orangesplease

Declined UT-Austin IR

Thanks for all the insight folks. I have pretty much shelved the idea of reapplying. ha ha

I may have a compelling reason to defer, but that's aside from the point. Was definitely happy to apply to those schools, but scared myself into reconsidering employment prospects. Trying my best to avoid being naïve and thinking I'll be a "lucky one" to graduate in 5 years with a decent TT offer. Will need to dig deeper for better placement info. The schools provide placement info, but it seems incomplete or unnecessarily broad for recent years.

My schools aren't as good as Wisconsin? ha ha I indeed was referring to accepting admissions to one school and deferring that offer. But that's part of the reason why I'm reaching out for some guidance. I very well understand what deferrals are for, so good to know about the shadiness factor.

If I got into Wisconsin, I would happily attend ha ha

Hey folks, Anyone get into T-20 schools, but deferred to see your luck the following year? I'm in a confusing position and aren't sure what to do regarding my apps. Two T-20 schools (at least I believe they fit in that ranking ) accepted me, but I'm really concerned about placement after graduation. For that reason, I'm contemplating deferring and applying for the next round. The two things that would probably change in my app is my SOP and contacts w/ professors. I did a fairly thorough job of discussing my research interests this time around, but did not go into detail regarding methods aside from mentioning I was interested in causal inference. My research into professors was rushed, so while I found the professors I wanted to work with at each univ, I reached out to very few of them. That may or may not have an impact on my decisions. My only hesitation is that I'm not a youngin' and waiting another year to begin seems wasteful. Any guidance is appreciated =D

Any UIUC or UT Austin students?

Just depends. You might want to apply to both in any case because you would have access to classes in both programs (and most other programs for that matter). MSFS has a long history and boasts many notable alum. If you want to work in international affairs, MSFS is one of the top programs along w/ HKS, Woodrow Wilson, and SAIS. GPPI has a M of International Development that was founded just this year, but has had a long history of providing an international development focused MPP. However, I would say the GPPI MPP is largely focused on domestic issues while providing a good set of internationally focused coursework (political economy, political risk analysis, etc.). Booz Allen and Deloitte recruit on campus for GPPI students for their federal practice. Last month GPPI students had an opportunity to do office hours w Deloitte (informal meetings w a couple consultants) in max. 3 student setting to allow us to learn more about their work. In my ofc hr, one of the consultants was a MSFS graduate in Latin American studies (entirely unrelated to what he was now doing lol). Many career opportunities in MSFS are shared with GPPI, but GPPI has a dedicated 2-person career team that exists to help students find, apply and get internships and jobs. I believe MSFS has less of a quantitative focus then GPPI, however. We take 3 mandatory quant courses and learn STATA.

I'm a GPPI student atm. Not sure if you're interested, but we have a joint MPP/IOMBA program with the Univ. of Geneva (or some other school in Switzerland lol). As far as prestige goes, SFS is the more prestigious program. With that said, either could work for what you're looking for. GPPI has many courses on management, but most of its internationally-inclined courses revolve around development. Hope that helps!

Hey, decided to drop by the forum on this random night to check what was going on. I applied to schools last year and ended up going with Georgetown's GPPI after encouraging them to provide me with more aid. For some reason I'm unable to enter and create separate paragraphs right now, so enjoy reading this block of text o_O Getting into GPPI wasn't too difficult (but I also say that having had solid work experience, awesome letters of rec and a decent GRE score) and I was worried about the effectiveness and the quality of the program overall. The main reasons why I chose this program was b/c by 2nd year, almost all students are interning or working while being full time students, it's alum network, and its location. While going to GW would make life easier transportation wise, Georgetown is THE university to attend in D.C. In the short time I've been here, Hillary Clinton has been on campus twice, we've had the president of Argentina, former national security advisers, current and former Asst Secretaries of State, Bono is coming to in a couple weeks. The guest list goes on and on and it's AMAZING that these officials choose to go out of their way to come to Georgetown to speak (free for students of course!). You need to decide what you want out of your degree. If you're hoping to do something amazing ASAP and land at a top federal consulting firm or get into a policy/gov agency network, this is the place for you. If you want to work at a low-paying nonprofit and need the masters for professional reasons, GPPI is not the place to go to. We have a student at GPPI who already has a M.A. in PoliSci, but returned for an MPP b/c he couldn't get a job w the M.A. Aka the program is quite relevant. Lastly, the community we have in this ~240 program is unimaginable. My class will literally show up at bars with 40-60 people and everyone is extremely grounded--that may not be the case w/ undergrads, however. Let me know if you have any further Qs about GPPI. There are plenty of international students as well and I am definitely happy I made the choice to come here.

Georgetown's School of Foreign Service also has an awesome Security Studies program. To be honest, I wish I had known about it before applying only to public policy programs =[ http://ssp.georgetown.edu/

My two cents on quant. If you are 100% committed to a weak quant program, feel free to skip it ha ha Per the student panel @ Georgetown's GPPI and my friend who graduated from that program, they all said the benefit of the program IS quant. The student panel said at GPPI specifically, most students come in with weak quant backgrounds and the program does a fantastic job at training them to handle quant. My friend said she wanted to increase her quant skills to diversify her skill set and now is able to better understand and manipulate numbers (especially in better understand how statistics may be collected and interpreted). I would say don't sell yourself short on quant. Had I not heard from so many ppl that quant worked out for them and it wasn't hell, I wouldn't be saying this. Also, you must realize how many humanities clones are out there. If you can have both the quant and humanities background, your resume will be that much more competitive.

fb group: http://www.facebook.com/gppi2014

Columbia SIPA provides very limited funding to first years, but scoring one seems to be decent (25-35k it seems). Then all second year students are generally guaranteed a scholarship if they are able to maintain a 3.5 (or 3.4?) or above. They report on average it's 18k second year, but it seems 30k year two is common and they offer TAships that cover full tuition. GPPI is stingy in that the max it seems most people receive is 20k/year. If you have about 3.4 and a decent quant score, you should get at least 5k/year. No additional funding opportunities year two, so work hard to get and keep that first-year scholarship! MIDP students, however, were offered full tuition this year b/c it was the first year of the program. I imagine they will be generous to students in its next several cohorts.

The wait finally ends. I was rejected after the worst application process I've ever experienced that included them receiving and then losing all my LORs >.< Wasn't meant to be.