OregonGal

Hah that's my exact same situation--originally from the Pacific NW, currently in DC, and torn between having the boost of local connections that DC schools have and the affordability/decent education of IR/PS, especially with the Pacific Rim focus (some of the faculty at East Coast schools still seem stuck in Cold War mode!). One way to mitigate the distance from seats of power issue is to intern in DC during the summers, and if I do go to UCSD that will be the route I'll try to take. Also, in case you do choose UCSD--I have a friend in postgrad there and he says that grad student housing is decent (lots of recent construction), more affordable than the surrounding area (~$500/mo), and very much in demand so you should fill out the housing forms as soon as you accept.

I called UCSD on Friday to ask about funding decisions and the very nice admin there told me that merit aid is currently in committee and they will be notifying applicants on their finaid packages in about two weeks. As for the school itself, I'm mainly looking at the International Politics degree, the heads of programs there are full professors with research that aligns with my own interests. I had a pretty decent convo with a recently alum of the International Economics program right as he was graduating; he told me that the specifics that tipped him over to UCSD vs other schools were: 1. The curriculum. The core courses in particular are very professional-skills focused, and he said that the ID/NPM courses had a good balance of program management/eval theory and on-the-ground reality (he switched halfway through from ID/NPM to IE because he wanted to focus on finance). 2. Career services. He went to work for USAID right after graduation, and he said that if you take advantage of the career services center they can give you a big leg up, because they realize that as a West coast school without name branding, they really need to boost their alumni profile through career services assistance. Also, he said that a lot of friends received pretty generous grant aid from UCSD. Running the numbers cited on their admissions webpage, $1.2M in aid for the top 25% of the class means $30K+ per top 40 students. So cross your fingers and hope you're in that top 25%!