edgirl

Hi Liv, You should post this question in the political science forum -- folks there may have more insight for you.

Sorry to ruffle feathers. I'm not convinced by those links that a Sciences Po 3-year degree won't carry the day in grad school admissions, but of course lewin00 is correct to note that contacting individual schools directly is the best way to go. I spoke with such certainty because both of my parents are academics, and I have never heard of anyone being denied graduate entry to their programs because their (non-US) home country degree was a three-year program. Note that in that Arizona link, it doesn't mention Great Britian in that list, even though many UK programs are 3 years long, and see the Sciences Po website for a description of degrees there: "The three-year programme features a compact and intensive format aligned with the most common standards in continental Europe. Capitalising on the high academic level of the students admitted, this curriculum allows them to obtain 240 ECTS credits representing a body of knowledge and life skills corresponding to four years of study in the North-American and Asian systems. Of these credits, 180 are awarded for courses completed while on campus, allowing Sciences Po to retain complete academic control over the equivalent of three years of study. This academic knowledge is acquired during the first two years of study, supplemented by a term paper." So, sure, if the OP were off to some never-heard-of-it school in the middle of nowhere, there might be a concern. But with a degree from Sciences Po, I have no concerns. Note too that SP has partnerships with over 300 other colleges, where students can spend their third year, and these schools include Princeton, Harvard, etc. -- so if there's a concern about having US credentials, spending a year at one of those places would go a long way to alleviate it.

It is equivalent. And recognized as such by US schools.

Hey teachgirl22, Your profile looks strong, but I have a couple thoughts/questions: 1. You'll need academic letters of recommendation for doctoral admissions. Now would be a good time to get back in touch with those grad school professors; remind them who you are; arrange an in-person meeting if possible; send a resume or CV that updates them on what you've been doing. Generally, doctoral programs require three letters of rec, and usually at least two of those need to come from academic sources, especially if it's been fewer than 5 years since you completed your last degree. 2. Your admin LORs from your current place of employment should mention these above-and-beyond type things you've done (mentoring, research, etc.) so that you can focus your SOP on your research interests. 3. What is your academic interest? You talk about doing an Ed.D.; Harvard only offers them (though HGSE is moving to a Ph.D. format with the cohort admitted Fall 2014), but Stanford does not offer Ed.D.s. Both the Harvard Ed.D. and the Stanford Ph.D. are research degrees, not practice-oriented degrees. Is that what you want? With Harvard, I would be a little careful given that the school is transitioning from Ed.D.s to Ph.D.s; while the Harvard Ed.D. has long been regarded as equivalent to other schools' Ph.D.s, there may be some change in that as the Ph.D. is introduced there, and it's not yet clear what the Ph.D. strands at HGSE will be. This isn't meant to dissuade you from Harvard, but I think it may be worth waiting one more year to see what they do with their doctoral programs. 4. In terms of "strengthening," in all honesty, your profile looks good and there's not much in it you can change at this point (GPA, e.g.) other than GRE scores. Generally, folks at Stanford and Harvard seem to have verbal scores above 700 and quant above 720 or so in the doctoral programs (old scale, obviously). So if I were you, I would just focus on your SOP and being able to articulate, clearly and concisely, exactly what you want to do and why Stanford and Harvard are the places you want to do it. Hope that's helpful! I would love to hear more about your research interests, since I'm a fellow education nerd myself!

If you're talking about master's programs in education, it is significantly easier to gain admittance to Ivy ed schools than it is to earn acceptance to the same schools' undergraduate colleges. (We're talking acceptance rates of less than 10% compared to rates of 50%. Not close.) I went to one Ivy for undergrad and a different one for a master's in ed. The two pools of classmates were quite different. In any event -- and more importantly -- pay attention to the folks here who have questioned your motives for asking. Why bother comparing yourself to the hypothetical "average" applicant (hint: there is no such person)? Focus on the program that's the best fit for you. I'm assuming you were accepted to Columbia, Penn, and Harvard, since those are the three Ivy ed schools. They're very different schools, and they have very different strengths. If you're making the decision on name recognition alone, you may well end up unhappy. Are you interested in classroom teaching? Something else? What you want to get out of your program? Where do you want to work afterwards? These should be the questions driving your decision-making -- not ones about selectivity and impressiveness to random folks outside of academia.

As long as you satisfy all the requirements of the Sciences Po degree, you will qualify for admission to US schools for graduate study. If you take the time to look at any graduate program's admission requirements, you'll see that the requirement is for applicants to have a 4-year degree from an American school or the equivalent degree from a non-US school -- in other words, a bachelor's degree, from wherever. Frankly, this is something you can easily find for yourself with a little effort.

I never received anything in the mail when I registered. You can access PowerPrep II for free through the ETS website, though. Good luck!

No. Don't worry about the AW score; just focus on your writing sample.

I thought the PowerPrep II quantitative questions were easier than the questions I had on test day, but my scores on both V and Q were within the ranges the practice test gave me.

You're certainly fine for the GRE; at most, the results will take two weeks to get to the schools to which you've applied. I'm not sure about the TOEFL timeline. The issue is that in both cases if you're not pleased with the results you aren't leaving time to retake either test.

Isn't Oxford's research group dedicated to higher ed issues? I don't see how that's relevant to your work.

Much Ado is available streaming on Netflix. I think Keanu's the only one in that cast who's consistently off-key -- while Denzel is admittedly a bit surprising, he at least seems to have a sense of the rhythms of what he's supposed to be saying. And of course you can't go wrong with the usual players in the Branagh stable. I was very depressed when he and Thompson divorced.

The GRE has just introduced a score select feature (like score choice on the SAT); starting in July, you will indeed be able to decide which test scores to send. You will have to send an entire date at a time -- you can't send individual sections -- but yes, you can send only the highest score. There are some details about what you can do when (and how much it will cost you). The official ETS description is here: http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/about/scoreselect

So, that's not my area, unfortunately -- which means you should take everything I say with a grain of salt! But I know a ton of folks who did their grad work in education at various CUNY campuses, and they all seem very satisfied. CUNY's tuition is such a ridiculous deal that it's hard to think about passing it up as long as you feel like you will be able to get enough supervision to be prepared when you start working on your own. I would see if you can't talk to some people in the program currently, get a sense from them of what supervision is like (and maybe see if you can compare placement rates), and then make a decision. Of course, the obvious point I should have made at the beginning is that those of us in education can't count on huge salaries, and NYC is not exactly a bargain city to live in -- meaning that if you feel like Hunter will be good enough, honestly, I'd go with it. But either way, it's a great dilemma to have; congrats on your admissions, and good luck!

What programs are you comparing/deciding between?

There is a saying about great minds ...

I don't think you were encouraged -- it sounds like you got a standard form response, which indicated you were eligible to apply because you met the admission requirements in the sense of having an undergraduate degree or whatever. And you state yourself that you didn't take much time to work on the application. So it sounds like you need to forget it and move on.

Haha indeed, except I don't know whether to laugh or cry ... It wasn't an afterthought, but I didn't have time to take the GRE until April 9, so it took a long time for me to complete my file (I submitted my app in March). So, yep, next year I'm doing a master's in education stats, research, assessment. Depending on how that goes, I may apply to doctoral programs in the same field, or pursue ed policy. We'll see ... Good luck at HGSE! Cambridge is a great city, as of course is Boston. I'm sure you'll have fun!

If anyone else is still waiting to hear, my file was sent to the faculty on April 23, and I heard on May 10. Though presumably response time varies by department.

Ha, no worries! The important thing was that you recognized my cat's cuteness. As far as particular reading materials go ... I think the most important thing is that the text be, essentially, complicated. Austen's actually a good example of an author who writes long and winding sentences that require you to think your way through them to get the meaning (if only because her comma usage is quite different from what our English teachers probably drilled into us!). I'm the kind of nerd who reads all the time, so I don't know what makes me want to run to the dictionary, but one thing I've started doing in the past couple years is reading a decent amount of literature within my field. I also read a lot of science/medical history. Glancing at my shelf, here are some suggestions (not in any order): A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis What is the What, Dave Eggers The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon Possession, AS Byatt Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides The Echo Maker, Richard Powers The New York Trilogy, Paul Auster Disgrace and Waiting for the Barbarians, JM Coetzee The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon White Noise, Don DeLillo Liar's Poker, Michael Lewis The Orchid Thief, Susan Orlean The Honor Code, Kwame Anthony Appiah Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich The Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant (trans. Paul Guyer)w3xz How to Be Alone, Jonathan Franzen Napoleon's Buttons, Penny Le Couteur & Jay Burreson The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz The Executioner's Song, Norman Mailer Gideon's Trumpet, Anthony Lewis In Cold Blood, Truman Capote Zero, Charles Seife Complications, Atul Gawande The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins Collapse, Jared Diamond The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver The Ghost Map, Steven Johnson That is, of course, a totally nonrandom sample! Just some books I love and that are thoughtful in different ways. Would love to see suggestions from others to add to my own reading list!

No, departmental codes are simply a way for ETS for direct the score more specifically to the intended recipient than they can with school-wide codes. So even if you use two codes, it only counts as one report.

In the revised version, which I took recently, the verbal sections definitely emphasize vocabulary in context rather than rote memorization of definitions. I would recommend starting with the ETS official GRE prep book (and ETS' PowerPrep software) to get a sense of how the verbal questions work and where your score really might be at the moment -- both to give you a baseline and a sense of the specific kinds of questions that are challenging for you. I'm not sure about other worthwhile prep materials, as I focused more of my time on math prep, but perhaps other GradCafers can offer some suggestions. Beyond prep books, you could also be reading complicated and sophisticated materials -- nonfiction books, New Yorker and Atlantic articles, etc. -- to keep your brain stretching and familiar with the various ways in which English sentences can create meaning. Good luck!

Thanks! Just what I wanted to hear!

I know that's their stated timeline, I'm just curious whether anyone applying recently has had a different experience. Thanks!

Has anyone applied to Penn GSE recently (i.e., after March 1 or so)? I submitted my application relatively recently and am wondering if anyone has a sense of how quickly they're turning around decisions this time of year. Thanks in advance for any insight!