rose1

Previous Schools (Name, type, or tier): Gotmy BA at the University of Florida Previous Degrees and GPAs: BA in Political Science, 3.94 GPA GRE Scores (Verbal/Quantitative/Analytical Writing): 660 verbal, 710 Quant, 4.5 writing Previous Work Experience (Years, Type): 1 year volunteering in Central/South America in rural education, 1 year teaching 6th grade science with Teach For America on the border of Mexico, 1 year working as a research coordinator for the University of Florida College of Medicine, working in bioethics, global health, and human subject research. Math/Econ Background: Principles of Micro and Maco, Stats I and II, taught middle school math and science concepts Foreign Language Background (if applicable to your program): AP Spanish in high school, a couple semesters in college, 1 year spent in Central /South America, 1 year working in English and Spanish on the Mexican border Intended Field of Study in Grad School: Economic Development Long Term Professional Goals: Project Management, Monitoring and Evaluation of development projects Schools Applied to & Results: SAIS - accepted, SIPA- accepted, Fletcher-accepted $$, American -accepted $, SFS -accepted Ultimate Decision & Why: JSU SAIS!! Picked for the rigorous quant work, the impressive open house, positive previous experience with the school, and its UNBEATABLE location in Dupont Advice for Future Applicants: Don't underestimate yourself. Don't be afraid to sell yourself on the application and don't assume that one or two blemishes on your record will sink you. I wasn't even thinking of applying for graduate school this year because I didn't think I had enough on my resume to get in. I went to see a former professor who encouraged me to apply and BOY AM I GLAD I DID because I was accepted to every school and I did not aim low! I completely re-wrote my SOP to tailor it for every school and I think that might have been one of the main reasons I got in everywhere I applied. I also received a promotion at work after I submitted my application and I made sure to follow up with admissions offices about it. Good luck!!

My friend is graduating with her MA from Heller and she claims there are a lot of opportunities to study human rights there. She just turned in her thesis and is returning today from a practicum with UN Women in Guatemala.

I am 90% decided on SAIS, but I just can't shake the feeling that they aren't as willing to help out their students as other programs. It seems like other schools have been very accommodating and willing to talk to me about what I'm looking to get out of the program, while SAIS kind of seems to have an attitude of take-it-or-leave-it and has been totally inflexible. Can somebody make me feel better about this so I can put down my deposit? Thanks!

I feel you! I am 90% ready to put down the SAIS deposit, but it's really hard to turn down SFS and 12K from Fletcher. Talking with alumni has convinced me that I need to be in DC. Every time I hear alumni talk about about their experience at SFS or SAIS, they talk about DC, their internships, the contacts they made, etc. at least as much as they talk about the school itself (and it's not because SAIS and SFS aren't good schools). While I was in DC just for open houses, I learned so much about organizations and career paths in my field that I didn't know about before.

Applying is a pain in the ass, but I think it is very unlikely that you would be denied admission if you did apply again. If you gain some new experiences to put on your resume, you might even get some funding. That said, you'd have to start the application process all over again just as you're adjusting to your new life abroad.

I honestly don't think the price difference is big enough to base your decision on. Go where you want.

Why do you need a third Masters degree when you already were accepted to do a PhD? Won't your PhD be your career changing move?

I live in Gainesville now! I went to UF for undergrad, my boyfriend is now a grad student and I work for UF, so I've been here for a while! I LIVE WITH MY BOYFRIEND and I've never heard of that crazy law. The city government is quite progressive and Gainesville is a pretty open and liberal place. Please don't think otherwise. I live in the Duckpond neighborhood and I would REALLY recommend this area to grad students. I can't recommend this neighborhood enough. While Gainesville makes a killing off of student apartments, you can, for the exact same price, live in a beautiful neighborhood in a really nice house within walking distance of downtown, a ten minute bike ride from campus and accessible to buses. It's a little quieter than student apartments but still has a young population and is really great if you have pets. Having lived here, I would never move back to an apartment. My landlord's name is Jim Konish and he rents a bunch of houses in the Duckpond area. He's been there forever - sometimes I'll be sitting on my front porch and people will walk by my house and comment that Jim was their landlord 25 years ago. As for katrocap, I honestly don't know how they survived with no car A/C in the summer. I would die. It gets really hot here and the humidity makes it feel SO much hotter. Being from Florida, I love the heat. I spend a lot of time at the pool in the summer. You will need a car here. I honestly don't use my car that often because it's possible to bike/walk and use public transit around campus and downtown, but if you plan on going ANYWHERE else, you will need a car. For beachy people, St. Augustine is great, Jacksonville isn't far away, and I LOVE the tiny beach town of Cedar Key. For outdoorsy people, I camp in St. Augustine (dog friendly) and also drive up to Georgia for hiking/camping/whitewater rafting. You can Kayak or paddle board at Cedar Key. UF has its own recreational lake students can use for free with canoes, a rock climbing wall, a frisbee golf course, etc. UF also has an rental place called Outfitters where you can rent camping gear and other things. For people that like drinking, Gainesville will not disappoint you. There's a pretty active music scene here, although not as good as it once was. People get REALLY into Gator sports and it's really fun. I have found the Gator alumni network to be phenomenal. Gators LOVE hiring Gators. You might be in for culture shock if you're moving from a big city. Feel free to ask any questions!

Hello! Florida native here. I actually went to FSU's main rival for undergrad, but a lot of my friends went to FSU and I've spent considerable time there. While Mexican food is good, Tallahassee really has more and better Cuban food, in my opinion. I second aberrant's advice to live away from campus. We used to call Publix, the local grocery store near campus, "Club Publix" because it was always full of undergrads in club clothes stocking up for parties. YOU NEED A CAR. I repeat, YOU NEED A CAR, although the Night Nole will get you home from downtown for free in a pinch if you live around campus. Also, Wordshadow, there are very nice beaches in the panhandle area, but they ARE 1.5-2 hours away. People make day trips to the beach, but it's by no means a beach town and does not have a beach-town feel, despite the AWESOME weather (by awesome, I mean hot). The pan-handle is not really undeveloped, just kind of back-country (think singing "Country Roads" to yourself as you drive around the panhandle. Oh, you don't like country music? Don't worry, it grows on on you). Also, that area was devastated by hurricanes several times in the last decade, which doesn't help. I wouldn't worry too much about housing. Tallahassee has a booming apartment industry catering to all types of students. A lot of apartments will even match you with roommates and you can specify that you want to live with another grad student, etc. Please do your research and don't sign an apartment lease that sounds too good to be true. Tallahassee isn't a dangerous city, but there are parts I wouldn't want to live in and have had friends that went that route have their apartment broken into.

I don't think I'm even eligible to take both macro and micro at once! SAIS is going to kick my ass....How exciting!

Also, everything milam said about Texas A&M goes for UF too. It is a very large and diverse community. A large percentage of the PhD students are international (my boyfriend is currently pursuing a civil engineering masters there). It is not a city overrun with rednecks!

I don't know anything about your particular program, but as a graduate of the University of Florida, I just want to point out that Olga is actually mixing up Florida State University in Tallahassee with the University of Florida, which is in Gainesville. They are very different schools in very different cities!

I just returned from a whirlwind tour of Boston and DC attending open houses. I thought it might be helpful for those that couldn't attend to hear impressions from people who did. I personally attended Fletcher, SAIS, and SFS, but feel free to post your impressions of other open houses as well. Obviously these are my own opinions, so please chime in if you disagree! I underlined where each school review starts so you can just read the ones applicable to you. Obviously these schools are all amazing. I am going to focus on new information I learned from the open houses, which might end up sounding negative since the promotional materials did a pretty good job of highlighting the positives of each school before I got there. That doesn't mean I didn't love each and every school. I still don't know where I'm going to go! ***Edit: Writing this post turned out to be very helpful for me to organize my thoughts. I’m sorry it got SO long!!!! Fletcher Fletcher was first on Sunday and Monday. My best friend lives in Boston, but I decided to take Fletcher up on their offer to stay with a current student so that I could get a real feel for the place. This was the only school that offered this, and I took it as a testament to the Fletcher community. I have to say that I actually came to regret this decision. I stayed in a house with some second year students who were incredibly stressed out trying to finish their theses, study for finals, and find jobs after graduation. None of them were in particularly good moods, they were very busy, and they did not seem to even have time to say hello. I felt like a pretty big inconvenience, which is strange because I assume these students volunteered to house prospective students. To be fair, this was NOT everyone's experience, just mine. The thesis seems like a pretty big disadvantage to me. It's SIXTY FIVE PAGES long and you either have to do it on top of your classes, or use one or two of your 16 total grad school classes writing it. It seems like if you actually want it to be substantive, you have to balance your one and only summer internship with research. Also, career services mentioned that their numbers are skewed compared to other IR schools because the thesis in your last semester means that a lot of Fletcher students don't start looking for jobs until close to or after graduation. Ouch. The actual open house was pretty nice. The facilities are old but good. The afternoon was MUCH better. Career services really sold me, the current student panel was fun, I was impressed by the student organization fair, and the development roundtable felt like it was tailored to specifically my interests. I liked the campus and I walked around for a while. It's only a few miles from Cambridge and downtown Boston. Fletcher seemed like my best bet for getting a Research Assistantship with a professor. I also found out that your concentrations don't appear on your transcript, so you can really tailor your resume to prospective employers. Fletcher's course catalog is my favorite of any school. I want to take EVERY CLASS. I also think it's really cool that you can cross register at Harvard and MIT. Fletcher is the only school that doesn't cap classes so you can pretty much take whatever you want. While Fletcher said over and over that their main advantage is their sense of community, I really felt like every school I visited had a pretty great community of students so I wished they didn't rely so heavily on that selling point. Not being able to intern during the semesters is a big minus for me since I'm a total career changer and I want to make sure I like what I'm doing before I spend two years studying it and then get stuck with whatever job I get after graduation thanks to a ton of debt. This school has the most international students and I think it's because a lot of them are going back to their countries and don't care about being in DC. SAIS My head said no. My heart said yes. If any school really stood out to me, it was SAIS. It mostly stood out in good ways that sometimes approached borderline obnoxious (for example, Wolf Blitzer was a surprise guest speaker, and they were the only school that introduced speakers, alumni and professors with their full array of titles and accomplishments). You could tell they went all out to impress prospective students. I love their building(s) in Dupont. The thought of living in Columbia Heights, a ten minute bike ride from school and internships, is pretty exciting. Where the atmosphere at Fletcher was extremely casual, everybody dressed up for SAIS. I saw a couple of BIG differences between SAIS and the other schools that I would not have known without the open house. Because SAIS is so big, the main way they reach their students is through concentrations. It seems that MOST resources (funding, list-servs, organizations, events, trips, capstone project, access to professors) are funneled through concentration. Since I didn't get into IDEV, this was awkward for me because it seemed that most of my time could revolve around a concentration I didn’t care that much about if I matriculated at SAIS. Despite this drawback, SAIS is still currently at the top of my list. This school seemed to be the least academic and most professionally focused of all. Their career services offer mini classes to give you tools you can put on your resume. They have A LOT more career trips all over the world. Students seemed really into networking. A lot more people go into the private sector from SAIS and it didn't seem as focused on public service as the other schools. SAIS has by far the best language program out of the IR schools but I wasn't as impressed with their student organizations or their course catalog. While other schools were represented by their academic journal and student organizations with names like "diplomacy club," SAIS student organizations seemed to be made up more of recreational sports teams and cultural activities. Due to the sheer number of students, it seemed like it could be a lot more impersonal than the other schools, although they cap most classes at 18 and I did NOT get the impression that there isn't a cohesive community. I did get the impression that SAIS was somewhat more of a party school than the others, maybe because of the happy hour culture in DC. I see their econ focus as a huge plus. I spoke to so many students who were able to get a quant internship in their second semester with no previous quant experience before SAIS. SAIS has worked hard to build a reputation for students that know their econ, and it seems like it really works with prospective employers. I also love the idea of pre-term. This way I could get some of these basic classes out of the way in the summer and really get the most out of my 2 years. The intensive July classes also seem like they do a good job of bringing people together before the semester starts so you can go into grad school with some friends. Students at SAIS seem to be better able to articulate what they’re learning, perhaps because SAIS isn’t as interdisciplinary or academic as Fletcher and SFS. I felt that students at Fletcher and SFS struggle in this area and even alumni of these schools commented that having to explain the degree was sometimes an issue with employers. Also, the idea that you have to bid on some classes to get into them was a big turn off before the open house, but I realized it's not that big a deal. Not that many classes even ever go to bid, and sometimes just a section of a class will go to bid if it's held at a very convenient time, so you would still have the option of taking it at a different time slot. I went to a big university and I LIKED the big class size. There was more diversity. There were more opportunities, more faculty, more money, more organizations, more alumni, more choice. To me, this is a plus. SFS My head said yes. My heart said no. The program itself seems AMAZING. The professors are infinitely accessible, the name is impeccable, career services is dedicated, the course catalog is perfect for my interests. Georgetown said and did all the right things, but I honestly think it's too small a program for me. Because the program is so small, it has virtually no space of its own. It's housed in the Intercultural Center, a huge building in the middle of a campus overrun with undergrads. The same few people talked to us all day because they just don't have that many people working in the program. I really liked the atmosphere of the other two schools better because they at least had their own building. To be honest, I didn’t love Georgetown, but my reason is not applicable to anyone but me. I spent all four years of undergrad and now work for my alma mater on a campus that is almost identical to Georgetown. I’ve been looking forward to making a change and I’m NOT willing to give that up – even for an amazing school!! For anyone else, this might be a plus instead of a minus. The campus is gorgeous and the small program obviously translates into more individual attention – even at open house. They were able to pair us up with current students for lunch, and I had several chances to speak with faculty members. I also like how they have oral exams instead of a thesis. I didn't like how far it was from DC. I need to be able to live close enough to campus that I can come and go throughout the day (I have a dog) and I don't think I can afford to live IN Georgetown, which would mean a commute. I also don’t particularly want to live in Rosslyn. They also GRADE ON A CURVE which I hate because it seems like it fosters a competitive rather than collegial environment. Decision If I can make the SAIS curriculum work for me without IDEV, I will probably go there. Otherwise, I will probably go to Fletcher. If I had any sense at all, I’d go to Georgetown, but the heart wants what the heart wants.

Fletcher is considered the more academic of these institutions, I believe because of the thesis requirement. Some fletcher students do pursue PhDs and I personally know a few that applied to the phd program in the 2nd year of their masters and will be staying on there to complete their doctorate

The great thing about GW is that most of their classes are at night so you can work during the day. With you working almost full time, could your dad afford to help you out without resorting to loans? Maybe you can continue to work hard, take on as much responsibility for paying as you can, and accept some help from your dad guilt-free, knowing that he won't be going into debt. You can even work on getting more funding in your second year from GW so that you can tell dad to close his wallet this time next year. That said, Tallahassee is a seat of local politics and it might actually be beneficial for you to be there, depending on your ultimate career goals.

An F is in no way unforgivable (although it might make them curious since most people probably try to explain something like that). I would still apply to the programs that require an explanation - the worst thing that can happen is a rejection and you might be surprised.They might be so sick of canned excuses that they admire your honesty. I think most people have one or two questionable things on their application (I personally had 2 and I wasn't rejected). There is a zero percent chance that your explanation is going to become gossip fodder amongst admissions committees. Trust me. I'm a staff member at a university and your story is not so uncommon as to be particularly memorable.

I want to do M&E work, so definitely public/non-profit. Boyfriend is graduating with his Masters in August so he will have to find a job either way.

My grad school decision is coming down to this question - is the advantage of being in DC over Boston for an IR Masters worth $30,000? Fletcher's job placement record is excellent, which implies that it isn't necessarily all that important, and it's easily $30,000 cheaper than my DC alternatives. On the other hand, would I be doing myself a huge disservice in taking out all the loans, packing up my family (okay, boyfriend and dog) and moving to Boston specifically for aprofessional development program when I have the option of doing the same thing in the undisputed headquarters of my field? It wouldn't exactly suck to graduate from Georgetown with an MSFS degree.

OregonGal - I'm honestly surprised by your rejections. I don't think your work experience sounds weak OR that you aimed too high considering your credentials. If you are thinking this way though, I wonder if that came across to the admissions committees. Based on your profile, I'm not sure working another year would boost your admissions more than taking a look at your resume and SOP and seeing if you're selling yourself as well as you could be.

I'd say 10K is completely negligible.

It's true that students at SIPA have to apply/compete for extremely popular course spots, but that's true of most top IR schools. I know for a fact that it is the same at SAIS, except they have a "bidding system" where you have a certain amount of points you can use to bid for classes you want to get into, preference being given to students who have been there longer and students within that concentration.

Go to AU! It's the best school, it's in by-far the best location, AND it's the cheapest! No question!

Bump. I'd like to hear what people are thinking about Fletcher since it's still very much in the running for me (I change my mind daily between SFS, SAIS, and Fletcher). The facebook group is very active and diverse and that appeals to me. I loved the person that did my evaluative interview and appreciated that she took the time to e-mail me when I was accepted. I am definitely taking advantage of that $400 travel grant to go to the open house and I think it's neat that I can stay with a current student to really get a feel for what it's like to attend Fletcher.

Has anybody decided on SFS for sure? I really like what I'm hearing from current students, faculty, and alumni.

OregonGal - thanks for that about the PLUS loans. I thought it would show up on my aid package if I was eligible for PLUS loans but I guess it doesn't. That makes things a little more simple at least. I also realized that on my $33,000 a year salary, I'm currently saving $500 a month and don't even notice the loss. I haven't had to dip into it at all,even when faced with big expenses like car problems, applying to grad schools, vacations, etc, and while I don't live like a rock star, I really don't watch my expenses the way I could. Plus my boyfriend is unemployed right now since he's getting HIS masters. This makes me worry a bit less since hopefully I'll be making more than $33,000 upon graduation and my boyfriend will be employed at an engineering-masters-degree salary! I guess $500 or more in student loans seemed like a lot until I realized I'm already putting that much away now on half the salary. Doh.