it off which equals to about $320 per month (at 6.8% interest). There is also the income-based repayment plans, but you would have to meet the eligibility requirements to participate which may be difficult to know before you even enter a program. I guess there is no easy answer. I do agree with nogone to think long and hard about what this means for your financial future. I too have seen friends who have shouldered a considerable amount of debt and how that affects their life choices. Would you consider it worth it to go 28K in debt if you weren't able to secure a fully funded PhD offer? I am sure that you have noticed upon reading numerous postings here on the grad cafe that getting accepted to a PhD program is tricky in the best of circumstances. I have also been surprised too by the number of people accepted to a PhD program without being offered full funding (esp in areas with a high cost of living). So I guess what I am trying to say is there are no 100% guarantees that this master's will translate into a fully funded PhD offer. Would you be marketable with only a master's if you had to work for a couple years before going to a PhD program? Is there a way to do the master's program part-time?

I am not sure if even working a year to save up money is going to put a dent in the 80 - 100K. Is that just the tuition? Or is it tuition and living expenses? If it was me and I was faced with self-funding my master's degree in the humanities, I think I would pass on this year. In the meantime, I would retake the GRE to see if I can get a high enough score to secure some fellowships or TA/RA positions from the school. If I was a US citizen, I would look at my home state to see if they had programs that I am interested in since their tuition is usually more affordable. I also would look at more schools to see if they typically offer funding to their master's students. In my opinion, 80-100K just seems like a lot of debt to me especially in the humanities where salaries are typically lower.

To be honest, I wouldn't be too concerned with your GRE scores. They are decent. I might be a little concerned with your quantitative score if your plan is to do a quantitative dissertation, but I don't think I would be so concerned to tell you to take it again. In the grand scheme of things, I don't think GREs are that heavily weighted for higher ed PhD programs. The biggest factor (I think) for getting into a competitive higher ed PhD program is you need to demonstrate your research capacity through relevant research experience, presenting at national/regional conferences, and writing up articles for publication. It also is helpful to have professional experience in the field of higher ed and to demonstrate a good fit with your research interests to specific faculty members. That being said your stated research interests of looking at "business education for inclusive growth in emerging economies" seems very narrow. Have you found faculty members that are doing this work at the institutions that you are interested in? I would urge you to broaden your focus a bit and be open to looking at other topics that you can explore in your PhD as well as the one that you have stated. Ideally, you want to find 2-4 professors that you would like to work with and you have a good research match with. Lastly, do you have a master's degree in a related field? While a lot of the programs don't require you to earn a master's degree, most (if not all) PhD students in competitive higher ed programs tend to have them-- usually they are in higher ed or some related education field. Good luck!

The Sociology Department at the University at Buffalo offers a Summer Institute in Advanced Statistics and Methods. http://sociology.buffalo.edu/workshops/ I took the SEM workshop a couple summers ago and it was great.

I agree. There is some concern that Education PhDs are not taught rigorous methods and/or the number of required statistics/research methods courses is less than other social science programs. I think that is changing though. There are some great schools of Education that have really focused on these issues and are graduating competent education researchers. (As a side note: I would look into those type of schools to apply to since you are applying next year.) Also I think it is helpful for Schools of Education to collaborate with other social science programs (sociology, psychology, public policy, etc) on how to address education problems. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to work on complex problems seems to be a good solution that I hope more Schools of Education move towards.

downward dog

What is the norm at your job for giving notice? Have you seen other colleagues give notice? How long was their notice? How were they treated after they gave notice? I would use my observations of my work place to decide how and when I gave notice. If no one has given notice since you have been there, what is your relationship with your boss? If you have a good working relationship and he/she is a reasonable individual, I would think 1 month or longer would be fine. If he/she has reacted badly to news of this nature, be prepared to leave immediately when you give notice. Personally, I gave over one year notice that I was applying to PhD programs, but my boss was one of my LORs. Good luck and congrats on your acceptance

The Cambridge area has a high cost of living so coupled with tuition at Harvard which is also high = lots of debt. I won't do it! Personally, I would do the master's at the funded institutions and then reapply for my PhD at Harvard and of course at other places. You also may decide that you rather stay at your master's institution for your PhD too.

dancing queen

I am surprised that your advisor said that to you. I don't think transferring is recommended for a lot of different reasons. In that situation, you would have to apply to transfer in the first couple months of being in your program. I don't see how you would really assess that the program is a bad fit in that short amount of time unless something drastic happens (i.e. lost of funding, your POI leaves, your department is cut, etc.) The other complications would be who to ask for LORs and how to explain why you transferring so that it sounds reasonable and legitimate to the adcom. Since graduate classes don't tend to transfer, you'll probably lose a year. Are you sure your advisor wasn't suggesting to enter a PhD program and if you didn't like it to leave with your master's and apply somewhere else for your PhD? That would make more sense and is more common.

I would be surprised if they factored those classes into your undergraduate GPA especially if it was an institution different than your alma mater. In the education section on the application, usually you can select that you were a non-degree seeking student. I assume those classes may be helpful if they are related to your field of study. I took a couple non-degree seeking classes, but I doubt it made a difference either way.

I am considering Michigan as well. My department's campus visit day is in mid-March as well. I have also heard nothing, but positive things about AA and about the university. I also like that the university is strong in many fields, they are deliberate about bringing grad students together in different programs, and there is a lot of exciting interdisciplinary research on campus.

Applying as a non degree student is (generally) not competitive. If you are interested in taking graduate courses as a non-degree seeking student, the admission office will need to confirm that you earned a bachelor's degree from an accredited institution and that you don't have any academic issues on your transcript. Usually though as a non-degree seeking student, you cannot take any course (some courses may be restricted to particular programs) and you have to wait until the degree seeking students register before you can register. I would check into this before you go this route because it is not going to work out if the classes that you want to take are restricted or popular. I was a non-degree seeking student in two different institutions a couple years ago and I had a good experience with the classes I took.

game theory

ping pong