MPP - deciding between GW, Georgetown and Brandeis!

[bazoid]

I've got acceptances to several MPP programs. Currently, the top of my list consists of George Washington, Georgetown and Brandeis (not necessarily in that order). I'm having a really tough time deciding between the three. My primary area of interests is urban and housing policy. Here are my pros/cons:

George Washington
- Pros: heard really good things about career services/support, best ranked of my top choices, in DC (lots of job/internship possibilities)
- Cons: doesn't seem like urban policy is a huge area of focus; couldn't really find many faculty on their website who were doing research I'd want to get involved with, most expensive of the three after financial aid (though very close in price to Georgetown)

Georgetown
- Pros: really strong on quantitative skills, strong brand name of school, found some faculty doing research that aligns with my interests
- Cons: haven't heard great things about career services, also heard that the subject-specific coursework is not fantastic (as opposed to the quant classes, which are)

Brandeis
- Pros: supposedly they take a much more progressive approach to policy issues which is intriguing to me; a professor reached out about shared research interests which was really cool and I'd love to get involved with her work; small program so maybe more opportunities to connect with faculty; most affordable of all three (about $10k less than Georgetown)
- Cons: not strong on quant, small program (both a pro and con!) so fewer peers to connect with; I have lived in Boston most of my life so it's less exciting to me and maybe has fewer policy-related job opportunities
 

Other schools I got into but which are probably off the table:

- Syracuse Maxwell MPA: I'd prefer a two-year program and to be in a larger city
- Chicago Harris MPP: heard about not-great student experiences online
- NYU Wagner MSPP: didn't get a lot of funding; also a one-year program

Any thoughts or perspectives would be very helpful!!
 

[GradSchoolGrad]

So realistically, you have 5 choices. I think your challenge is identifying what trade offs are you more willing to make and what trade offs are you less willing to make.

So lets do this one by one.

- Brandeis - just drop them period. Unless you really want to do local Boston activism, they really don't have much value for you. The program is basically amateur hour and their student's don't exactly have competitive outcomes. Even the stars that career service spotlight aren't doing anything special (AKA: run of the mill stuff in other schools)

- Syracuse Maxwell - this is probably the best academic school. If you have any ambitions to go for your PhD, this is the best option.

- U. Chicago Harris - this is the best school if you want to focus hard on urban and housing policy from a combined academic/applied approach. I would argue they have more a sophisticated quant than Georgetown and much better applied opportunities. I think it is important to explain where the bad student experiences come from rather than paint with a broad brush.
a. U. Chicago Harris is a terrible place for international students because it isn't exactly an international city.
b. The size of the program makes it challenging for those who don't try to be proactively social
c. The intensity of the quant creates a lot of anxiety

From a pure career potential perspective, I would choose this one.

- Georgetown McCourt - this gives you the most career flexibility between the brand and the quant skills that you learn. Just be aware you'll be on your own career wise. You also won't have too many peers or faculty to help you with your policy area of interest. This is especially true since urban and housing policy is a rather niche field once people realize that getting involved means financial modeling, zoning policy, and land management laws. If you are okay with striking it out on your own academically and career wise but take advantage of everything DC  has to offer, this is a good option.

- NYU Wagner MSPP - this is a good option if you want to just whirlwind into a NYC internship while at school and hopefully land a job from there. Basically, not have a minimum real grad academic or community experience and get a degree stamped. NYU Wagner is infamous for have a very weak community experience and peer support.

- Georgetown Trachtenburg - I think of this as the all around compromise option. They aren't particularly good at one thing, but there are no major drawbacks. Your career would be based heavily upon what series of internships you get from the DC area. You arguably get the bare bones with quant, but enough to make you on par with the average. I do like how GW Policy students tend to be the nicest and most supportive among all the ones I encountered. They have the 3rd weakest brand and alumni of your roster after Brandeis and Wagner (arguably they have large numbers of alumni, but the affinity isn't that strong). I think of GW as the objective lowest branded school where you are still within striking distance to most prestige jobs, but then if you do want a prestige job you are going to have to work your butt off networking unless you have a special status or a Congressman's son/daughter.

[bazoid]

3 hours ago, GradSchoolGrad said:

So realistically, you have 5 choices. I think your challenge is identifying what trade offs are you more willing to make and what trade offs are you less willing to make.

So lets do this one by one.

- Brandeis - just drop them period. Unless you really want to do local Boston activism, they really don't have much value for you. The program is basically amateur hour and their student's don't exactly have competitive outcomes. Even the stars that career service spotlight aren't doing anything special (AKA: run of the mill stuff in other schools)

I'm growing more inclined to agree with you the more I learn about them. I don't necessarily see them as a bad program, but it does seem like they are very weak on quant, which is a big part of why I wanted to do an MPP in the first place. 

- Syracuse Maxwell - this is probably the best academic school. If you have any ambitions to go for your PhD, this is the best option.

I don't really see myself pursuing a PhD, but this is good to know.

- U. Chicago Harris - this is the best school if you want to focus hard on urban and housing policy from a combined academic/applied approach. I would argue they have more a sophisticated quant than Georgetown and much better applied opportunities. I think it is important to explain where the bad student experiences come from rather than paint with a broad brush.
a. U. Chicago Harris is a terrible place for international students because it isn't exactly an international city.
b. The size of the program makes it challenging for those who don't try to be proactively social
c. The intensity of the quant creates a lot of anxiety

From a pure career potential perspective, I would choose this one.

The things you mention definitely came up in the student experiences I read. Some other issues that I came across:
1) They have massively increased class size over the last 5 years or so. Graduating class size doubled between 2018 and 2020 and from what I can tell, it's continued to go up since. I saw comments from students that feel like the program has "growing pains" and looking at how fast they're trying to grow, I can certainly see why it would.
2) Some students felt there was an overemphasis on economics, to the detriment of other subjects that should've been covered in more detail.

- Georgetown McCourt - this gives you the most career flexibility between the brand and the quant skills that you learn. Just be aware you'll be on your own career wise. You also won't have too many peers or faculty to help you with your policy area of interest. This is especially true since urban and housing policy is a rather niche field once people realize that getting involved means financial modeling, zoning policy, and land management laws. If you are okay with striking it out on your own academically and career wise but take advantage of everything DC  has to offer, this is a good option.

Yes, other students/alums I've connected with have mentioned that career services aren't very helpful and you have to make a significant effort to get their support. 

- NYU Wagner MSPP - this is a good option if you want to just whirlwind into a NYC internship while at school and hopefully land a job from there. Basically, not have a minimum real grad academic or community experience and get a degree stamped. NYU Wagner is infamous for have a very weak community experience and peer support.

Definitely not looking for the rubber stamp; NYC would be a fascinating place to study but it just isn't worth the drawbacks to me.

- Georgetown Trachtenburg - I think of this as the all around compromise option. They aren't particularly good at one thing, but there are no major drawbacks. Your career would be based heavily upon what series of internships you get from the DC area. You arguably get the bare bones with quant, but enough to make you on par with the average. I do like how GW Policy students tend to be the nicest and most supportive among all the ones I encountered. They have the 3rd weakest brand and alumni of your roster after Brandeis and Wagner (arguably they have large numbers of alumni, but the affinity isn't that strong). I think of GW as the objective lowest branded school where you are still within striking distance to most prestige jobs, but then if you do want a prestige job you are going to have to work your butt off networking unless you have a special status or a Congressman's son/daughter.

The less rigorous quant is maybe the biggest downside of GW for me - however, they do have a data science certificate you can pursue alongside the MPP and I think I might do this if I attend to strengthen my quant education.

Thanks so much for your detailed response! I responded to some of your comments above, in orange. A few follow up questions:

- I think of Georgetown as definitely having a stronger brand than GW on the national level, but is this true when you're applying to policy jobs in DC? I'm especially curious because Trachtenberg's program actually ranks slightly higher than McCourt's according to US News (not sure how much stock people put in that, though).

- (I'm making the assumption you're a Georgetown alum here, sorry if I'm wrong) Did you find that Georgetown made it difficult to get academic support as well as career support? Other students/alums I've talked to have mentioned some frustration on the career side, but I hadn't heard any grumblings about their academic support systems, and I'd heard faculty are generally helpful and approachable.

- What exactly do you mean by "prestige jobs"? I don't see myself pursuing an elected position and I'm not too concerned with climbing up the ranks in an organization to some sort of powerful role. At the same time, I want to set myself up for opportunities to do challenging, interesting work that is reasonably well compensated. (I know the MPP isn't the degree to pursue if you're hoping to make a lot of money...I don't need to strike it rich; just hoping to make a comfortable living.)
In other words - I'm trying to clarify whether you think GW will set you up for mediocre job opportunities in a broad sense, or if it just won't be the best program for a specific set of highly coveted positions (also trying to clarify what those positions are).

[Boolakanaka]

1 hour ago, bazoid said:

Thanks so much for your detailed response! I responded to some of your comments above, in orange. A few follow up questions:

- I think of Georgetown as definitely having a stronger brand than GW on the national level, but is this true when you're applying to policy jobs in DC? I'm especially curious because Trachtenberg's program actually ranks slightly higher than McCourt's according to US News (not sure how much stock people put in that, though).

- (I'm making the assumption you're a Georgetown alum here, sorry if I'm wrong) Did you find that Georgetown made it difficult to get academic support as well as career support? Other students/alums I've talked to have mentioned some frustration on the career side, but I hadn't heard any grumblings about their academic support systems, and I'd heard faculty are generally helpful and approachable.

- What exactly do you mean by "prestige jobs"? I don't see myself pursuing an elected position and I'm not too concerned with climbing up the ranks in an organization to some sort of powerful role. At the same time, I want to set myself up for opportunities to do challenging, interesting work that is reasonably well compensated. (I know the MPP isn't the degree to pursue if you're hoping to make a lot of money...I don't need to strike it rich; just hoping to make a comfortable living.)
In other words - I'm trying to clarify whether you think GW will set you up for mediocre job opportunities in a broad sense, or if it just won't be the best program for a specific set of highly coveted positions (also trying to clarify what those positions are).

I hate to say it, but for many folks, whether it's true or not. GW, is meet with, how come he/she didn't get into Georgetown---it has that much of a name value.

[GradSchoolGrad]

2 hours ago, bazoid said:

Thanks so much for your detailed response! I responded to some of your comments above, in orange. A few follow up questions:

- I think of Georgetown as definitely having a stronger brand than GW on the national level, but is this true when you're applying to policy jobs in DC? I'm especially curious because Trachtenberg's program actually ranks slightly higher than McCourt's according to US News (not sure how much stock people put in that, though).

- (I'm making the assumption you're a Georgetown alum here, sorry if I'm wrong) Did you find that Georgetown made it difficult to get academic support as well as career support? Other students/alums I've talked to have mentioned some frustration on the career side, but I hadn't heard any grumblings about their academic support systems, and I'd heard faculty are generally helpful and approachable.

- What exactly do you mean by "prestige jobs"? I don't see myself pursuing an elected position and I'm not too concerned with climbing up the ranks in an organization to some sort of powerful role. At the same time, I want to set myself up for opportunities to do challenging, interesting work that is reasonably well compensated. (I know the MPP isn't the degree to pursue if you're hoping to make a lot of money...I don't need to strike it rich; just hoping to make a comfortable living.)
In other words - I'm trying to clarify whether you think GW will set you up for mediocre job opportunities in a broad sense, or if it just won't be the best program for a specific set of highly coveted positions (also trying to clarify what those positions are).

Okay one at a time.

- No one looks at the US News rankings for public policy other than people applying to schools and administrators. People that hire don't know it exists. Unlike US news rankings for other things like business or law schools with its well thought out formulas, the Policy one is basically a popularity contest based upon academic reputation. That naturally favors schools with a PhD program. GW has a PhD program and Georgetown doesn't (although it plans to have one in a few years).

- As for Georgetown, you get support (academically or career wise) if you try to do things that are popular. So career wise, if you want to do Presidential Merit Fellows, which dozens of people apply for every year, you'll get help. If you want to do Education Policy, you'll get help. If you want to do something that is a little bit more niche, no one will care for you, and it is on your own to figure out. Most likely, you didn't hear academic grumblings because you likely talked to someone who was in a popular policy area (Education, Environment, Gender/Family Policy, and International Development). Housing Policy (at least when people get serious about it) is consistently one of the less popular policy areas at McCourt. In my class, there was 1 person who was interested in it. There was 1 person in the class above me (he was a dual degree with MBA actually). 0 in the class below me. More importantly, there is no professor that i know of, who is a natural fit to teach the subject or help you with it in the Georgetown empire. The closest might be the real estate professors on the business side. Part of the problem is that Georgetown is trying to get better but in the grand scheme of things, its weak on local and state and public-private partnerships. 

So usually people with unpopular policy interest do one of the following things at McCourt: a. persist by themselves and be lonely. This is what housing policy friends did. b. Transfer to another policy school due to lack of academic support. I knew a Food policy person do that. c. change policy areas to something that I would get more support in (this is what I did) and stop chasing academic passions. 

In U. Chicago Harris, there is a Plethora of Urban Policy and Housing policy support just by virtue of being Chicago + academics who research the topic.

- Newsflash, very few people with MPP without a non-MPP graduate degree (usually law or MBA) get elected into Federal Office, or even State/Local office. 

- By prestigious jobs, I mean the most competitive or high risk Tier 1 jobs in what I call the "dancing with the HKS and Princeton alumni crowd". Keep in mind a significant number of the HKS/Princeton MPP alums go to non-competitive jobs to chase their passions, but a vast majority do. I would categorize these prestigious jobs into these 7 categories.
 

a. Anything related with a start up (especially tech) as a public benefit company.

b. Competitive federal career roles or programs like the McCain Fellowship or working for the Department of Energy de-nuke Agency (very few new roles)

c. Highly Competitive (emphasis on competitive and not branded) Think Tanks, Research Institutes, or Research oriented consulting firms (ABT associates for example)

d. Competitive Private Sector stuff (e.g., The McKinseys... The Deloittes)

e. High impact state/local or non-profit via an accelerated promotion track - so the Mayor's Policy advisor or Speech writer or City Council's Legislative Aide or Non-Profit Policy Director  

g. Policy Shop for a major private company or consortium 

h. Elite Public Sector Politically Connected Roles like White House Internship/Fellowship or Housing Committee staff role

*As a note, PMF is highly well regarded and has a lot of real opportunities. However, its luster has kind of fallen over the years. When my sister was at HKS, there were stars from her class who got rejected. Now the standards have been lowered a lot to pass muster. I know people who self-admittedly were B students with lackluster career backgrounds who got PMF when their much higher achieving spouses, siblings, and etc. got rejected from an earlier period. 

If you go to Harris, these positions are in striking range. McCourt, kind of within striking range if you work hard and network well. Go to GW, you really have to work your butt off and get really lucky.

[Charles Herman]

I am also considering MPP programs. I am looking at GW and UMD. You said you found good reviews on support etc. can you elaborate? I just started my research.