brian.sabina

Hey, First off, congratulations on have some great choices. I'm a little biased, but it seems like Harris would be an amazing place for you. Program Evaluation and Cost Benefit Analysis are two of the focuses for which Harris has made its reputation as a great policy school. We are also really strong when it come to the quantitative side of things. Come on, it's University of Chicago: the home of modern economics! I think you would be hard pressed to find a better place to study econometrics. Additionally, Harris' core curriculum focuses on making sure that students develop skills. The school want to teach us how to think not what to think. Harris rocks in terms of flexibility. First, since we're on the quarter system, you have more opportunities to take classes than schools that are on a semester system. Second, Harris encourages students to take classes outside of the policy school and almost everyone does. We're allowed to take up to eight classes outside of Harris. That's almost a years worth if you want to! Third, University of Chicago is an open school which means you can enroll in any graduate class at the University. I know people currently taking classes at the B-school, the law school, in the International Relations Dept, in the Divinity School, and in the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Finally, as an international student would you rather be in Ann Arbor, MI or Chicago? The weather is pretty much the same. However, Chicago has a lot more going on, a lot more culture, a lot more food, a lot more types of places to live, etc. (Plus you can most likely cut out a plane stop each time you fly!) If you have any specific questions feel free to email me at brian.sabina@uchicago.edu. Hope this helps!

Any basic scientific calculator will do. I wouldn't worry about it too much. I used a graphing calculator that I had hanging around form high school. It helped a little bit, but I would have been fine with a scientific calc. I can't imagine you would need to spend that much money on a graphing calculator. Maybe pick up a used TI-83plus on eBay? Fair winds, Brian

Hey, I spend less than the estimated cost of attendance, but not much. That said, I'm choosing to live a somewhat more expensive lifestyle. I def. don't sweat the extra beer I buy. I'm confident I'm making it up in earning potential. You can live on less than the estimated budget, especially if you live with roommates. You can save hundreds of dollars a month on rent. I think they estimate 900 dollars a month. You could easily find 650-700 a month with a roommate in hyde park. - Brian

Hey, 1) I'm not completely sure how group internships are distributed. You might want to direct that question to Elen Cohen who is the Dean of Students. Here email address is: cohen@uchicago.edu. She is very approachable so don't have any qualms about sending her an email. The practica are like classes which you can register for online and then get approved by the professor. Practica spots are limited by the number of projects that are going on during any given quarter. I believe it is on a first come basis as long as the prof. who is running the program signs off on you. The mentorship program is application based and if you are interested in it you will have to write a few essays and submit a resume in the late summer. I'm not positive but I"m guessing something like 70% of the people who apply get mentors. Most stuff you have a fair chance of getting if you are serious about applying an put some effort into writting the essay or talking to the prof. before hand. As far as additional experiences to gain practical experience, a lot of people start to work part time internships during their third quarter first year and throughout their second year. There are other opportunties to interact with the city and real policy makers. This year I spent spring break on a program called Chicago Civic Week during which we picked a different policy topic for each day for spring break and met with policy leaders in that field. We had about 20 meetings over the course of the break and it was awesome. I"m also on the Chicago Policy Review and I get to intereact with outside policy makers all of the time. That said, the first two quarters are a little insulated given the core, but it's definitely worth it once you finish the core. 2) Individual internships are not facilitated by the school. It is up to you to get an internships. However, the career services department is there to help guide you through the process and make sure that you have all of the tools needed to make that happen for yourself. We have an online job and internship called HarrisLink where they post job opportunties. They also run a networking trip to DC during the winter and bring plenty of recruiters to campus during the fall and early winter. 3) I've found that RAships and TAships are generally open to anyone applying. Most people who are RAs just found a prof. that was doing work that they were interested in and talked themselves into a job. That said I got an RA offer from a prof. because I did well in his class, so it can go either way. Most TA opportunties for MPP studnets are sent out to our class listservs and anyone is able to apply directly to the prof. who is running the course. Hope this helps! Fair winds, Brian

Hey, I'm guessing that, as you said, about half of the people here are not funded. However, I'm not really sure of those numbers since funding isn't something that people talk a lot about. I think it is completely worth for several reasons: 1. I'm getting a top notch policy education that is providing me with the skill set needed to make informed and smart decisions. I think that is what Harris is all about. Not telling me what to think, but how to make decisions based upon my preferences and what I think is right, and then how to defend those decisions. 2. I'm associating myself with a really powerful brand, that will be a signal to people throughout my life. 3. The people here are great, especially the students. I've made some great friends, and there are definitely people here that will be running things later in life and that I will be glad to know and be connected to. As far as long-term earning potential. While not everyone gets 80-100K jobs out of school, some people do. I'm also interested in consulting and I hope to be working at a top tier public sector firm which would put me into that range. I got an internship with a public sector consultant for the summer. However, I have to stay that Harris also opened my eyes up to a lot of other cool jobs that are out there. One of my friends who originally wanted to go into consulting is going to work for UNICEF this summer, another is working in a National Park developing business plans for the National Forest Service. There is really cool stuff out there that I had no idea about before. As you mentioned how much people make really depends on what they want to do. Government salaries are pretty strictly defined based upon the GS system. However the government also has loan forgiveness so that helps. Honestly, salaries out of any MPP or MPA program are not going to be MBA type salaries, so as long as people are getting jobs that are reasonably well paid, (which is happening from all of the top schools) then I think it is all kind of a wash. I've talked to a lot of alumni and they have said that everyone gets a job when they graduate. Whether or not it is the right or perfect job for them has to do with how much time and effort people put into identifying what they want to do after school and then going out and getting it for yourself. The career service at Harris are not handing us jobs, but they are pretty supportive and make sure that we have the resources we need to be successful. Finally, the last thing about jobs and choosing a school is looking where the schools have strong networks. Harris is really strong in Chicago and DC. Harvard is probably stronger in the Northeast. Georgetown in DC. So it depends where you might want to end up. Hope this helps. - Brian

Hey, I'm a current Harris student that is interested in International Development. I would agree that KSG has a strong program in place fro International stuff. However, there are still a lot of courses on international policy and development offered both at Harris and throughout the university. This quarter I'm taking State-building and Failure, Poverty and Economic Development, and a Seminar on Public Policy and Inequality, all of which are internationally focused. I also considered two international development courses offered by the International Relations department and a Human Rights Law class offered by the Law School. The b-school also offers some course around international development and emerging markets. We have a lot of international speakers come to campus (as does Harvard). Basically there is a lot here, but it's not as canned as it would be at Kennedy. As for the environmental stuff, Harris which has long been know for social, urban, and education policy, has recently staked out Energy as its next policy expertise area. The school just created the Harris Energy Institute which is a collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory and the physical sciences dept. here at the University (the people that created the first nuclear reaction). They also just started a partnership with the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences which is a science and energy policy watch dog publication. Very closely tied to the energy theme is environmental policy. There are several great faculty members who specialize in environmental policy including Jim Salle and Don Coursey. I've had both and both area great. Basically there is a lot of buzz around here about environmental and energy policy. It seems like we have a lunch session or a speaker or a mini-course on these topics happening all of the time. If you are looking to stay in Chicago, then U of C, definitely has a better brand. Harris has particularly strong networks in Chicago and DC. Hope that helps. - B

Hey, To add-on to what Kitty has already said: 1) I know of a couple of students who worked full-time during the first couple of quarters, and they said it was really rough. The biggest issue is that core classes and almost as importantly core TA sessions tend to be during the day. That said, there were people who had part-time jobs and internships. Now that we are done with most of the core, it seems like the number of people who have started part-time internships has grown exponentially. I've been told that a lot of second-years also have internships during the year. I'm guessing the school would recomend waiting at least until the third quarter to start working part-time. 2) There are plenty of people who live outside of Hyde Park. For the first year I think that 2/3 Hyde Park, 1/3 Elsewhere is probably accurate. However, I think the numbers even out to 50/50 during the second year. After Hyde Park, I think that Loop / South Loop is the next highest concentration of people. I live in the South Loop and it takes me 25 minutes door to door and my bus drops off and picks up right in front of Harris. From the Loop it take 15 minutes to get to school, and maybe 25 minutes from the Lincoln Park / Lakeview neighborhoods on the Northside. 3) Yes, Harris has a quant. reputation, but I couldn't imagine studying this material without using math as a tool to understand how things work. A lot of the other policy schools are almost afraid to use numbers and I think that's to their student's disadvantage. The rest of the world uses numbers. Policy makers make decisions based on numbers! And in my opinion, the math in the standard sequences at Harris is really not that hard. Most of the hard stuff has to do with econometrics and statistics which most people don't know before they get here anyway. That said, GO TO MATH CAMP no matter what your math background. It's just as much of a social event as it is about learning math. As long as you've had some math exposure before, don't worry about the math before camp. The prof. they get to teach Math Camp is great and funny. By far the best math teacher I've ever had The format is great, no real homework, a little bit of studying for the two parts of the test which are spread out. It's just a lot of fun.

Hey, I'm a current Harris student that is more internationally focused. Let me be clear that Harris is not as internationally focused as some other policy schools. However, I've found there are plenty of courses and activities to keep me busy now that I'm out of the core. Here are a few more thoughts in addition to the IPP: 1. This quarter I'm taking State-Building & Failure and Poverty and Economic Development at the Harris School, both of which are completely internationally focused. I also took the Middle-East Current Affairs mini-course this past fall which was great. 2. The flexibility of the Harris curriculum after the core allows you to take advantage of internationally focuses offerings from other parts of the university. The Law School has some course on Human Rights and Trafficking, the International Relations Department is top tier and has some great offerings, and the business school has a bunch of internationally focused courses. 3. There is a ton of non-course international stuff going on at Harris and the University. Harris has a whole Middle-East month during the fall. The university brings in a lot of diplomats and international figures. (We have some important person from Turkey coming in next Friday). There is also a very strong connections between the university and South America, especially Chile. There is a whole student group at Harris focused on international issues. There is an amazing International Relations workshop ever Thursday night called PIPES (you can find this quarters schedule of speakers online). I guess my main point is that if you want it, there is lots of high quality international policy discourse going on here, but it's not going to be as spoon-fed to you as in other places.

I want echo s33's comments. We took a survey in our second quarter Political Institutions and Policy Process class and it turns out that the majority of the class falls between the center and the left, but there are still some conservative people here. As far as the curriculum, it is intentionally apolitical. I've heard from multiple Professors and Deans that the school wants to teach us how to think not what to think. Especially in the core the focus is on positive not normative analysis. A tribute to this might be that we have alums who are US congressmen on both sides of the aisle.

Hey, I'm a current student who is attending Harris without funding. I'm using loans to pay for school, and I think it is completely worth it. I briefly looked for outside funding sources and didn't find too much low hanging fruit around the university, but I'm sure if you really worked at it you could find some scholarship money out there. Students are not reconsidered for funding their second year. Fair winds, Brian