malmo

Wow thanks a lot, CowboyDan. That was incredibly helpful! I really appreciate the advice and I will definitely be thinking about how to craft the kind of cohesive application you're talking about. BTW, congrats on WWS!

I graduated from college a couple of years ago and after doing an English-teaching Fulbright, I began working as a paralegal at a fancy law firm. For a long time, I had planned to go to law school, but recently began to change my mind after seeing how miserable my co-workers are and how much they have to work. Since I focused so much on the application process for law school, I don't really know much about MPP admissions, but I majored in IR and would love to work in the field in some capacity. Problem is that I don't have a concrete idea of what I want to do (I'm leaning towards doing some kind of consulting work on trade or labor issues, but won't feel comfortable writing a statement of purpose about something I have no experience in). What level of certainty/focus does an application to programs like SAIS, WWS, HKS, or Fletcher need to convey? And is it stupid to go into a program without a concrete idea of what I want to do, in the first place? Some part of me thinks I'll find something interesting to do after graduation anyway, as long as I can get into one of these super-prestigious places. Is that really naive?