sherpa07

Cornell's CIPA might be a good option. They give lots of award money, and seem to be lighter on work experience.

Carnegie Mellon's "Open Learning Initiative" (OLI) is a good one that I'm using now. Their Statistical Reasoning course seems to encompass everything you need. http://oli.cmu.edu/courses/free-open/statistical-reasoning-course-details/ They also seem to have a "Causal and Statistical Reasoning" one that might be useful. I didn't notice it until just now, so maybe I'll check it out.

I don't disagree that other schools, including Chicago, also have poor financial policies. But there are plenty of schools comparable to HKS that fund significantly better. Princeton, of course, funds all students. Duke Sanford's website says they fund 90%, and all US students get a small assistanceship. UPenn Fels' website says they fund 80%, and the same is true at Cornell CIPA. There's no question that these schools have comparable - in fact, less - financial resources than Harvard, and they can do it. I also don't disagree that it's worth a small premium to go to Harvard. It is Harvard, after all. A $100K premium - over Duke, Penn, Cornell, Princeton? I, at least, don't think so. I really do think HKS needs to thoroughly revamp its funding policies, especially to remain competitive. Graduate School is now often prohibitively expensive for many; that wasn't as true a decade or two ago.

Agreed. HKS is not particularly transparent with its admissions processes, or especially its financial policies. I received $0 from HKS a few days ago, and emailed inquiring about the decision. Apparently only about a quarter of students got ANY funding. If that includes PhD students, then that's quite the pittance for MPP/MPA, etc. students. I'm also assuming many of those 25%-ers received a relatively trivial amount -$5K, $10K. Given this incredibly small amount of funding, it seems like HKS would employ some sort of "need-considered" policy. It can't accept a bunch of students, give them no money, and then have a relatively low yield. Its funding policies are so different from peer schools that it almost requires it to consider ability to finance as part of admissions. This is, though, all speculation. I've never seen anything official on the matter.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/127362370771884/?ref=ts&fref=ts Duke's. Anyone know of a CIPA group?

I'm making this exact same decision now - Duke or CIPA, with $$$ from CIPA, but only some from Duke - so if anyone has any specific insights beyond what's above, please chime in!

Go to MIT. I'm in a similar situation - admitted to 10 programs, most with decent to abundant aid. The one exception? HKS, where I too got $0. Sure, going to HKS might offer some tiny marginal benefit over this program at MIT. That marginal benefit, though, evaporates in the face of the type of debt Kennedy expects you (and I) to take out. Think of it this way: if you weren't able to save hardly anything on $45K/year, how will you pay off $140K with a slightly higher income? Probably not very comfortably. Also, I don't think you should worry about worrying about money. Worrying about money, within reason, is the smart thing to do. To me, it's simple. I've read this forum enough, though, to recognize that there are plenty of others who don't feel the same. I'm sure others will chime in and can maybe enlighten (us) about why HKS is worth $140K in debt.

Just got my financial "aid" decision. As expected, I got $70K in loans. Bye bye HKS!

Is there a region in the US where she'd prefer to live? That's the big thing that sticks out when I see her three options. Each feeds heavily into its geographic region.

Just got my funding info via email. A really tiny amount - $10K total, split between two years, so $5K/year. Ford just fell out of the running for me!

I just checked my spam.. nothing. I still haven't heard, and I also find it odd that some have, and some of us haven't. Also a little irked, because I'd have to book a flight, etc. to visit.

Still haven't heard anything here, either.. hmmm.

I've been checking email non-stop! Nothing yet.

Congrats! How were you informed? Email? I've got nothing here yet.

I'd take the money and run. I don't think the differences between those schools are big enough to justify any significant differences in post-graduation debt. That's just how I think about it, though! I'm pretty debt-averse, for perspective. I think if you want to work in public service, having no debt's a huge advantage. If you don't want to work in public serivce, having no debt's still a huge advantage.