GradSchoolAlibi

Also in at mich and curious about funding. Is it true that I can count on getting in-state tuition for my second year? If not there's no way it could compete with Duke for me financially. Also would appreciate if someone could speak to its international development offerings

Just logged in and got an admissions status & aid award. Not the improvement from last year I was hoping for, but I'm in with some cash.

Congrats, Jesus. Even Goldman's waitlist is exclusive

There's no "secret formula" for the ordering of admissions responses, although people pop up with them every year, looking at the first letter of your name, the date you applied, etc. Stop pattern-hunting and accept the unknowable -- it's your only choice! Anyone looking for a career in policy analysis should know not to accept the first theory with two data points, and anyone looking to into a career in administration should know how detrimental that theory would be to morale.

I just want to add a thought to relieve anxiety for our audience here, particularly those who aren't commenting. Most of my decisions last year were admits, and they still didn't come until mid-March. Syracuse had let me know super early, and I think Heinz got back to me in the first week of March (because as a DC admit, I was in the first pool of acceptances). Anybody hoping for an MPP from Michigan/Duke/Chicago/UCLA/Berkeley/Heinz etc. shouldn't expect to hear anything for two weeks, at least.

IIRC, they re-started their staff a few years ago. I think Rhonda has been on the job a few years, but Maggie's been there a long time. Obviously Team Harris is new this year. My impression is that they're trying to respond to an acknowledged weakness.

I'm no expert. But you've gotten quality advice. If you can use this year to get quality work experience, all the better. There's a very strong bias against applicants straight out of college, but I bet that even with that bias you could get into some top-notch schools. Throw in more WE and you'll be good.

Carnegie Mellon has a strong faculty, led by A. Blumenstein (famous for the Gun Diffusion Hypothesis)

Hiya, I've had a good time trading essays with some of you folks, and would like to start another round of exchanges. I'm working on the essays for Berkeley at the moment, and would be happy to help some other folks out with theirs, too. There's an interesting split between the statement of purpose and the personal history essay which I'm trying to manage correctly. Please e-mail me at sdavenport87@gmail.com if you're interested. I will make sure to return any drafts by tonight, and I'd appreciate if you could do the same.

It doesn't take much experience with letters of recommendation to know that most of them, inevitably, are written by some sort of friend, if not the applicant himself. They're fluff. I understand that academic references are usually the most valuable, partly because they're most credibly not hagiographies. Where do letters from internships fall on this scale? I interned for an elected official in San Francisco for about 3 months, and am essentially weighing getting a letter from her vs. a professional reference, with whom I've worked for about 1 month. Which is more valuable? Are letters from unpaid internships given any credibility?

Pinkman, Alf: Let's roll. E-mail me. I'm currently working on the KSG essay (first things first) but am also looking for feedback on both Goldman essays.

spark, If i remember correctly Harvard and Princeton require an academic resume of this detail in addition to your regular resume. During my apps last year, I think I submitted an additional, detailed academic resume highlighting my economic and quantitative courses to at least 3 schools. So my advice would be to prepare it but not really offer that unless it is asked for specifically.

Hopefully someone with more experience can answer your questions. But based on my own (after 1 application cycle), I'd say that lack of work experience will filter you out from the very top schools (Berkeley, Harvard) and at the least diminish your funding from the others. But it's not a total dealbreaker. Though I had two years out of college before applying, a minority of it was full-time and super-relevant. I still did alright. My advice to you would be to make the rest of application describe you as maturely as possible. I'd also say that in applying to a combination of schools, pick a few safeties. The fact is, these might be the most attractive options, since they'll offer you a hell of a lot more money than your top picks. And when making your decision, its a good option to weigh.

My instinct would be to go for HKS but not for WWS. The Princeton MPP program is explicitly mid-career, and even its MPA program has a much higher suggested age and duration of work experience than HKS. Especially since WWS also requires a four-page policy memo, I think your effort is better concentrated on the one rushed application.

Hello vaunted gradcafe community, I'm applying to MPPs after a good effort and pretty good results round of acceptances last year. So with some experience under my belt and the feeling that I've been through this one time before, I'm applying again now. If anybody is near completing in their statements and would like to swap essays with mine, I'd encourage it. I've gotten to the point where people sometimes pay me to write/edit, so I hope I can do a good job with yours. I merely ask for the same in return. I've got a draft for Goldman and another for HKS ready to go; I'll be churning the rest out for the remaining schools later. Shoot me an e-mail at sdavenport87@gmail.com.

I'm also making a $45k+ choice between two schools. Especially after interest, that's roughly equivalent to a year of salary in my early career. I'm tempted to overspend and go to the better school, for the long term good of my career. However, if I'm truly concerned about my long-term career there's probably better uses for that $45k+. I could afford to take on a less-paying but more promising job, or be better able to work for the employer that I believe in, or have more time and resources to study, write a book, etc. Is deciding to pay extra for a better school about weighing the long term against the short term? I'm prone to think that prestige is over-priced, not under-priced, so I'm becoming more comfortable with the idea of going to my second-choice, and best-funded option.

hahaha, that confused the hell out of me. FYI Columbia hasn't posted my admissions decision. I can't say that checking my status was worth the time it took me to find my PIN and log out from one of my other "applyyourself" accounts, which always conflict and never resolves easily.

I agree that all schools seem to claim they emphasize quant, but some make the claim more often and with more emphasis. Chicago beats this point to death, and won't stop telling you about their quantitative method. Berkeley claimed that they are very quant-heavy, but not as quant-heavy as some other schools. My impression is that CMU is also remarkably quant-heavy. Any advice any current student has for preparation for MPP-level economics is extremely welcome.

I haven't. But I'm anxious to. There have been a few students who have posted on thes forums, however. Since the program just started in 2008, there can't be any more than 100 alumni from the whole program, but I would assume that those four years are enough time for them to iron out the bugs and get a decent reputation going for Heinz interns, if it didn't exist already. IIRC last year, 22 students secured internships, and only one was unpaid. And this average, of all 22, comes to $20k, and the top wage was $40k. So that statistic seems very real -- and not terribly surprising, considering that the organization benefits from 30 hours per week of work. All math and rankings aside, I have to believe that, especially for someone with thin work experience like myself, coming out of CMU with nearly a year of near-full time work in DC will be in a professional position more immediately valuable and versatile than a similar graduate from a slightly more prestigious university.

I have no special expertise, but the public policy N&W Report rankings are a joke. They haven't been updated since 2008 -- they don't differentiate between an MPP and an MPA, and none of their specializations seem meaningful. It is my impressions that policy schools run a spectrum from theoretic to skill-based, or academic to professional, that the rankings completely fail to capture. The list seems to me to be useful as a general guide, but I imagine it breaks down very quickly in the specialties, save for perhaps the more broad categories of public policy analysis and nonprofit management, which seem to get to the core of the MPA/MPP distinction. I have heard that the conservative connotations that come with a U of C Economics diploma do not carry over to their public policy department -- although they do of course stress quantitative methods.

I received a similar option. My understanding is that as long as you keep 3.0 (or something similar), it renews automatically. I am absolutely banking on this financial figure and basing my admissions decision on it, so if I'm mistaken I hope to know now!

So far: Harris $10k. Syracuse MPA (funding not yet disclosed) UCLA $22k (in-state full ride) Goldman - rejected. Heinz DC Track - $28k Barring very generous aid offers from Michigan or Duke, or acceptance to Harvard/Princeton, it looks like I'm headed to CMU and then off to DC. U Chicago is very prestigious, and recently added on David Axelrod to faculty (adding to Paulson, Richard Daley, 2 Nobel Laureates, and more), but I've been told the program is more "orthodox" than ideal. CMU strikes me as its opposite -- less prestigious, but eminently practical. I'm struggling to put a value on 9 months of work and living experience in Washington, DC, but it seems substantial (not to mention the average $20k salary students earn at their internships the 2nd year). Either way, I don't think I can justify spending an additional $17k annual to go to Chicago rather than CMU. However, I do think CMU is worth an additional annual $12k over attending UCLA. Does anyone take issue with my math, or see other factors at hand? It seems like there are quite a few people making this decision.