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inquisitive87

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  1. Hi Everyone, I need some help with this one: does anybody know the deal with FLAS Fellowship awards and whether or not they're typically awarded again after the first year? I know it's up to the specific departments of each individual school to form a consensus each year on which students (incoming or continuing) will get the award but, regardless, has anyone had any experience with FLAS renewal? Background: Trying to decide between accepting an FLAS Fellowship (full ride plus $15,000 stipend for at least the first year of the MPA) at a tier 2/3 school vs. mediocre (less than half) funding at a tier 1/2 school. Ignoring the debate over the merit (or lack-thereof) of accruing significant debt for an MPA/MPP, I'm really just interested if anyone knows anything about the viability of this particular fellowship. Despite its noble mission of training future leaders in security-relevant languages/cultures, does it end up just being a scam for schools to get qualified students to enroll by giving them government funding for the first year before denying renewal in order to use it to attract new admits for the next year? Thanks all!
  2. Seconded. I didn't apply to SIPA (for a variety of personal reasons) and have nothing personal invested in it, but USNews has them at #29 below Rutgers and Georgia State?! I would love to hear their justification for the merit of this peer review.
  3. In at Sanford MPP with $15,000 fellowship and $4,000 assistantship
  4. Congrats, by the way, on the Merit scholarship! I didn't mean to knock USC unfairly (in fact, at this point, I'm leaning toward going there); it's just that almost every ranking I've seen that wasn't USNEWS basically had Duke, UT Austin, GPPI, and U Chicago in the solid second tier for their policy programs (after GSPP, SIPA, WWS, and HKS in the first tier) with everyone else just lying around below them. Obviously there's a lot of fluctuation depending on context but that's what I've seen the most of. Interesting to hear that USC's made it further abroad though- at least where you are. Does anybody know any LBJ recent GSPP graduates who've said anything about how their "newly established" degree has worked out for them?
  5. I'm really thinking about it hard; the MPP seems to have great international employment prospects, plus the median MPP grad starting salary in 2011 was $81,000- which seems to be higher than most MPPs. Not sure about the 23rd yet (I live across the country). Would anyone happen to know the feasibility of hitting them up for more money after the initial award decision? I've heard of people having limited success doing that at other schools... thoughts?
  6. An admissions officer just sent me this: http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/careers/data Maybe I'm being overly harsh (the figures are for ALL of LBJ), but it really seems like graduating students, on average, stay in Texas and don't make much above $50,000 their first year out. Also, it doesn't look like there's much going on internationally with job placement- something that frightens me in particular given that I want to do ID consulting. USC, by contrast, seems to be a lower-regarded program but advertises much better international employment figures. I would be psyched for someone to refute this and demonstrate that employment prospects for the MGPS graduates sufficiently rock though.
  7. Thanks USMA06- I'll bear all that in mind when I'm checking the place out.
  8. Can I ask why you decided not to apply to USC as well? I've had trouble finding relevant LBJ data on internship/job placement (I want a school with strong international placement as well), but I saw that USC seems to send people to all the relevant international development consultancy firms, think tanks, and NGOs fairly regularly. Am I wrong?
  9. Gotcha, thanks for the clarification! And congrats by the way- that ought to just about take care of tuition there.
  10. Legallyproper: Your signature says that you got pretty decent funding for SPEA, but I'm curious about where it came from? SPEA's office just said that they haven't announced fin aid at all yet...
  11. From what I've gleaned through my own experience and many conversations with professors, friends in grad school, and those on the outside: I'd say this one requires a qualified 'depends what you want to do with it' answer. I'd look at it as paving the way for two options (regardless of how realistic they are): the first step toward continuing on toward a PhD or a terminal degree for some kind of job in the policy analysis world. That a master's in IR is usually exclusively an academic degree, however, already creates potential problems for you using it as a terminal degree because you'd probably be applying to policy-relevant positions against a number of other applicants holding professional degrees (business, policy, finance, etc.) that will make them look like they know more than you about how to actually apply what they've learned. Now, if you were to get the IR degree from a top-tier school, then that might overcome the academic nature of the degree and get you a job at a think tank. However, those jobs are limited and you'd be applying to all the same ones against the MPPs, MBAs, and IRs from tier 1s. If you have a wealth of experience behind you then that will always help but the degree is (arguably) not ideal for use as a career-launching platform. If you want to become an academic, however, then that might be a different story. It might be tough getting into an American PhD (depending on the year and program) but you could more easily get into a decent program overseas provided that you're ok with living and working abroad for the foreseeable future. On the other hand, if you can talk up the hopefully quant-heavy nature of your IR master's then that would help significantly in American PhD applications. As a word of caution though, I was told by several of my poli sci professors (at a top 5 liberal arts school) that the academic job market sucks for everyone to the extent that it's not worth getting a PhD from a non-top twenty school. Going to a lower tier IR program and then applying against all those from WWS, HKS, GSPP, etc. who're shotgunning it for all the same extremely limited top 20 PhD-track programs will be a challenge that will probably require a pretty decent life-story on your SOP in order to overcome. So, in essence, a tier 2 or 3 IR program might be worthwhile if it was cheap and heavy enough in quant. I'd say it makes a comparatively bad substitute for a terminal professional degree (no one really does IR locally) and, even though it would be better for an academic career trajectory, you're still gonna face a shit storm of competition in getting into a professionally viable American PhD program. I'd either use it to go abroad in an academic context or abandon it altogether before you sink yourself in debt for a degree you won't be able to use. For my own part, if I don't get into a Tier 1 MPP or tier 2 with significant funding, then I'm not going at all until that situation changes.
  12. I applied to MIIS right out of college before I really knew what I was doing, got accepted with aid, and went to the open house before turning down the admit. Even so, there are probably other people on this forum who know more about MIIS than I do and certainly more about NYU. From what I remember though, the school just became Middlebury's official grad school, but it's small and pretty expensive for what it offers. It's known for having a niche in training translators, linguists, etc, but its IR, MBA, and MPA programs aren't as well known for their prestige. The students and faculty I spoke with played up their contacts in DC but I'd really doubt that they have better contacts there than any other well-known policy school. MIIS is a lot smaller though so the alumni network seemed fairly concerned with helping out (trying to boost the numbers of what they call the "MIIS Mafia" in jobs throughout DC) and you'd get decent chances to build contacts with your professors. Ultimately, it depends, as always, on what you're looking to do. If you want to likely stay in California, manage to pull great funding, or have a real linguistic interest as a component to your studies, then MIIS might be a good choice. If you want better international (and in many cases national) credibility and networking potential, I'd go with NYU provided that the funding wouldn't be radically against you. Both places are really expensive to live in incidentally. Anyway good luck, both are good schools with a lot going on.
  13. Yeah, even though the flinging around of insults and diatribes on how little a stranger online might know about consulting seems counter-intuitive of a forum largely dedicated to exploring careers in public service (a career undertaken, one hopes, in the interest of bettering the lives of strangers regardless of their personalities), I think you are at least providing a service to those of us who have spent the last 12 weeks looking for any excuse not to think about our applications. In that sense, thank you. Although, I do hope that people can get that whole condescension/intellectual arrogance thing worked out by August... OP: Do what you think you love; even if you fail, it won't be a wasted life.
  14. Which program at GSPP did you apply to? Also, did the interview instructions specify whether it was geared toward a specific fellowship or just admission?
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