Forest Owlet

I just stumbled onto this thread and can't believe how everybody's going through similar stuff! As a relatively old (wrong side of 30 ) international applicant with a fairly unusual profile, I thought things would be very different for me. Thankfully, I managed to badger all of my LOR writers to submit by the deadline, but since then I've discovered a couple of minor mistakes in one of my apps and have been obsessing over them. Being home (and thus away from work) doesn't help, nor does the fact that my younger brother got married a couple of days ago, resulting in the inevitable questions about my life plans: 'So when are you getting married?' 'Umm... Err.. I have applied for a PhD...' 'Oh, you'll get in easily...' (But 5 mins ago you asked me what I did for a living ) 'Look - doesn't he look really good? Go take some pictures. Shoo!' The way my profile is meant that I had to get 1-2 LORs from work, which now means that the whole place knows that I am applying . Which is also going to make for some very awkward conversations if I don't get in anywhere, not to mention a very interesting discussion with my boss: 'Thanks for your reco, but my overall application sucked, and hence I'm not really going anywhere. Can I please continue? Please? Pretty please? Have I told you how awesome you are?' And then I suddenly get cold feet and worry about whether finishing a PhD when I am just under 40 (hopefully) will make any sense, and how the money stuff is going to work out. In the middle of all of this, my parents sneak in the odd curveball: 'Why don't you get married and then go for a PhD?' On top of all this, one of my POIs, who had suggested that we discuss the specifics of what I'd like to work on if I get in has gone awol and isn't responding to my emails.

Again, sorry to bump this - but this is something even I am very curious about, and will play a big role in my decision-making process. Can current students at the top policy schools throw some light on this? A look at the career destinations document of these programs throws up a high proportion of Federal or State Government openings, which would be out of bounds for international students. How do international students fare with getting a position of their choice immediately at the end of the program, especially if they do not voluntarily want to go back to the their country of origin?

Accepted at Yale MEM. Found it out through the website. No mails yet. They'll let me know about funding in 2 weeks time. My first post on this site. Been stalking it for a while, but a good way to start being active here