How to get funding at Harris?

[Joe S.]

I was admitted to Chicago Harris and Carnegie Mellon ($) about a year and a half ago. I chose Chicago but inevitably deferred because the cost was astronomical. My GRE score was lacking to say the least and I was wondering what other things I could do besides added experience and increasing the score to help get funding to go back in Fall 2013.

Thanks!

[ridofme]

I know this doesn't address the "other things" part of your question, but I asked the Harris admissions office about their criteria for scholarships, and basically the only concrete answer I got was scoring in at least the 75th percentile on the GRE. They also said the statement of purpose was important...

I don't want to derail your thread here, but if there are any current students out there who got big scholarships to top schools, would you mind sharing any insights into how you got them? 4.0 GPAs? Perfect GREs? Native fluency in Russian, Arabic and Mandarin? Personal connections?

[MYRNIST]

For this post, I'm assuming we're talking about general merit scholarships, not diversity or service veteran ones.

I think the most important thing is the strength of your profile relative to other admits. My general impression from talking to admissions people is that you need to be one of the very top applicants to get a merit scholarship. Although there are a lot of variables that go into determining what a "top" applicant is, it is fair to assume that undergrad GPA, GRE scores, foreign language proficiency, work experience, etc. all play a big role. Given that, you can maximize your chances of getting money by applying to schools where your profile is stronger (by the aforementioned metrics) than most other applicants. That might mean applying to lower ranked schools, since even if you get accepted at a top ranked school you have a lower chance of getting money. If you have a 3.8 GPA and 1400 GRE, you stand a much higher chance at getting aid at a school where the median is a 3.3 and 1250 than at one where your 3.8 and 1400 are average.

For a personal example, my aid experiences followed this trend. I got rejected at Yale + Georgetown + WWS, given moderate aid (15-20k) at Tufts and SAIS, full ride at Pitt GSPIA, and full ride + stipend at GW-Elliott. The GW part throws it off a bit, since its just as good as Tufts or SAIS, but in general my finaid was correlated with the ranking of the school.

You can look at my stats if you want, but I don't think they by themselves matter - it's all about your competitiveness relative to other applicants at a particular school.

Edited October 21, 2012 by MYRNIST

[Clay Made]

For this post, I'm assuming we're talking about general merit scholarships, not diversity or service veteran ones.

I think the most important thing is the strength of your profile relative to other admits. My general impression from talking to admissions people is that you need to be one of the very top applicants to get a merit scholarship. Although there are a lot of variables that go into determining what a "top" applicant is, it is fair to assume that undergrad GPA, GRE scores, foreign language proficiency, work experience, etc. all play a big role. Given that, you can maximize your chances of getting money by applying to schools where your profile is stronger (by the aforementioned metrics) than most other applicants. That might mean applying to lower ranked schools, since even if you get accepted at a top ranked school you have a lower chance of getting money. If you have a 3.8 GPA and 1400 GRE, you stand a much higher chance at getting aid at a school where the median is a 3.3 and 1250 than at one where your 3.8 and 1400 are average.

For a personal example, my aid experiences followed this trend. I got rejected at Yale + Georgetown + WWS, given moderate aid (15-20k) at Tufts and SAIS, full ride at Pitt GSPIA, and full ride + stipend at GW-Elliott. The GW part throws it off a bit, since its just as good as Tufts or SAIS, but in general my finaid was correlated with the ranking of the school.

You can look at my stats if you want, but I don't think they by themselves matter - it's all about your competitiveness relative to other applicants at a particular school.

Well said. I do disagree on GWU being as good as Fletcher or SAIS because its not but that's not really relevant to this discussion.

I agree with everything else. Personally, I found Harris to be terribly managed when it came to adcoms. Time after time they ignored emails, didnt respond to calls and generally caused me to reject their offer. I was given moderate aid by Chicago and I did really like the school. However, the experience I had with adcoms really put me off the school. They do a terrible job selling the school, there's completely false information on their website, and in general it makes the school seem second rate. Now the professors on the hand were excellent in selling the school (which is the word of a friend I trust who is at the school now) so there's that.

The point I'm making is that aside from being badly run, Harris is quite stingy with their aid. I attempted to leverage aid I received from a different school to gain more but I didnt actually receive a response!!!

But everything MYRNIST said is correct. Its relative to the quality of students they encounter and review. I just felt you ought to know how Harris operates before you place all your eggs in one basket!! Good luck.

[ridofme]

Thank you for your insights. Unfortunately, I'm a "splitter" so to speak - my GPA is just under most of my target schools' stated medians, and my GRE is way above. My work experience and language skills are pretty good, but not spectacularly impressive, so it's hard to know where I stand. I guess I'll find out next March!

@Clay Made - what are you referring to when you say that "there's completely false information on their website"?

[nattynudnik]

Joe:

As a graduate of Harris, I have the impression there was a focus on GRE quant scores for MPP funding. Remember, this is a school that prides itself on doing quant right and rigor. Most of the people I knew with full rides had perfect or near perfect quant scores. I had a 760Q (which was 87th percentile at the time), 690V (96th percentile then), a lackluster undergrad GPA, a humanities degree, five years of work experience, and got about 2/3 funding for tuition. I also had a full ride offer at a school in California.

That was four years ago, but most of the staff is the same at Harris, so I think it's probably still true. As far as I could tell, most people received at least some aid. I also know the class that came in after me had a higher average GREs and GPS; things were getting more competitive. Oh, and take linear algebra - there are a couple people on the adcom that LOVE a background in linear algebra.

As for Clay Made's comments, it's hard to not to feel a little defensive considering there may be some hyperbole there, but I think she made the right decision for her. Chicago has its own style, UChicago especially, and customer service is just different there. From 2009 through at least 2011, there was only one admissions person, and I had a similar experience about not hearing back. However, the fit was right for me, so I got over it. If you're quant-focused, there's no better program. Period. Also, if you think you'll be staying in Chicago, take a look at the rosters for city gov, county gov, CPS - Harris practically runs the city.

Hope that helps!