OregonGal

It depends on what you mean by "preparing". I already knew the career field I wanted to go into (International Politics/Policy) would require a Masters degree sooner rather than later, and also that I would need a few years of work experience to qualify for candidacy especially given my GPA. When I graduated college I was already preparing my resume through being very specific about what kinds of jobs I targeted and eventually took--a year overseas teaching English (international professional experience--check!), six months interning at an international engagement organization (office experience in IR field--check!), and a 1-year Americorps position (program management and public service experience--check and check!). Like I said, I knew pretty early on what I wanted to do and all of my experiences only reinforced that this is the career I want. I definitely used my work experiences to challenge myself and make me think about what I want to do professionally, and whether I really wanted to do XYZ for the next 30 years. I also knew that a Masters would be necessary to take the next step--mostly because all the jobs I applied to were taken by people with Master's degrees! I used the prep questions and sheets on the ETS website, focusing more on the Quant stuff, for a few days before the GRE. I have been well-trained by the American public school system for multiple choice exams, so I wasn't too worried. My final scores were 94% V, 63% Q, 4.5 AW. Obviously I could've done better on the Quant, but I also was not going to shell out a ton of money that I didn't have. I looked up a couple schools using the Foreign Policy rankings (obviously this is for MIR/MIA programs not MPA/MPP) and then e-mailed one of my old professors to ask if she had any further recommendations based on my interests. This was also helpful because I planned to ask her for a LOR, so it was a great way to spark her memory beforehand and show that I was invested in the process. She pointed me towards a couple schools I hadn't originally planned on applying to but were a great fit, which was very helpful for me. I considered taking quant classes, but my work schedule didn't allow me to take a community college class and I know myself well enough to know that I wouldn't do well in an online math/theory based course. If you haven't taken one by the time you apply, and are planning to take one, you can always put in your SOP/resume somewhere that you're planning on taking quant classes. Then, if you finish before decisions are mailed out, you can update the admissions office on your final grade. If you finish after being accepted on a provisional admit (fairly common) you can use the courses to confirm your admit or waive out of pre-term courses. To save up more money for the application fees? I also wish I had researched SOP questions a bit earlier on so I could have honed in on those a bit better. I didn't think I needed to start on those more than a couple months ahead of time, when really I should have started crafting the SOPs as soon as I narrowed down my list of schools.

Pre-term for my masters program starts August 6; I fly out August 3rd after finishing work on July 31st.

Agreed. Public service programs are great for MPA/MPP applications because you've proven your interest and have applicable real-world experience. Even for an MBA program my Americorps service would be pretty applicable, since I did program development, implementation and management with an HR slant. I always encourage people looking at MPA programs to consider a program like TFA/Americorps. The pay and hours suck, but there's a lot of intangible benefits.

I know someone who recently moved (within Chicago) using a broker and had a positive experience. Maybe that's something to look into? Reputable brokers are paid by the landlord--they receive your first month's rent in exchange for finding them a tenant. They may have listings not available to the general public, and can do the hunting for you. I'm moving across the country but thankfully I have graduate housing. I just need to furnish my room once I get there, in the 2 days before classes start.

Yes, LORs--one of my LOR writers actually called me a bulldog at one point but I was just sending him an e-mail once a week or so to remind him that, by the way, my January admissions deadline was the previous week (I had actually asked him to write the LOR back in late November).

Congrats! One of my former co-workers actually got into the I-House when he started at SIPA; he was super excited at the chance to hopefully eat homecooked international cuisine

I actually liked that part of GWU; the scheduling of classes helps to enable office internships so you don't have to pop in and out between classes, and it also allows them to draw on that deep pool of current practitioners that they bring in as adjuncts. Also, while there's not a lot of financial aid available that's true for most Masters programs, and their tuition is about $10,000 cheaper than JHU-SAIS--and since they're based on an actual university campus there's a much larger pool of on-campus positions that can get you tuition remission.

MPP/MPAs are professional degrees; the best programs really stress professional experience. The students who come in straight out of college have to be stellar candidates in everything from LORs/SOPs to GPA/GREs, and usually with relevant internship/research experience. I don't know how colleges consider taking an extra term, but it might be worth your while if you can get that internship. Personally, I'd advocate getting some professional experience for a year at least once you graduate--you mentioned doing part-time Americorps in school, so you might look into a full-time Americorps position to get experience in the issue area you want to study the policy for.

Well, the student loan industry is actually pretty well covered--due to the nature of student loan debt, it's usually insured by the federal government (since students generally don't have credit history that would convince banks to loan them money otherwise) so banks won't take much of a loss. Also, student debt usually can't be discharged in bankruptcy like other debts.

I would take the tests sooner than that for a November 30th deadline. It can take several weeks to 2 months for the testing services to score and process tests, especially when there's a writing component.

Beach/water activities, hiking, biking if you're into outdoor activities. Tijuana?

I don't know how NSF fellows tie in to graduate schools, but if you're planning to apply to graduate schools in December/January you want to take the GRE no later than that Nov 1 date, and that's really pushing it. Scores can take anywhere from a few weeks to 2 months to be processed and sent to schools because of the lag time in grading the AW essays and pushing the scores through the ETS system.

There are no federal subsidized loans for graduate students. However, unsubsidized loans are always available. The priority deadline is for grants, and the May 1 deadline is to help schools process financial aid in a timely fashion. She should contact her financial aid office ASAP to make sure that they have the information they need to set her up with loans. The loans are processed by the school, but the lender is the Dept of Education, if that makes any sense. So, in school your only contact is with the school's financial aid office and they receive the loan amount directly to be applied to your tuition, and then any leftover for living expenses etc is credited to you by check or direct deposit. After you leave school, your only contact is the Dept of Education Loan Servicing division and you don't make payments to the school.

Not under federal loan consolidation. That program only applies to "Federal Direct" loans (Perkins, Stafford, Direct Sub/Unsub), where your payments go straight to the Dept of Education and not to a 3rd party like a bank or Sallie Mae. It also doesn't apply to Parent PLUS loans, so you can't take over the debt your parents took on to send you to college.

Hmm... for me the big appeal of an ultrabook is the speed, thinness and lack of weight of a SSD and fewer peripherals. I wouldn't go for that Samsung because it has a regular hard drive with only 16GB flash cache and weighs 4 lbs. My current laptop weighs 4.5 lbs and can still be a bit of a drag, so I definitely want the "ultra" to be applied to how light-weight my new computer is (the 13" Air is only 3 lbs, the 11" is only 2.4 lbs).

I'll probably look at Amazon's stuff; my main concern is buying furniture (especially something like a mattress or a desk) without trying it first. Dressers and bed frame will probably be ordered from there.

While it can be a bit of an obstacle to not have an optical drive on your laptop, I think that it's not as big of a deal as a lot of people think. If you watch a lot of DVDs you can buy an external optical drive, and if your issue is data storage then you can rip the CD at your university's computer lab and transfer the data onto a jump drive. Microsoft Surface does look pretty--the keyboard cover looks really cool--but my concern with it is that they didn't really highlight the software capabilities at that tech conference. That makes it hard to gauge what the app ecosystem is going to be like at launch, or how 3rd party applications even interact with the tablet.

I think by AA he was referring to the African history program? I do think that regional history programs that are not Europe or the US have a smaller pool of applicants to draw on, which is in your favor. Also, I think you would really have to emphasize that you were working full time on top of your course load--it's true that your GPA isn't the best, but unless you took 9 years to graduate your route shows off your work ethic/discipline and that's a great thing to be able to demonstrate for adcoms who don't want to waste money and effort on someone who may drop out due to the PhD candidate workload. Also, you said you have a year of school left? The most important thing you can do is make straight A's your last year. Not only will it boost your overall GPA, but it will show an upward progression in your grades to the adcom (2.8 right after transferring, then 3.2, then a 4.0 in the fall right before you apply). Most grad schools don't look at your GPA your first two years because you're expected to stumble upon entering college. Your last two years, when you're taking most of your upper-division major coursework, is where you need to shine.

Yeah I was about to say... I think the requirement was 160-180 in my school because it's a quarter system--full time would be 42 credits a years. And I graduated with well over that because due to AP courses, I came in with around 40 credits but still graduated in four years because I used the schedule space to dual-major.

(Go Ducks!) Seriously though, I think the Econ department is decent at UO, though not top-tier, and the business school is decent as well if you want to branch out into finance or ops. I took an international trade/econ class from the department head, Bruce Blonigen, and he was pretty sharp. You could also check out Professor Chakraborty, who specializes in international finance.

The "average" summer day in the Portland area is in the 70s and sunny to partly cloudy. However, we do get hotter, especially in late July and early August--80s during the day isn't uncommon, and there will be a few days in the 90s and stretching towards 100 (a couple years we had a horrible heat wave of like, 8 days straight reaching into the 90s with 3 100+ days in the middle). It cools down at night into the 50s-60s and isn't humid so it's a lot more bearable than an 80-mumble day on the East Coast. The final point to remember: on average, there are 200+ cloudy days in Portland every year. It rains from October to May, and then there is a drought from June-September. Half the rain falls in the winter (November-February), another third in the spring. I'm not talking about occasional torrential downpours here, either--I'm talking about cloudy days, with a near-constant drizzle that randomly amps up to actual rain. The situation in Seattle is very similar, just even more rain and a bit colder in the winters. If you don't like the rain, or need a lot of sunny days, don't move to the Pacific Northwest; just visit in the summer

I agree w/ state school that PhDs are much more research/academically focused than Masters programs--those are really geared towards being a professional's terminal degree. That being said, I also know of people who go to Masters programs with the objective of transitioning into their school's PhD program, and manage to convince the program to let them do so. Also, while I think it would be difficult to convince an Econ school to fund you as a policy PhD there are policy programs with PhD tracks, and they're not exactly the ugly stepchild of their programs. I'll give you the example of the one PhD program I looked into seriously before realizing I didn't want an academically focused program, at UC San Diego. UC San Diego has a Political Science and International Affairs PhD offered through the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, and their PoliSci department. It's ranked the #7 IR PhD program in the country and it's the #1 public school IR PhD program, according to TRIPS and Foreign Policy magazine. According to their admissions site, the PhD "prepares students for careers in university teaching and research, or as international affairs researchers and specialists in policy analysis...combine the analytical skills of political science with the political economy, institutional analysis, policy analysis (especially economic policy), and regional training of IR/PS." They admit 15-20 students per year, with 4 years of guaranteed funding followed by teaching assistantships. To give you an idea of what stats to aim for, the UCSD PhD minimum admissions requirements are: GPA: 3.3 GRE: V 560, Q 720, AW 5.0

From what the OP has said, it sounds like their concern isn't just the admissions process being weighted towards multi-linguals; it's also that the programs don't allocate time for language. So, instead of taking 3 academic courses and one language, he'd be taking 4 academic courses and trying to fit in a language into whatever free schedule space he has. If the schools don't allow more than a minimal number of credits be used for language, you may have to pay extra or audit them and not receive a grade. The language courses may even need to be taken through the Boston Consortium, apparently--which would mean traveling to another campus and complicating scheduling/expense even further.

It sounds like you haven't started with your advisor yet; even if you did know him I would suggest including a cover letter because you are applying for a job. You don't want to come off as unprofessional or relying on your personal relationship with him.

I think that when you're talking age differences, the older you are the wider they can be before there's a serious barrier. Like: in high school, a senior dating a freshman or even sophomore (3-4 years difference) can be viewed as somewhat shady because an 18 year old can be so much more mature and experienced than a 14 or 15 year old. However, by the time you're graduating college it's less of a big deal to be a senior dating a sophomore. I know I as a mid-twenties person would have doubts about dating a junior in college because you have so many experiences between graduation and a couple years into your career; however a 30 year old and a 27 year old probably are in similar stages in life. Once you get older, such as in your 40s and 50s, I think it spreads out even more--like a 45 year old dating a 54 year old.