Revolution

My apologies for the late response; I've been super busy. I ended up turning down SAIS and opted for b-school instead. Although the money was tempting, after talking to people at SAIS admissions and career services, I arrived at the conclusion that the school is not a good fit given my professional and personal goals. Best of luck.

Best of luck to everyone! I remember going through this process last year, and it was an exhausting nerve wrecking process. I ended up getting into SAIS with a half-tuition fellowship (M.A., DC campus) but turned it down for various reasons. It's a great program though.

Yes; I officially turned down SAIS.

Very well-said. What matters is a program's prestige, name brand, general network, and job placement. The fact that a famous alumni came to speak should have ZERO impact on one's decision to attend.

Did anyone go to the SAIS open house in D.C. yesterday? How was it? Your thoughts?

Tuition at U.S. schools, undergrad and grad, is simply out of control. Median salary has not kept up with tuition hikes, when adjusted for inflation. Of course, certain programs are worth the cost, so each person has to do a careful cost-benefit analysis to figure out whether a school is "worth it."

SAIS is awful when it comes to answering questions on career placement. My guess is they're embarrassed about the fact that most SAIS students don't get good jobs coming out. Don't even bother e-mailing Bahar at admissions. She's one of the least helpful people I have ever had contact with.

Got it. Thanks.

Wow. Thanks for your super informative write-up. When you say "top 5 consulting firms" i assume you meant firms in the defense/government consulting sector?

First, I'm not a troll, contrary to popular opinion on here. Second, I will be at the SAIS open house.

SAIS' acceptance rate is 42%? Wow, that's high. No wonder everyone on gradcafe got in. The caliber of the average admitted applicant at SAIS is quite low.

Yeah I mean I wish they had a specific gpa criteria for getting more funding. So if they said something like "if you get a 3.7+ gpa in your first year, we'll raise your funding by 20%." I think that would be helpful, but from the school's standpoint, perhaps revealing such information will lead to way too much academic competition amongst classmates, thereby ruining SAIS' collegial atomosphere. Either way, financial aid, career services, and admissions, have been very opaque when i asked them for specifics (the conversation with sidney jackson was the one exception).

If you're planning on taking out a lot of loans, $19k/year from a great program is nothing to scoff at, and i don't see any reason why you should take sais or sipa over fletcher. Tufts is a great IR program; it has different strengths than sais and sipa, but if you're aiming for policy/government jobs, going there will not at all be a liability. Boston is a lot cheaper than nyc (might be a bit cheaper than DC as well), and is a much better city for students. You can live in NYC or DC once you have a decent paying job, but as a student boston wins out easily. Tufts is the obvious right call here. Best of luck.

I actually asked SAIS financial aid about this as well, but they were very vague. They said that funding for second year could go up depending on "academic performance." But they didn't give me any criteria for what my gpa would need to be to get more money. And they didn't give any details on how much more i could get either. The fellowship i got was contingent upon getting at least a 3.25 gpa the first year, so i'm guessing that i would need to get 3.5+ for any chance of getting more money in the second year. But this is all speculation, and it seems like financial aid likes to keep quiet on the details of funding.

I was going to recommend ucla online extension but their econ courses for spring quarter are closed. Take a look at berkeley's extension courses. They're pretty flexible in terms of how long it takes for you to complete the courses.

No; first-year funding or lack thereof is non-negotiable. It is possible to get funding second year if you do well academically your first year.

I'm from a working-class background and went to college on financial aid. Contrary to conventional wisdom on this board, most students at ivy league colleges are on financial aid and are not young versions of george w. bush.

Um, $50K/year is a lot?

1. I have not officially turned down SAIS yet. I'm most likely going to the open house in D.C. and will make my final decision afterwards. I still have a few questions that were unanswered and am waiting to hear back. 2. I agree that SAIS' academic curriculum may be better suited for macro research, but the concern is job placement and recruiting. Classroom learning is secondary. After all, this is a professional degree, not an academic Phd. What good is all the econ classes if I can't get the job I want coming out? When looking through linkedin profiles of sais alums, there were very few who had jobs that interested me, and when I reached out to them, they all said that it was very tough to get those jobs coming out, and it was more a function of luck/timing than sais' career services and resources. And as I said in the other post, Sidney Jackson himself told me that very few sais students are getting finance jobs and they pretty much don't get any on-campus recruiting. 3. I seriously thought about the world bank/imf/fed route. Problem though is that many of those jobs are on a one-year contract basis. Furthermore, you can't really transition from there to macro hedge funds unless you're in a direct markets research/trading role. Even then, the transition could be very tough since macro hedge funds tend to hire ex-traders, bankers, and Phd economists. I'm sure it's been done before, but going to sais just for the hope of making that transition seems quite risky. Even in world bank/fed, however, a top MBA will go further than a sais/hks/wws/sipa grad. The NY Fed does recruit at sais and sipa, but they hire almost all of their actual market research analysts and traders from top b-schools. 4. My next degree will be my last one. Hence, it will be the most important one, and people will judge me by it. If I were exclusively interested in DC policy jobs, I would go to SAIS in a heartbeat since it gets so much respect there. But given my finance interests and interest in working in nyc, london, hong kong, or singapore, the SAIS name brand and network just won't get me that far. When I recently told my friends that i got into johns hokins sais, they all looked confused, and I had to explain to them what the degree was, that the school is actually in DC, not baltimore and what the program entails. They all made fun of me for even applying there and gave me a hard time about it. So yeah, I don't think I want to spend the next 30 years of my professional life having to justify why i went to sais and having a huge chip on my shoulders compared to my buddies who went to top b-schools. This is going to sound harsh, but outside of the DC government/policy circle jerk, no one gives a flying fuck about SAIS. I also looked through linkedin profiles of current SAIS students in the finance club and was extremely underwhelmed. The profiles of the students are just weak; very few have private sector experience in finance/consulting and many of them went to no-name colleges. With that type of network, it would be very difficult to achieve my career goals. 5. Happiness. We all want to be happy. There are many on this forum who would be very happy at sais. The open house could change my mind on this, but from what i've gathered i don't think i would be happy there. The classes are tough, and grades matter at policy programs, so i will spend 2 years busting my ass off while my job prospects coming out won't be that great. Why would I do that? As a rational human being, it doesn't make sense, and i see it as a negative expected value decision. Finally, I'm looking for a very specific experience that will satisfy my emotional and social desires; I don't think SAIS can provide that for me. Feel free to send me a PM with any further questions. Best of luck.

Thanks for this. I guess I will stick with Dulles.

Ah, forgot about reagan. That's more of a regional airport though right? I have to check and see if my city even has flights to reagan.

I'm guessing Dulles airport is the only place to fly into? Too bad it's like 30 minutes away from the city.

Depends on your career goals and what kind of educational experience you are looking for. Princeton WWS is stronger in public sector/domestic policy while HKS MPA-ID is geared towards international work and pretty strong in private sector. A good friend in MPA-ID has an internship lined up with MBB consulting this summer. The MPA-ID program is also VERY rigorous; the first-year sequence is similar to what Harvard Econ Phd students take. So keep that in mind as well. And of course, the two schools are in very different environments: small college town vs a city filled with students from many colleges. Congrats on the great choice. And best of luck!

I'm actually going to be at the SAIS open house, only because i'm going to be in DC that week to visit a friend. So I'll just drop by. Really looking forward to it.

You made the right choice. SAIS is simply not worth it, especially if you don't get funding. I was offered half tuition fellowship at SAIS DC but will be turning it down. Unreal how a policy program can charge an annual tuition of $40K.