tj19

Previous Schools (Name, type, or tier): Top 10 Southern Regional University Previous Degrees and GPA's: BA, 2.8 GRE Scores (Verbal/Quantitative/Analytical Writing): 600/620/4 Previous Work Experience (Years, Type): Part-time during school year and summers, 4 years. Math/Econ Background: Statistics minor, GIS minor Foreign Language Background: None Intended Field of Study in Grad School: Policy Analysis, Program Analysis Long Term Professional Goals: Work in the emergency management/disaster response field Schools Applied to & Results: Accepted: American, Georgia State, George Mason, University of Maryland -- Baltimore County, University of Texas-Dallas, Appalachian State. Rejected: University of Delaware Ultimate Decision & Why: American. Received no money anywhere, and American isn't that much more expensive than my other admits, but is probably the best school. Any advice to Future Applicants? Apparently, ignore the GPA and GRE minimum scores if you really want to apply. Many of the schools I was accepted at gave the clear impression that they wouldn't even consider my below-3.0 GPA. But a good statement, good references and a clear history of involvement in the field helped overcome that.

MPA Acceptance packet today, no mention of $

Sure, I could see that. Money will always be a factor, and GMU is cheaper but still in the DC area. I hate to fall back on US News rankings, but it's still a top 50 program. And in one of my areas of interest, public-policy analysis, it's ranked just behind of American and ahead of GWU.

Yep, just like the above. Nice little e-mail today (2 days after their published deadline). Thank you for submitting your graduate application to the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at George Mason University. Your application has been processed and will now be sent to the department for review. If the department requires further documentation they will contact you directly. Please allow at least four to six weeks from the published deadline for a decision to be made. We will notify you of the decision by mail. They've had it for over two months. Really? Another 4-6 weeks for review?

Wow. Really? That's surprising to me as it bumps their decision timeline right up against some April 15 deadlines for submitting a deposit to other schools that have already sent out acceptances -- like American, a school that GMU directly competes with.

Rejected. I was hoping being a Delaware resident would help, but oh well.

The link itself isn't personalized but you'll need your "G Number" that supposedly GMU admissions sent you. The problem is that I never got an email from admissions with any G Number. Luckily, the financial aid email also contained my G Number. The message was: "The status of your George Mason University Student Financial Aid Application is available online. You will first need to create a temporary user account. Please visit https://password.gmu.edu and select the click 'here' to option 1, to activate your Patriot Pass Account. Follow the instructions to get your Mason Access NetID and to create a secure password. To activate your account, you will need your university G number ID which was provided to you by the Office of Admissions and your PIN. If you've never used your PIN, it is initially set to your date of birth in mmddyy format. If you've previously used your PIN but have forgotten it, please contact ITU Support at 703-993-8870 to request a PIN reset. Once you've created the temporary user account, please visit https://patriotweb.gmu.edu and login with the NetID and password that you created to check your application status. " Just a very confusing email.

I got the application under review e-mail shortly after my application was complete, and this most recent e-mail was the first I've heard since. I had discovered the web page you sent a while back -- I have to say, GMU's website is not the most intuitive thing in the world. I'm beginning to think that this doesn't really mean anything with respect to admission. Maybe they just finally loaded the information in the financial aid system, so we got the weird e-mail today. Seems odd, but I'm still definitely listed as "still being processed" on their application status website. Guess we'll find out sooner or later.

Got sort of a strange e-mail from GMU's Financial Aid Office saying that the status of my financial aid application is available online, and directing me to a terribly designed website to retrieve a temporary user account. Which then directed me to another odd website to set my password. Then on to another website to use the temporary user account and password to access my financial aid application status. Which ultimately didn't contain much except to acknowledge they received my FAFSA a month ago. It does state that my "expected enrollment" for Fall 2011 is full-time. Does any of this mean anything with respect to an actual acceptance? The acceptance website is still showing me as "in process". It's been a little over 8 weeks since my application was complete.

Congratulations! And . . . uh, oh. I haven't heard from UDel for the same program. But I was just accepted today at UM-Baltimore County for their MPP. No Emergency Management track, though. I just liked that it was in the DC-Baltimore area. Would you mind sharing when your application at UDel was complete, and they notify you via e-mail?

Dear God, FOURTH! The tragedy. The horror.

Program Applied To MPA, MPP, M.S. (Disaster Science) Schools Applied To: American, George Mason, UMBC, UDelaware (M.S. in Disaster Science), UT-Dallas, Georgia State Schools Admitted To: American Schools Rejected From: Still Waiting: All but American Undergraduate institution: Top 10 Southern Regional University -- Private Undergraduate GPA: 2.8 Last 60 hours of Undergraduate GPA (if applicable): 2.8 Undergraduate Major: Public Administration, with minors in Statistics and Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) GRE Quantitative Score: 620 GRE Verbal Score: 600 GRE AW Score: 4.5 Years Out of Undergrad (if applicable): 0 Years of Work Experience: 0 Full-Time, 4 Part-Time Describe Relevant Work Experience: Volunteer Firefighter, Paid EMT/Paramedic. Internship with county Emergency Management department.

Yep, same here. e-mail to check my status, which did not sound promising, but then was pleasantly surprised. Not very optimistic about $$ given my stats, but who knows?

You might want to check out Georgia State's new program as well. It's new, but the director has been involved in EM for a long time. http://aysps.gsu.edu...ter-policy.html IAEM has a page where they list schools with student chapters http://www.iaem.com/...msachapters.htm I would guess that most of the schools with student chapters have an academic program in EM. Their job bulletin board also has a section for searching for internships. Good luck!

Hey, George Mason has an EM concentration. I think North Texas (go figure) is well regarded. The FEMA college list at http://www.training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/edu/collegelist/ is starting to get a little dated but is still a good start. NASPAA has a search function where you can select "Emergency" as a filter for the Field of Study, which helps. Another poster pointed me to what sounds like a really interesting year long English language program at the University of Tel Aviv http://www1.tau.ac.il/emergex/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37&Itemid=44 But yeah, figuring out how good any of these might be is a big challenge. I'm applying to some of these, but I also am looking at policy/program analysis and/or planning/gis specialties since that's the area of EM work that I'm looking at (for now at least).