MYRNIST

Well, it looks like this might become a moot point for me, because Elliott just offered a ridiculous financial aid package Georgetown is highly unlikely to match. Balls in your court, Georgetown.

SSP.

Eh, I don't really care to speculate. I'll start making those decisions once the admissions and financial aid dust settles.

It's funny, I submitted my apps in December and managed to wait til mid-March with no problem. But now that I've heard from everywhere else, waiting another week to hear from Georgetown seems agonizing.

I also am waiting to hear about fin-aid. I've sent 3 separate emails (1 before admissions results, 2 after) asking about funding, and not gotten a reply for any of them.

Completely agree. I crossed SIPA off my list early in the process. I talked to several alums, and they had very little positive to say, beyond the cool factor of living in NYC. They had several anecdotes about how huge and impersonal the program is. Example: you have to "apply" to take desirable classes. As in, send in a resume and statement of purpose to compete for your spot in Class X. Thought getting accepted and paying through the nose meant you received access to the best faculty and courses, the ones they use in advertisements? Think again. My alum friend used the phrase "treated like cattle" multiple times in our conversation. While there are plenty of really smart and talented people there, there apparently also is a fair amount of NYC-area unmotivated rich kids who are coasting it out on their parents dime. Ivy brand + not-that-rigorous selectivity + large class sizes + NYC lifestyle = lots of trust funders. I think this is where the "cash cow" perception comes in, since SIPA seems to admit some percentage of their class based on economic considerations, rather than "attracting the best and brightest." Not saying they are representative of the program, but I wouldn't want to go to any program that had more than a handful. Any current SIPA students want to comment on whether my friends' perceptions of the program were atypical?

I'm still waiting on an admissions result, and fin-aid results for all but one school, so right now I don't know.

I'm not disputing they are legit numbers, I'm arguing against their relevance to the current admissions cycle. Which I assumed was the point of bringing them up?

I disagree. None of those numbers reflect applicants who applied after the economic crisis (Fall 2008 admits would have been applying in late 2007). There is a mass of evidence to show a major increase in graduate school applications since then - the old "wait out the bad economy" trick. GW Elliott received over 2000 applications this year (that number is straight from their acceptance letter) and will admit 640-700 students. That's about a 30-35% admissions rate. What do you think it is for historically more selective schools like WWS? HKS? SAIS? Georgetown? I'm guessing single digits to teens, max twenties. The demand for grad school is extremely elastic. It does not take much effort or time (comparatively) to submit an application. If lots of people all of a sudden decide they want to apply for grad school, they can, with almost no delay. Supply is relatively inelastic. If a school only has institutional capacity to support 400 students, and all of a sudden is bursting with applicants, it can't just admit 600 of them. New buildings, extra faculty recruitment, alumni fundraising and grant applications to pay for all of this, etc. run on a much slower development cycle. Think 5 year plans, not months. Plus most of these schools' finances probably took a major haircut from the crisis. Endowments are typically held in investments, not cash, so they likely got majorly exposed to the downturn (Harvard and Yale lost 30% of their money in 2009). Alumni giving almost certainly decreased. How would they fund major institutional overhaul? Schools are still getting flooded with post-crisis applicants, but don't have the capacity to take a ton of them. Especially since they might have judged the spike in applications to be temporary, and are have just now re-built their war chests to a degree where they can expand. If they are, you probably won't see the effects for a couple years. Bottom line: I think the actual admission numbers for the Fall 2012 cycle are considerably lower than those reported in the SIPA document.

Their admissions website says they only use snail-mail. I live in a Chinese factory town, where getting international packages delivered requires 3 months and an act of God, so I contacted them to see if this was true. They assured me that they use email notifications, same as any other school. So I guess no worries? No way phone-calls are official, seems like just a nice little gesture.

Fin aid details come out later. Usually within a week.

Both of you are wrong, it's a British school so clearly they send wizarding owls.

Based on forum chatter, it seems this is the last school many people (myself included) are waiting on. Commence fretting about when they'll tell us, reveling in the glory of funded admits, or telling that stupid ad-com where to stick it.

Just waiting on Georgetown SFS now. Get on with it already, ad-com!

Full tuition is the largest I've seen. I applied to a few of the full tuition ones, didn't bother with the little 5k ones. To quote the great http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsjBVQ6Kk4E, "why mess around with them little nickels when you can get the big dollars?" Anxiously waiting to hear back about the results.

In with 13k.

In at SAIS Strategic Studies

Just found out today I'm in at SAIS Strategic Studies, and Fletcher (with 13k), but rejected at WWS. Win some, lose some.

Out. Congrats to all that got accepted!

LOL, it's more like I am so stressed out about grad school I am incapable of talking or thinking productively about anything else.

You would do well to drop the "insider", "those of us in the know" routine. You clearly work in academia, and perhaps in the ivory tower, USNWR rankings actually correspond with general reputation. But among DC professionals (at least in my experience), equating Kansas or Indiana or whatever with WWS, HKS, etc. will get you laughed at. A school's reputation in the academic tribe =/= reputation in the working world. The fact that you included "faculty that are publishing in the major journals" as a major criterion of school quality is telling. I personally don't give 2 hoots whether, say, Madeleine Albright or Paul Pillar get published in the major academic journals, since their professional accomplishments speak for themselves. That viewpoint isn't inherently any better or worse than yours, but I am quite sure it is one more commonly held on this forum, and among people who actually practice public policy. And by that perspective USNWR rankings are laughable - find me multiple Cabinet members, World Bank execs, think tank heads, etc. who went to Kansas or Indiana, and then I'll start believing they are ranked correctly.

That's some sage, sound advice from both of you (and thanks for the kind words ajl), which I will completely disregard. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to mainline coffee and refresh my email every 5 seconds until I'm wielding a little carpal tunnel claw.

I am starting to freak out here. Why hasn't GW contacted me about fin-aid one way or the other?!

Small boutique program, not many security-studies courses (and definitely not a full degree path), very new so not a substantial alumni base, non-DC location. Don't get me wrong, for people with different interests and career goals it could be great - just not a fit for mine.

Weird, I still haven't received any word (yes or no) on financial aid from GWU. Anyone else accepted but not heard about fin-aid yet?