Which schools match other schools?

[gradddygrad]

Hi everyone, I tried looking for answers to this on the forum but couldn't find ay. I'm applying to a few MPP programs by their early action deadline (Harris, HKS, Sanford, and McCourt), and I'm wondering if it's worth applying to a couple of places that might be more likely to offer me merit aid (ex. American) in order to use them to negotiate for more money from the first round of schools. In a hypothetical situation where HKS rejects me/offers me nothing, Harris/McCourt/Sanford offer me 10k each, and American (or some equivalent school) offers me 25k, would I be able to use that offer to squeeze some money out of any of the others? Or would they refuse because of the perception that the school might be a less prestigious program? Thanks for any info anyone's able to provide!

[GradSchoolGrad]

1 hour ago, nyc97 said:

Hi everyone, I tried looking for answers to this on the forum but couldn't find ay. I'm applying to a few MPP programs by their early action deadline (Harris, HKS, Sanford, and McCourt), and I'm wondering if it's worth applying to a couple of places that might be more likely to offer me merit aid (ex. American) in order to use them to negotiate for more money from the first round of schools. In a hypothetical situation where HKS rejects me/offers me nothing, Harris/McCourt/Sanford offer me 10k each, and American (or some equivalent school) offers me 25k, would I be able to use that offer to squeeze some money out of any of the others? Or would they refuse because of the perception that the school might be a less prestigious program? Thanks for any info anyone's able to provide!

First of all, ethically, you shouldn't just be applying to places just to get scholarship offers. Ethically, that just isn't right (you are taking away admissions seats from people who really want to go while you have 0 interest to attend, even as a safety school), and as someone trying to go not public policy, that is concerning.

Now in reality, when you do get scholarship offers, there are 2 things to keep in mind.

1. Scholarships generally roll down not up. That means the if you get 30K of Scholarship from Georgia State, at most, Harris school might give you 5K more (AT MOST...), but not much. If you got 10K from Harris, McCourt might swing you 20K). I have known of exceptions for highly vaunted students (like former Navy Seals).

2. Please be aware that school's generally know each other's budgeting situation. They meet each other in conferences and have a good idea if other programs are under budgetary stress or not.

THE BIG UNKNOWN.

1. You have to keep in mind that due to COVID - a lot of people deferred their acceptance to MPP programs, so this year's application cycle might be a lot more intense - meaning less money to float around (this is especially true as many schools are under financial duress). 

Edited August 31, 2020 by GradSchoolGrad

[Boolakanaka]

4 hours ago, GradSchoolGrad said:

First of all, ethically, you shouldn't just be applying to places just to get scholarship offers. Ethically, that just isn't right (you are taking away admissions seats from people who really want to go while you have 0 interest to attend, even as a safety school), and as someone trying to go not public policy, that is concerning.

Now in reality, when you do get scholarship offers, there are 2 things to keep in mind.

1. Scholarships generally roll down not up. That means the if you get 30K of Scholarship from Georgia State, at most, Harris school might give you 5K more (AT MOST...), but not much. If you got 10K from Harris, McCourt might swing you 20K). I have known of exceptions for highly vaunted students (like former Navy Seals).

2. Please be aware that school's generally know each other's budgeting situation. They meet each other in conferences and have a good idea if other programs are under budgetary stress or not.

THE BIG UNKNOWN.

1. You have to keep in mind that due to COVID - a lot of people deferred their acceptance to MPP programs, so this year's application cycle might be a lot more intense - meaning less money to float around (this is especially true as many schools are under financial duress). 

I ditto GSGs comments, especially about next year being not just competitive, but there are many financial issues that will be coming home to roost, even for the most well funded/endowed of programs.  The combination of those two items will be bracing for many folks...

[gradddygrad]

43 minutes ago, Boolakanaka said:

I ditto GSGs comments, especially about next year being not just competitive, but there are many financial issues that will be coming home to roost, even for the most well funded/endowed of programs.  The combination of those two items will be bracing for many folks...

Thanks to both of you for the concern. I'm aware that funding is going to be rough, but I have a municipal public sector job that might be eliminated because of budget cutbacks, so I can't really afford to wait years. Plus, the economic ramifications of all this will probably take a long time to resolve, so I don't think waiting an extra cycle will help THAT much. I think I'm a pretty strong applicant, but I definitely don't expect to get close to the kinds of funding people have been posting about here in recent cycles. That's part of why I'm asking, I'm really trying to look for any way to make the programs I want to attend as affordable as possible. 

[GradSchoolGrad]

1 hour ago, nyc97 said:

Thanks to both of you for the concern. I'm aware that funding is going to be rough, but I have a municipal public sector job that might be eliminated because of budget cutbacks, so I can't really afford to wait years. Plus, the economic ramifications of all this will probably take a long time to resolve, so I don't think waiting an extra cycle will help THAT much. I think I'm a pretty strong applicant, but I definitely don't expect to get close to the kinds of funding people have been posting about here in recent cycles. That's part of why I'm asking, I'm really trying to look for any way to make the programs I want to attend as affordable as possible. 

Hey, I get it, I applied to grad school after being a public servant for 8 years as well. Neither of us are saying you should apply later. 

However, 3 things:

1. From a practical stand point - applying to extra schools just to get a scholarship means a total waste of a time because unless you are extraordinary talent (former Olympian, former Pultzer prize winning journalist, and etc.) you won't be able to leverage scholarship from a lower prestige school to higher prestige school. Honestly, negotiating with a school threatening that you won't go without scholarship is probably more effective of a tactic vs. leveraging an alternative scholarship from a less regarded school. 

2. I get that financial security is important and everything, but one of the most interesting things I saw in policy school was how the former non-profits and public servant folks would be the first to do XYZ questionable activity for cash because they thought they earned the right to from their years of prior service. I am not saying that is you and I understand you are trying to do the right thing. Just saying - hearing some echos to the past. 

3. Since you are a strong candidate, I recommend you go where you will actually get the best ROI in terms of career outcomes. So for example, McCourt probably not the best options for career outcomes. Granted they haven't put out fact sheet with average post graduation salary in a few years (and the last one they conveniently omitted some people they couldn't track down / ignored the outliers with extremely high salary), last time they did post McCourt salary was less than post Georgetown undergrad.

Edited August 31, 2020 by GradSchoolGrad

[gradddygrad]

35 minutes ago, GradSchoolGrad said:

Hey, I get it, I applied to grad school after being a public servant for 8 years as well. Neither of us are saying you should apply later. 

However, 3 things:

1. From a practical stand point - applying to extra schools just to get a scholarship means a total waste of a time because unless you are extraordinary talent (former Olympian, former Pultzer prize winning journalist, and etc.) you won't be able to leverage scholarship from a lower prestige school to higher prestige school. Honestly, negotiating with a school threatening that you won't go without scholarship is probably more effective of a tactic vs. leveraging an alternative scholarship from a less regarded school. 

2. I get that financial security is important and everything, but one of the most interesting things I saw in policy school was how the former non-profits and public servant folks would be the first to do XYZ questionable activity for cash because they thought they earned the right to from their years of prior service. I am not saying that is you and I understand you are trying to do the right thing. Just saying - hearing some echos to the past. 

3. Since you are a strong candidate, I recommend you go where you will actually get the best ROI in terms of career outcomes. So for example, McCourt probably not the best options for career outcomes. Granted they haven't put out fact sheet with average post graduation salary in a few years (and the last one they conveniently omitted some people they couldn't track down / ignored the outliers with extremely high salary), last time they did post McCourt salary was less than post Georgetown undergrad.

Ah, gotcha. Sorry, I misunderstood the first time. And I was looking at McCourt because I'll probably end up wanting to work in DC (went there for an internship in undergrad and loved living there) and Georgetown seemed to be the best option in the area (ex. higher quality than American, more generous with funding than GW, more domestic focused than SAIS, etc). I figured the location would make up for weaknesses compared to other schools. 

[GradSchoolGrad]

49 minutes ago, nyc97 said:

Ah, gotcha. Sorry, I misunderstood the first time. And I was looking at McCourt because I'll probably end up wanting to work in DC (went there for an internship in undergrad and loved living there) and Georgetown seemed to be the best option in the area (ex. higher quality than American, more generous with funding than GW, more domestic focused than SAIS, etc). I figured the location would make up for weaknesses compared to other schools. 

As to McCourt, they do have surprisingly generous funding, but its a school that the rest of Georgetown kind of looks down upon due to lower than expected student quality and less impressive career outcomes. I'm not talking about HBS vs. HKS type stuff. I'm talking about alumni, grad students, and current undergrad students in Georgetown have told me they have sense of McCourt having one of the weaker grad school reps in Georgetown. Outside of Georgetown, most people don't now, and students hope the Georgetown brand takes them places, but like I said the student quality given the brand quality of Georgetown leaves a lot to be desired.

Location only helps you if you can score awesome internships, which is possible, but you don't exactly have a strong peer group helping you out (if anything, they weigh you down). Happy to talk more about this in detail if you DM me. 

[columbia09]

11 hours ago, GradSchoolGrad said:

As to McCourt, they do have surprisingly generous funding, but its a school that the rest of Georgetown kind of looks down upon due to lower than expected student quality and less impressive career outcomes. I'm not talking about HBS vs. HKS type stuff. I'm talking about alumni, grad students, and current undergrad students in Georgetown have told me they have sense of McCourt having one of the weaker grad school reps in Georgetown. Outside of Georgetown, most people don't now, and students hope the Georgetown brand takes them places, but like I said the student quality given the brand quality of Georgetown leaves a lot to be desired.

Location only helps you if you can score awesome internships, which is possible, but you don't exactly have a strong peer group helping you out (if anything, they weigh you down). Happy to talk more about this in detail if you DM me. 

What would that be ? And what’s bad about the Georgetown public policy school? I know some people who went there on a $20,000 scholarship. 

[GradSchoolGrad]

1 hour ago, columbia09 said:

What would that be ? And what’s bad about the Georgetown public policy school? I know some people who went there on a $20,000 scholarship. 

At Harvard, there is extensive collaboration and cross-programming between HBS and HKS (my sister went there + my former boss and I am a regular higher ed watcher). Concurrent to that there is noticeable semblance of program rivalry between HBS and HKS, more akin to sibling rivalry (I mean it is true that HBS gets more money and has lower acceptance rates). However, HKS is still wildly respected among the Harvard community and integrates with the rest of the Harvard academic community quite nicely. I use this as a point of comparison.

McCourt on the other hand is at large viewed by the Georgetown community as a spoiled brat (since they got a $100 million endowment 7 years ago or so... it is spread out over decades + major institutional commitments, so it isn't exactly the cash cow people think it is either) whose general student quality bring down the Georgetown brand and as a school has struggled to do well integrating with the rest of Georgetown. As someone who had the benefit of working with University administrators I can say that the backroom thoughts about McCourt playground behavior was not the nicest. 

Yes, I had a nice scholarship myself, and I know people who got $20k scholarships - it wasn't that hard when the economy was booming and all policy schools were struggling to get sufficient applicants. However, I will say that the ROI of the McCourt experience on average is noticeably less than at other schools they compete with, both in terms of career returns and skills improvement. 

My three issues with McCourt MPP where:
1. Anti-Career Focused Culture

As a professional school, I was shocked by how taboo it was talk about career. There was a strong focus on being nice and that meant that if talked about career you may make other people feel bad that they might not have been targeting their career interests. It doesn't help that much of the core faculty still mostly talk in terms of academic research goals and not how best to target career interests (notable exceptions abound). Career services tries, but when no one wants to play ball, there is not much game. There is reason there is so much career dissatisfaction + below undergrad post graduation salary metrics (last time they published it).

2. Not a Values Driven Community

Even though Georgetown as a University emphasizes a lot on doing things for good / humanity and etc., the policy school seems to be a Georgetown values free zone. There is very little sentiment of doing policy for good. There is a lot of supporting XYZ policy because you want to be seen as part of the popular crowd. Consequently, there was little real genuine political discussion about anything, because people didn't trust each other to be honest brokers to have intelligent conversations about anything. 

Without a sense of community creating student cohesion, you basically have grad students gone wild making Public Policy Cliques. Yes there were Mean Girls' type behavior like Excel Sheets ranking the American men by attractiveness (supposedly Pivot Tabeled and everything). 

3. Little Professional Development

The coursework was definitely challenging and I did pick up some academic skills. However, in terms of professional skills, I regressed, and probably would have ended up worse off than I started had I not caught myself and took remedial measures. Part of this has to do with how little to no professional development is incorporated into the programming. There was no system for peer career coaching (ad hoc peer coaching was frowned upon per the anti-career culture) and little to no formal guidance and direction for career by the school. The most that was available was guests/alums who came in every now and then at 7PM to talk about their career paths. Consequently, every time I talk to a McCourt student (to this day), I expect and get someone who struggles with holding a professional networking conversation and struggles with professional communication (written and oral) in general.

For example, I am talking about LinkedIn messages pretty much demanding a job or when I follow up with a McCourt student about my attempt to get the person an interview, I get sarcastic replies about how the person doesn't care for the opportunity after all. 

Edited September 1, 2020 by GradSchoolGrad

[columbia09]

1 hour ago, GradSchoolGrad said:

At Harvard, there is extensive collaboration and cross-programming between HBS and HKS (my sister went there + my former boss and I am a regular higher ed watcher). Concurrent to that there is noticeable semblance of program rivalry between HBS and HKS, more akin to sibling rivalry (I mean it is true that HBS gets more money and has lower acceptance rates). However, HKS is still wildly respected among the Harvard community and integrates with the rest of the Harvard academic community quite nicely. I use this as a point of comparison.

McCourt on the other hand is at large viewed by the Georgetown community as a spoiled brat (since they got a $100 million endowment 7 years ago or so... it is spread out over decades + major institutional commitments, so it isn't exactly the cash cow people think it is either) whose general student quality bring down the Georgetown brand and as a school has struggled to do well integrating with the rest of Georgetown. As someone who had the benefit of working with University administrators I can say that the backroom thoughts about McCourt playground behavior was not the nicest. 

Yes, I had a nice scholarship myself, and I know people who got $20k scholarships - it wasn't that hard when the economy was booming and all policy schools were struggling to get sufficient applicants. However, I will say that the ROI of the McCourt experience on average is noticeably less than at other schools they compete with, both in terms of career returns and skills improvement. 

My three issues with McCourt MPP where:
1. Anti-Career Focused Culture

As a professional school, I was shocked by how taboo it was talk about career. There was a strong focus on being nice and that meant that if talked about career you may make other people feel bad that they might not have been targeting their career interests. It doesn't help that much of the core faculty still mostly talk in terms of academic research goals and not how best to target career interests (notable exceptions abound). Career services tries, but when no one wants to play ball, there is not much game. There is reason there is so much career dissatisfaction + below undergrad post graduation salary metrics (last time they published it).

2. Not a Values Driven Community

Even though Georgetown as a University emphasizes a lot on doing things for good / humanity and etc., the policy school seems to be a Georgetown values free zone. There is very little sentiment of doing policy for good. There is a lot of supporting XYZ policy because you want to be seen as part of the popular crowd. Consequently, there was little real genuine political discussion about anything, because people didn't trust each other to be honest brokers to have intelligent conversations about anything. 

Without a sense of community creating student cohesion, you basically have grad students gone wild making Public Policy Cliques. Yes there were Mean Girls' type behavior like Excel Sheets ranking the American men by attractiveness (supposedly Pivot Tabeled and everything). 

3. Little Professional Development

The coursework was definitely challenging and I did pick up some academic skills. However, in terms of professional skills, I regressed, and probably would have ended up worse off than I started had I not caught myself and took remedial measures. Part of this has to do with how little to no professional development is incorporated into the programming. There was no system for peer career coaching (ad hoc peer coaching was frowned upon per the anti-career culture) and little to no formal guidance and direction for career by the school. The most that was available was guests/alums who came in every now and then at 7PM to talk about their career paths. Consequently, every time I talk to a McCourt student (to this day), I expect and get someone who struggles with holding a professional networking conversation and struggles with professional communication (written and oral) in general.

For example, I am talking about LinkedIn messages pretty much demanding a job or when I follow up with a McCourt student about my attempt to get the person an interview, I get sarcastic replies about how the person doesn't care for the opportunity after all. 

You activity seek out Alumni from Georgetown on LinkedIn and try to get them jobs? That’s nice, I only get spam about online degree programs and retirement offers. 

[GradSchoolGrad]

1 hour ago, columbia09 said:

You activity seek out Alumni from Georgetown on LinkedIn and try to get them jobs? That’s nice, I only get spam about online degree programs and retirement offers. 

Well with LinkedIn, I set it up to follow my undergrad and grad school alumni network. So if someone posts that they need a job help, I see if I can do something for them. I have had amazing success with undergrads... However, with McCourt kids... I'm done. Too many struggle buses. 

[columbia09]

1 hour ago, GradSchoolGrad said:

Well with LinkedIn, I set it up to follow my undergrad and grad school alumni network. So if someone posts that they need a job help, I see if I can do something for them. I have had amazing success with undergrads... However, with McCourt kids... I'm done. Too many struggle buses. 

I don’t get why they don’t want job offers? Do they think they’re too good for what you’re offering or do they think they can find a better job ?

[GradSchoolGrad]

22 minutes ago, columbia09 said:

I don’t get why they don’t want job offers? Do they think they’re too good for what you’re offering or do they think they can find a better job ?

Well it isn't job offers. It is networking opportunities. It is often talked about by staff at Georgetown the a shockingly number of McCourt students, especially those who come from a lower rated undergraduate school, acquire the Georgetown brand and develop an entitlement mentality. By that, I mean, they feel that they no longer have to do the work to network and build relationships to get jobs. They just think they can flash the Georgetown brand and have things land to them. I mean that false reality crashes to different people at different times during their grad career. However, I have also seen people be hit by that reality and then loiter in the "I can't compete with Harvard" mentality and then lose drive. Bottom line,  time and again, I see that McCourt students lack professionalism and grit. 

A lot of times, when I try to connect a McCourt person to an opportunity I have in my rolodex, they either:

1. Leave me cold or tell me to scram because they got something else they rather do they think they can easily acquire

2. Go to the networking opportunity totally unprepared (I don't blame them completely... McCourt never emphasized networking skills)... and sometimes I get a follow on call about why I referred a dud. 

Edited September 1, 2020 by GradSchoolGrad

[columbia09]

5 minutes ago, GradSchoolGrad said:

Well it isn't job offers. It is networking opportunities. It is often talked about by staff at Georgetown the a shockingly number of McCourt students, especially those who come from a lower rated undergraduate school, acquire the Georgetown brand and develop an entitlement mentality. By that, I mean, they feel that they no longer have to do the work to network and build relationships to get jobs. They just think they can flash the Georgetown brand and have things land to them. I mean that false reality crashes to different people at different times during their grad career. However, I have also seen people be hit by that reality and then loiter in the "I can't compete with Harvard" mentality and then lose drive. Bottom line,  time and again, I see that McCourt students lack professionalism and grit. 

A lot of times, when I try to connect a McCourt person to an opportunity I have in my rolodex, they either:

1. Leave me cold or tell me to scram because they got something else they rather do they think they can easily acquire

2. Go to the networking opportunity totally unprepared (I don't blame them completely... McCourt never emphasized networking skills)... and sometimes I get a follow on call about why I referred a dud. 

Your undergrad institution I hope is better. I have a coworker at McCourt now I hope he/she gets something out of it