jct329

The CIA has a very deep connection with Yale when it comes to recruiting. No surprise it would send people there for grad school (or recruit people from grad school there).

Just wondering, as someone who is going to be applying next year, could some of you guys share numbers, WE, and funding? I know there's the results database, but it seems very limiting in the amount of information.

There are tiers, definitely, but there isn't really a "best" program. I would say that Georgetown's SSP, Johns Hopkins SAIS with a Security Studies focus, and Columbia SIPA's International Security Program are the top tier. I'm not sure what rank you are and if it would be available for your country's military, and what the requirements are, etc., but you might look into opportunities that your military has to attend the US military's grad programs as well (Naval Postgraduate School, Air War College, US Army Command and General Staff College).

Generally looks great. You should also look into the Johns Hopkins SAIS Security Studies concentration and Columbia SIPA's International Security Program. I would definitely suggest studying a few months for the GRE and retaking. There is a lot of study material out there, and you can learn a lot of tricks to make it easier (especially on the quant side).

So I posted to this topic about a year ago, but my circumstances have changed somewhat. I have become much more interested in doing an MPP in policy analysis focused more on domestic policy than IR stuff. There really doesn't seem to be anywhere near as much on MPP programs here as there is on MAIR type programs. Program Applied To : MPP Schools Considering Applying To: Michigan Ford, NYU Wagner, Texas LBJ, Minnesota Humphrey, GWU Trachtenberg, American SPA, Maryland, Georgetown GPPI, maybe HKS though I feel like it would be a bit of a waste of time...I might also apply to SAIS and/or SIPA and/or the Security Studies Program at Georgetown Undergraduate institution: Lower public Big 10 school Undergraduate GPA: 3.9 (High Distinction - Top 5%) Undergraduate Major: Double in Political Science and Economics (Honors in both) with a thesis in Poli Sci GREs: 164v/162q/6w Years Out of Undergrad (if applicable): 5 Years of Work Experience: 5 Describe Relevant Work Experience: Worked for an environmental non-profit right out of college for a few months as well as the state Democratic Party in 2006. Will complete a 5 year enlistment in the Navy in early 2014 (yes...enlistment...not an officer. Worried this may hurt me as I'm just an enlisted admin guy and I'm not sure if they will see it as very relevant experience.) Year in deployment Africa (including significant travel around the Horn of Africa), year total sea deployment. I also volunteered in Africa quite a bit doing an English discussion group at night with the locals. Quant: Calc 1 and 2, and a few stats classes along with Intermediate Micro, Macro and a bunch of other econ classes (but no econometrics). Strength of SOP: Who knows...I think I'm a good writer, but I imagine everyone thinks the same thing. I'll have some pretty good experiences to talk about, though and will make sure to draft it through the better writers I know. Strength of LOR: Should be pretty strong. I keep in contact with a couple profs and my bosses all love me (I've worked directly for two O6s, one of whom is a Poli Sci PhD. I'll probably get both of them to do a LoR.) Negatives: So the reason I enlisted instead of getting a commission was due to the fact that I had two underage drinking tickets and a public intoxication ticket while an undergrad (the public intox and one of the underage drinking tickets happened during the same incident). All of the incidents happened in 2005. My parents were thrilled... I thought I would come in the Navy for a year or two and put in a commissioning package, but decided against it. I'm colorblind so the only field really open to me would have been supply, and I really didn't want to do that. I'm more than a little worried about the tickets, but I feel like a 5 year stint in the military with absolutely no issues and glowing LoRs will help make up for it. One thing that's great about my situation is that I figure I can afford to go anywhere I get in, even if I get no additional funding. The GI Bill will help out with 17.5/year (plus pretty generous housing allowances and book stipends) and I have no UG debt, car is paid off, and I'm not married/no kids.

I'm mostly looking at GW SSP, Georgetown SSP, SAIS, SIPA. Is Pitt at the same level as these? I do worry some about location, but the program itself reads like something I would be very interested in.

Not to mention the fact that if you save enough to take 6 months off in the US, you probably have enough to take about 3 years off in Ethiopia.

How much does it take to test out of micro and macro? I was an economics major and got As in Micro/Macro and Intermediate Micro/Macro, but have done nothing related to the field in 4 years (and I'm not applying until the 2014 cycle, so just more curious than anything else). Will dusting off the old Mankiw and Hal Varian books be enough? Are the tests super math heavy or more conceptual?

SAIS has a pretty damn good Security Studies program as well.

Military member here. From what I can gather, it is worth it if you are already in your career and want to advance. For the most part, if you are active duty military and want to get your masters in order to make rank, it is fine. If you are hoping to do any type of career shift or are hoping that it adds a lot to your resume in the job market, it will be worth much much less. It is regionally accredited by the HLC, which is what you actually want. A lot of for-profit online places are "nationally accredited" which means they are absolutely worthless.

It's pretty early for me so I'll update this stuff as I go, but I would definitely love feedback along the way. I'm going to apply in 2014. Program Applied To : MA - IR (not sure specifically which area yet. Interested in Security Studies, African Studies, or Russian/Eurasian Studies), MPP Schools Considering Applying To: SAIS; Georgetown Walsh (not sure which program) and MPP; American SIS and SPA; GW Elliot and Trachtenburg; UMD MPP; NYU Wagner; SIPA. Would prefer to be in the DC area. Undergraduate institution: Lower public Big 10 school Undergraduate GPA: 3.9 (High Distinction - Top 5%) Undergraduate Major: Double in Political Science and Economics (Honors in both) GREs: Haven't taken them yet. Just got study materials in the mail, will take them in about four months. Years Out of Undergrad (if applicable): 4 Years of Work Experience: 4 Describe Relevant Work Experience: Worked for an environmental non-profit right out of college for a few months as well as the state Democratic Party in 2006. Will complete a 5 year enlistment in the Navy in early 2014 (yes...enlistment...not an officer. Worried this may hurt me as I'm just an enlisted admin guy and I'm not sure if they will see it as very relevant experience.) Year in deployment Africa (including significant travel around HOA), year total sea deployment. I also volunteer here in Africa quite a bit doing an English discussion group at night with the locals. I have about 80 hours logged so far for that. I'll probably continue volunteering when I get back. Languages: Took Russian through high school (including a month long exchange where I hosted a Russian for a month and then went to St. Petersburg for a month) and a year of Advanced Russian in college, but dropped it in favor of doing poli sci and econ. I'd love to get back into it and am considering some autodidactism....I think I would do pretty bad on a test right now. Quant: Calc 1 and 2, and a few stats classes along with Intermediate Micro, Macro and a bunch of other econ classes. Strength of SOP: Who knows...I think I'm a good writer, but I imagine everyone thinks the same thing. I'll have some pretty good experiences to talk about, though. Strength of LOR: Should be pretty strong. I keep in contact with a couple profs and my bosses all love me (I've worked directly for two O6s, one of whom is a Poli Sci PhD. I'll probably get both of them to do a LoR.) Negatives: So the reason I enlisted instead of getting a commission was due to the fact that I had two underage drinking tickets and a public intoxication ticket while an undergrad (the public intox and one of the underage drinking tickets happened during the same incident). All of the incidents happened in 2005. My parents were thrilled... I thought I would come in the Navy for a year or two and put in a commissioning package, but decided against it. I'm colorblind so the only field really open to me would have been supply, and I really didn't want to do that. I'm more than a little worried about the tickets, but I feel like a 5 year stint in the military with absolutely no issues and glowing LoRs will help make up for it. One thing that's great about my situation is that I figure I can afford to go anywhere I get in, even if I get no additional funding. The GI Bill will help out with 17.5/year (plus pretty generous housing allowances and book stipends) and I have no UG debt, car is paid off, and I'm not married/no kids. I would love any feedback or advice!!

What is the point of the Bologna campus? Is it more difficult to get in there? Is it geared towards certain specialties?

"...external realities and ideas, not intrapersonal sociability." I think he's saying to talk about the weather and the local sports teams...

I had two underage drinking tickets during my UG years. I was 19 and 20 at the times of the tickets, and will be applying when I am 27. Should I write some type of addendum for it? I've had no legal issues since then, and I've never had a drinking problem. I definitely don't want to waste my SOP with any mention of it. I'm worried about the AdCom's ability to smell bullshit, so I really don't know how to frame it (i.e. if I'm overly remorseful about it, won't they think "Is this guy really that remorseful about drinking beer when he was a sophomore?") Should I just mention it on the application wherever they ask for criminal records, and then not mention it again? Is trying to spin it as a learning/maturing experience overly cliche? Without this I think I'm pretty competitive at a lot of good schools.

Haha, nice find. How good is Rand's program? I remember reading about it a few years ago. It's pretty much as quant heavy as an econ PhD isn't it? Seems like it would be an interesting route to go if I had a (MUCH) larger math background.

I'm actually strongly considering that same program if accepted. Was wondering if you could answer a couple questions: 1. Are most of the students former military? 2. Do Elliot Cohen's political beliefs come out very strongly? Are most of the professors of the same neoconservative influence?

That's good advice for current undergrads and people not applying this cycle, but it's incredibly obvious and has little to do with the questions of the OP. Of course you should work your ass off to get the best applications possible. I think the better question for discussion is, assuming you have done that, what is an acceptable level of debt for a given program? Should you really go into $60k of debt for this program or that program, or should you take the money and some other program?

As far as layman prestige, Columbia is FAR superior to Johns Hopkins. Most people who don't live on the East Coast barely know what JHU is (unless they are involved in the medical or IR fields, or have some other reason to be highly knowledgable about universities). That really shouldn't matter. The only thing that matters is the prestige of the program among future employers. SAIS is probably a little more highly regarded (though the difference may be negligible).

As far as brand name goes, even if it's not *the best school* for a particular program, SAIS is still the most prestigious. Your opportunities with SAIS will be just as good as they would be at SIPA (if not better), while taking on less debt (in a field that doesn't make much money). The amount of debt you will take on living in Manhattan (unless you want a lengthy and tiring commute) will be enormous. I am uncertain as to the prestige/reputation/actual academic experience of the Bologna program relative to SAIS DC or SIPA. I guess I'm saying that I would definitely take SAIS if I were you, but I fully understand your predicament (which, let's face it, is a pretty good predicament to have!)

I discussed in another thread a little bit of a predicament I'm in, but here's the tl;dr: I'm military and am scheduled to get out near the end of 2013. I have good stats, and I think I'm pretty competitive at a lot of places, but I worry about getting out without knowing for sure what's going to happen. Right now I'm planning on applying for places that take spring admissions for the spring 2014 term (NYU, American SPA, UMD, and Indiana are the four I would apply to), but I'm having a tough time justifying limiting myself based on spring/fall admissions. I would be more comfortable if I were able to apply for fall 2013, and then defer until fall of 2014. I could figure out something to do with my half year off I think (though this worries me as well...I really don't want to have to move in with the parents or anything, even if I have solid plan in place. If anyone has any good suggestions in this area I'd love to hear them as well.) Would I need to explain this situation to the school? Would it be frowned upon?

So I graduated from a Big 10 university in 2008, worked for a non profit until the November elections, and then joined the military as an enlisted admin guy. I had a couple of underage drinking tickets in UG, so I was going to come in for a year and become an officer after that. I decided I didn't really want a career in the military (would be another 6 year commitment if I did an enlisted to officer program), and I really didn't want to be a supply officer (I'm colorblind, so that's about all I could do). I had a UG GPA of 3.9 with a double major in Political Science (Honors) and Econ, will have great LORs from two or three O6s and possibly an O9. I'm currently an E5 deployed to Djibouti for the year, and the rest of my experience is in a fairly corporate area of the military. Haven't taken the GREs, but I'm expecting to do well as I've always scored pretty well on standardized tests. I'm getting out in December 2013, so I'm only applying to schools that have spring admission. I know this may not seem like an important thing, but I would have 6 months of nothing to do if I didn't. I'm very interested in domestic policy analysis. Three main schools I'm looking at are NYU, University of Maryland, and American. Will being enlisted in the military be bad for me in applying? Is military experience generally only seen as relevant for officers?