RCtheSS

There is always student employment. From the Ford School fellowship letter: Obtaining a Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) or Graduate Student Research Assistant (GSRA) position is a unique opportunity, one which we strongly encourage our students to pursue. These positions provide full tuition, stipend and healthcare coverage, in addition to valuable teaching experience. Such employment will supersede your fellowship offer for the semester you are working as a GSI/GSRA, and the fellowship funds for the semester of your GSI/GSRA position cannot be allocated to another semester; indeed, fellowship funds cannot be rolled over or allocated to another semester for any reason.

Also accepted with half tuition! Too many decisions to make in the next month...

I'll be real with you: there is racism in every part of the United States. Assuming you wish to continue onto a Ph.D., I would be more concerned about determining your fit with the each master program, whether your research interests can be pursued in the curricula offerings, and if there are enough faculty you could connect and/or collaborate with around your research.

Congrats to y'all! Your hard work has paid off.

No problem! Also, one of my best friends is a Ph.D. student (school psych) and she's lived in Hidden Lake apartments for the past two years with another friend in her cohort. I always stay with her when I go back to visit, and they're fairly nice while staying within their budgets.

A lot of the apartment complexes are currently filling up or renewing current leases for their fall semesters. They'll be signing new residents during the summer, but your chances will get slimmer as you get closer to August. One year I went the property management route, and rented a condo (very close to the Continuum) managed by a realty company. If you haven't been looking on Trulia or Realtor.com for condos for rent, I suggest that as well. I had to pay a deposit for setting up my utilities since I also had no credit history at the time. You'll probably have COX internet in your area. The total cost of start-up stayed below $250, IIRC.

This week should hopefully be full of decisions. Harris MPP is slated to release Round One decisions on Friday, and rumor has it Ford MPP will release news sometime this week.

I read your post in the "A couple rejections" thread, and you certainly have a great frame of mind about this process as a whole. Nothing about this is easy, but you do what you can to look forward to the next steps.

I'm keeping all my fingers crossed for you this week, katpillow. I hope you receive some positive news.

I'm still waiting on an admission decision. My only guess is that they're waiting for the Ford School MPP decisions to go out as well, which may happen by the end of this week.

Have you looked into Alaska Airlines?

If accepted, graduate schools will ask for a copy of your official transcripts before you can register for classes in the semester you were admitted. They want to verify that you completed the coursework to complete a bachelor's degree.

I'll be there! Very excited.

I am one of those folks who kept a large Excel workbook to make these decisions! I waffled so, so much with my deciding which programs to apply to. I made my first master list of 18 schools during my junior year in undergrad once I had been accepted as a PPIA fellow and knew I would receive funding by attending one of their consortium schools. Then I started organizing the schools by concentrations/specializations that fit my research interests, concurrent degree options, tuition and fees, financial aid, cost of living in the city/state of the schools, post-graduate salary information, and tax information in the city/states. Location definitely factored into it. I moved to D.C. for my policy job, and it took me about 5 months to know that I do not really like this area enough to want to stay an additional 2 years for a master degree, so I culled those schools off my list. Then it went back to program curricula and course offerings. At this point I was switching out programs on my "Top 8" schools to apply to every couple days based on how I felt at the time. But what really helped me pin my ultimate list down was my dead-set decision to pursue a dual degree. If a school didn't offer this option, I took it off the list for good. At the end of it all, I say it was a balance of holistic financial information and curricula options that finalized my program list.

HKS offers doctorate degrees as well as their professional master programs. Have you looked into those? If you already see yourself going into academia, you should definitely go with the best academic and career path that will get you there.

One of my friends works in IT and has been looking for a new job. He's been seeing the same kind of crap during his search--entry level positions requiring 10 years of experience. He said he saw a database-related position that was paying under $50,000 but required a master's degree!

There you go! Congratulations! I've already signed up to attend the Open House on April 1, in case anyone else is going then.

I don't know if anyone else is in the DC area, but UM SSW is holding an admissions event + reception this evening. I'll be attending even though I don't know the status of my application.

It's 9AM there, so I'm going to wait for them to wake up a bit before expecting any news to drop. Or y'know, we'll probably just be waiting another week.

I actually hate flying, lol. Not out of fears, but mostly out of annoyance and discomfort. But I feel like this is the perfect opportunity to see parts of the country I've never ventured to before, so I will gladly suck it up for the experiences. Yeesh, that's a long drive though! My ass would be numb after 4 hours of sitting in a car seat.

Officially accepted into Minnesota's MSW program! c'mon Michigan, give me some news!

Congratulations!! I'm so happy for you! You deserve it

aaaaah I just booked a multi-city flight which will take me from DC to Seattle to Minneapolis to DC within five days! So many campus visits, so little time. I'm going to be travelling a lot for the next month. Going to Charleston next weekend, still need to book a trip to Austin, and then Virginia Beach in early April...bye bye paychecks.

Yep. I haven't heard a damn thing.

I just registered for the March 31 Prospective Student Day event. I'll also be attending UW's MPA open house event on April 1, so it all works out. I've never been to SEattle so woop woop!