gordon_shumway

Went to the GU open house yesterday. I have mixed feelings. I appreciated that GU wants to make their program as strong quantitatively as possible (having a quant background this excited me), however, listening to over an hour of why Georgetown's "brand" is so strong, and how all of the professors (very few of which are full time) went to top PhD programs in their field was kind of a turn off. I appreciate that good credentials lend credence to a programs strength. Having said that, I fear that GU's extremely high tuition is not spent on making it a school that can compete with top policy schools (by top I mean the usual suspects). Lacking a PhD program and having only a few core professors leaves GU at a distinct disadvantage with regards to advanced research projects and corresponding research grants and publicity. Further, some of the core professors seem at best tangentially related to a school pumping out students with professional degrees. E.J. Dionne is a great writer, but I cannot for the life of me see how a WaPo op-ed writer is going to teach me anything that would be of any value (or help me get a job) in my pursuit of a career in a Federal agency or at a non-profit/consulting firm. I liked that GU wants to better itself and initiated a study to see where it stacks up against the best ranked programs, but simply running a study and claiming to be a peer school to HKS does not make one a peer to HKS. Make no mistake, I am not trying to toot my own horn, as I feel that I am hardly an exceptional candidate, but I was fortunate enough to receive funding from GU. However, with what they gave me I would be left with ~$1,100 a month loan repayments for 10 years, and simply put, the GU "brand", as they touted it, is not worth that kind of debt.

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Anyone know if Georgetown will increase an individual's scholarship award based on competing offers?

I called last week, was told that scholarship committee decided to look at the second batch of accepted applicants before sending offers to those in the first batch (first batch being those supposedly getting back offers on the week of the 14th). He told me not to hold my breath waiting for the results.