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I know people who are teaching burnouts (literally left half-way through the year) who have worked on the staffs of representatives and are still ascending through policy circles. thdus82's question is an important one. If you aspire to the doctorate, your teaching experience may mean very little in Ed Policy; as an aside, I'm a curriculum and teaching doctoral student, and teaching experience doesn't mean much there, either.

Any meeting with someone I don't know, at an institution at which I'm trying to make a favorable impression, I would treat as formal. I would dress accordingly, which for me would be a suit and tie. It's hard to know what they will ask. I met informally with a professor at Wisconsin several years ago, before I applied to graduate school. He seemed mostly interested--if you could say he was interested at all, which is debatable--in what my research interests were. Vague answers were not taken well; he challenged every general statement I made, and at the time I thought he was a horse's ass. Certainly, I had interests, but with the benefit of a few years of graduate school, I can see how someone else would have considered them very poorly defined. In my own questions/dialogue with them, I would try to ascertain two things: First, are there professors in the department who are researching and/or working on projects that coincide with my research interests? It's hard to make generalizations about admissions across programs and universities, but I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb by saying that programs typically want to bring in doctoral students who have interests in the ballpark of some of the faculty's interests; not to say that they are trying to bring in a homogeneous group of people, but if you want to study specialty X, and the faculty excels in W, Y, and Z, it might be hard for them to advise you at the doctoral level. Second, what is the general orientation of the program? Are they focused on the promotion of social justice (although, I think most programs pursue this one way or the other, even if it is not a stated goal)? Do they have psychological underpinnings (e.g., "process-product") that might influence the approach they take towards learning and schooling, perhaps in a way convergent/divergent with your own beliefs? Are they focused primarily on the production of research, or do they work to serve practitioners in their various programs? If you could elicit answers along these lines, it might help to determine whether the program is a "good fit" with your philosophy or ideas on education. Again, it's not that you want to follow something completely in line with your views and be with a bunch of people who are exactly identical, but if you are going to spend 3-5 years studying at a place you don't want to hate the snot out of it because of their take on the world.

I think this, like many aspects of graduate school admissions, varies by program, though my general feeling is that it doesn't really help. My program at TC went years without admitting more than one male per cohort, and I don't think it's for lack of applicants. I have a classmate who is doing some admissions work in our department who might have a better perspective on this, but I don't think being male counts for all that much in the process.

To your first question, no. Again, when people disagree with you, they are not "bashing" necessarily. I pointed to a frequent criticism of TFA, which I did not support with anything, whether that source was academic or otherwise--a point td21230 pointed out. I should point out that saying it was easy to get in to was totally incorrect; I'm not sure what I meant when I said that, but the academic credentials of incoming candidates are certainly not lacking, and are in fact carefully scrutinized.

Incidentally, if I didn't have to go dredge up some things in other aspects of teaching and teacher education, I would go and search for peer-reviewed support. At the moment, I don't have the time to do that, so I'll have to accept your criticism if the above links (which, again, are straight from a "Google search") are insufficient "proof", or even insufficient enough to be used to interrogate your individual experience, which is at this point all you've offered.

Well, yes, we would have to define what kind of attrition we are talking about (i.e., term of commitment, exceeding beyond initial commitment), and perhaps focus on effectiveness and attention separately. When I look at "Google", I see a number of "Google links" expressing concerns along both fronts, to say the least. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/10/04/kappan_donaldson.html [2/3 stay, but few actually stay long enough in context to fully develop] http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/teachers/a-new-look-at-teach-for-americ.html http://www.greatlakescenter.org/docs/Policy_Briefs/Heilig_TeachForAmerica.pdf [The original study from the above article] http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2012-04-27/story/low-teach-america-retention-rate-examined-duval-embraces-program [as few as 11% teaching in public schools in five years] Do these not count? Or are you more of a peer-reviewed only kind of person?

TFA has a pretty wretched attrition rate, too. Easier to get in, perhaps, and easier to "burn out" or just quit.

Definitely email; admissions is much more cooperative than other departments.

Good luck to all of you! I had always wanted to apply at UT, as many of my professors in my master's program had earned doctorates there; this was so much the case that the College of Education at this school was referred to as "UT West." Just when I was ready to apply they dropped their Curriculum Studies specialization, so I never applied.

I've heard of people going either way with this. The last thing I remember being told is not to use an objective on a resume, since employers could potentially just weed you out using the objective alone. Whether this is true or not, I don't know. I go through periods where I will use one, and then periods where I will leave it off. I've never used one on a CV, though.

Well, yes--an idea I tried to stress several posts up as well. The point of writing this was that there isn't a shortcut to a doctorate. In nearly all cases, you don't save time by "skipping" a master's degree.

Looking at this a second time, I do think I underplayed recommendations in my previous posts. As an undergraduate, I had -zero- professors who I was close with, so applying to any type of graduate school from this point was difficult. Things were much different after my M.Ed when I was looking at going on for a doctorate, when I had a number of professors who I had a decent rapport with, and one or two who still write recommendations for me if I need them. It made a huge difference in the quality of my application.

You won't be "skipping" a master's degree either way. Let's assume a PhD is 90 credits. If you have a master's degree, often you'll be able to transfer a certain number of credits in to the PhD, as recognition of prior learning. In my own program, I was able to transfer in 40 credits from my previous graduate work, leaving me with 50 credits to go (minus what I've completed now, that is). Without previous graduate work, you'll be responsible for the full load. In some programs, this means you will effectively earn a master's on the way to a PhD. In other cases, you'll just complete the credits on the way to your dissertation and the degree. The advantage here is not just time of completion, but cost as well. My master's degree, while an excellent learning experience, was not at an Ivy league institution, and therefore much, much, MUCH cheaper. The 40 credits I transferred in were much cheaper than 40 credits at Teachers College, which is above $1300/credit. Most C&I programs seem to want at least three years. We have many people with TFA or NYCTF experiences, although most of them have gone beyond whatever the original commitment is for those respective programs. When you look at faculty advertisements in C&I or teacher education, they often require a minimum of three years teaching experience. Again, I cannot speak specifically to other areas of education, which may require more or less experience. It probably does vary from program to program, but both doctoral programs I've been involved in have asked for at least three years.

All due respect to michigan girl, but the necessary qualifications for each program will vary. While GPA, GRE, and the like will of course factor in--again, to different degrees, depending on program and university--your statement of purpose will probably carry as much weight as any of the quantitative factors. Your ability to connect with research and with professors who are at your chosen universities will be big as well, and you can do this through your statement of purpose and through letters of recommendation as well. Research experience is not a firm prerequisite, but it may well set you (far) apart from other candidates. Publications, as michigan girl indicated, are definitely a plus, but they are probably the exception rather than the rule among applicants--particularly peer reviewed publications. As far as experience is concerned, I think it depends what kind of "education" you are looking to get in to. Personally, I find it silly when people apply to curriculum and instruction programs without practical experience in these areas; I also find it silly when universities admit people who lack such experience, but they do. Of my own doctoral cohort in curriculum and teaching, all but one student has considerable K-12 teaching experience, and the only one who doesn't has worked as an adjunct in universities (although her teaching there is in a different field). That said, if you plan to pursue higher education, educational psychology, educational foundations, or some other end of "education", experience may not really be as important.

I couldn't say this for certain, but I don't think Teachers College is making any funding decisions based on GRE quantitative scores. Then again, their reputation is so poor when it comes to financial aid that it is a miracle that anyone receives it. From it sounds like, they offer funding during the first semester or year in many cases, but once you've earned some credits the funding goes bye-bye and you're left with tough--and extremely expensive--decisions for the years to follow.