MartianQ

This may be a dumb question, but there is no hope for funding if you get off the wait list, correct?

I'm in! Waiting on funding...

The 2008 rankings were a little off, but this year's rankings are just ridiculous. The fact that there is such a huge disparity between the two alone is evidence that these rankings shouldn't be taken seriously or used as any sort of a guide. I have respect for USN's undergrad rankings as well as their business and law school rankings for the most part, but public affairs is just a joke this year. Most of the top 10 I agree with, not necessarily the way they are ranked, but the fact most of them indeed deserve to be in the top 10 or top 15. But then you see Sanford ranked 16th, right under Arizona State... Okay, I disagree, but I accept it. Then you see GPPI ranked 23rd... umm okay... Harris ranked 23rd as well, at that point I just went oh okay, so this ranking is completely arbitrary. And seeing Columbia SIPA ranked 6 places below at 29 sealed the deal for me. Really?? SIPA is #29, after a whole bunch of no names. You gotta be kidding me. SIPA' placement is on par with HKS. I get that it's supposed to be based on reputation, but I just don't see how that can be the case, just look at employment statistics, admission rates, faculty who teach there, what current and past students are saying, none of it corresponds with those rankings.

In at Chicago, but no funding Came as a bit of a surprise since I got very generous offers from other programs, but definitely not as a shock, after all it is one of the best policy schools in the nation and I didn't have a strong quantitative background. Congrats to all who got in! Just curious, did your admission email contain funding info? Just wanna make sure I didn't miss anything.

That's wonderful news. Perfect timing.

Just received a letter from USC Price, I'm in with funding, but no email or any electronic indication really, my online status still says "received". Is that normal, do they not send emails or let you do anything electronically?

Retook today, got the exact same score I got the first time LOL. 162V 160Q. (5.5 AW first time I took it, didn't retake AW). I was really hoping to improve on the quantitative, but I really messed up the first section and the second one was so ridiculously easy, I was done with it with 10 minutes to spare and was convinced it was the experimental one until I saw a third verbal section and facepalmed haha. I hate how the test is section adaptive, that just enhances the element of luck. I messed up one Q section pretty badly (I'm guessing 7 or so mistakes since I had none for sure on the second and got a 160) which I don't normally do, and as a result the second section was way below my ability, so even though I got every question right there it didn't count as much because of the low difficulty of the questions obviously, so in a way I got double screwed. The old test was more fair in that regard. But anyways, enough whining, I'm happy with what I got, at least I won't have to resend scores to all my schools. Hopefully that score is high enough to get me into a decent MPP program, but I can forget about HKS haha.

I'm retaking it December 27th. Just wanna confirm this, when you take the test now you get to see the final scores for the Q and V at the end right? No more estimates?

I see, thanks. Can I get people's opinion on listing other schools you are applying to in your application? I did it for HKS and now as I am completing applications for other schools, I am starting to question whether I should list them or not. I mean, it can do one of several things, it can motivate them to offer you funding if they think you are very competitive and want to win you over, but it can just as easily motivate them not to offer you funding if they see your schools (e.g. HKS) and decide well if he's applying there he must not be expecting a scholarship, which for HKS I am very unlikely to get one, so he can afford to pay the full cost, so we won't give him anything. And if I do list schools, should I list weaker or stronger programs or ones of about the same level or all of the above... If I don't list any, I'm not sure if that benefits me either. I can't decide... After weighing all the pros and cons I've decided that listing schools of about the same level of prestige as the one I'm applying to is probably the best approach. But I'm not sure. Thoughts?

Hmm, has anyone been given access to SPARKS yet?

Oops, my bad, I was looking at applied and enrolled figures and completely ignored the obvious fact that the number of people who chose to attend is lower than those who were admitted. This is why I got 160 on Q haha. But the information for Harris is here: http://harrisschool.uchicago.edu/students/prospective-students/admission/ It says they received over 900 applications and the entering class was 135-140, so that's 15.5% of all who applied ended up attending. Now I don't know what Harris's yield is but it's gotta be pretty low if they admit 60% and only 15% choose to attend... That or the admit rates have gone down a lot. If undergrad admission rates are any indication (not sure if they are), Chicago now has an 18% undergrad admission rate compared to 27% before the recession hit. For GPPI, I found this: https://gushare.georgetown.edu/PublicPolicyInstitute/Web%20Files/Admissions/Fall2010MPPClassProfile.pdf It says 1167 applications received, 152 enrolled. It is for 2010 though. It think you're right, but I also think admit rates have gone down significantly. HKS is probably at 17-18% this year. That figure of course is derived from a careful analysis of my gut feeling.

Thanks! Darn, reading thru the last few pages of this thread, I realized my essays were all single-spaced. They didn't indicate anywhere if they required it different, so I think I'm fine... I mean it's not a college paper, single spaced just looks better to me generally. Although one of my schools does require double spacing. So I don't know. Hopefully it's not a big deal. Good luck to everyone. On to the other schools... Oh, by the way, does anyone know what HKS's admission rate is these days? It used to be 30%, but I'm pretty sure Chicago and GPPI currently stand at about 15%, so I can imagine HKS's is probably around 10 or even less. I hate how screwed our generation is haha.

Hm, I just noticed that HKS requires you to list your salary on your resume. Did you guys do that?

Can I ask an honest question? Do you guys generally use the same SoP with minor modifications (say a paragraph) for each school or do you write a separate one for each?

Done! It is exactly 1000 words haha. I may change around a sentence or two just so it's not EXACTLY 1000 words but I did it! and without taking out anything essential. I'm sending out my application tomorrow, good luck to all the other HKS applicants!