HKS and the Mountain Of Debt

[jointdegree]

I didn't apply to HKS, but you guys have hit all the points of concerns that I had about the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. It is nice to know that the possibility might be there, but there

[linden]

Hello, all. I am reviving this thread with a question about funding decisions.

It just occurred to me that I might be foolishly holding out hope that I will receive a scholarship/fellowship next week. Does anyone know if HKS has already reached out to or interviewed candidates it is seriously considering for scholarships/fellowships? (And, this question does not apply to Reynolds or Zuckerman fellowships; I am asking about the other fellowships/scholarships, the ones that required only a one-page essay.) I was just curious if the fact that I have not heard a peep from financial aid all this time means that I am not in the running for any of these funding offers.

[zourah]

I'm certainly not expecting any fellowships, but while I haven't heard anything, I'm not willing to believe that means I should be in despair. I never saw a mention of interviews in the application process, so there's no real reason to believe that it isn't taking place in a black box somewhere, with no news to anyone until next Friday. We'll see.

[fes_alum]

Has anyone has received their official letter of acceptance yet. If so, was financial aid information included with your letter? Three years ago when I was admitted into the Kennedy School, financial aid information was included with your admission packet. Has this changed? Is financial aid information ONLY available online now?

[therunaround]

Update on the whole debt thing:

I just got back from GPPI's Open House and found out that their projected cost of attendance is 60k/yr. I was fortunately enough to get a 10k scholarship there. That's 50k/yr for me. So if I asked you "Is the Harvard education and brand worth 30k of extra debt?" what would you say? Personally, I think it's worth and extra 30k (I know I'm not talking about interest on that, here) to go to HKS over GPPI. No?

[deechi]

I was having this discussion with my director (who was questioning why I was even going to grad school in the first place) who just came over from the NSC at a young age. She related to me why she chose the University of Maryland over HKS, SAIS and GW. She said when she went up to the HKS admissions director and asked if a Harvard Degree is going to cost me $500 bucks a month down the line, will a harvard degree help me get a job that pays $500 bucks more a month?

The response?

No. Of course not.

The reality is that as long as you go to a top ten school you have just as good a chance to break into the "field" as you would anywhere else. It all depends on you and the effort you put into it. It's definitely a "check mark" on your resume but so is going to SIPA, WWS, SAIS or anywhere else and it's one of many, like work experience and foreign language ability. Then you have to consider that it is only that, a check mark. That definitely won't help you in the interview and chances are it won't give you that much of an edge your first year on the job. My office has more alumnus from Fletcher and American than Harvard and Yale, and trust me when I say there is absolutely no distinction made.

[therunaround]

I was having this discussion with my director (who was questioning why I was even going to grad school in the first place) who just came over from the NSC at a young age. She related to me why she chose the University of Maryland over HKS, SAIS and GW. She said when she went up to the HKS admissions director and asked if a Harvard Degree is going to cost me $500 bucks a month down the line, will a harvard degree help me get a job that pays $500 bucks more a month?

The response?

No. Of course not.

The reality is that as long as you go to a top ten school you have just as good a chance to break into the "field" as you would anywhere else. It all depends on you and the effort you put into it. It's definitely a "check mark" on your resume but so is going to SIPA, WWS, SAIS or anywhere else and it's one of many, like work experience and foreign language ability. Then you have to consider that it is only that, a check mark. That definitely won't help you in the interview and chances are it won't give you that much of an edge your first year on the job. My office has more alumnus from Fletcher and American than Harvard and Yale, and trust me when I say there is absolutely no distinction made.

While an interesting way to look at the issue, I think this misses the point. Firstly, this sort of thinking is only applicable to people who have a free ride option at a top notch school. For everyone else the $500 figure is much less because it should only represent the difference in the cost (and future monthly repayments) of your education at each of the schools. This is the point I was trying to get across in my previous post. Harvard isn't that much more expensive than some of these other options, at least based on no scholarship information. Secondly, I think in IR there is probably little advantage to going to HKS over SAIS, SIPA, WWS, etc. But! what if you decide down the line that you'd like to go into business or law or whatever. My theory is that a Harvard degree with give me more flexibility down the line than a degree from SAIS or SIPA. While SAIS has an excellent reputation (in fact sometime a better one than HKS), it flies in a smaller circle. An HKS degree will be well respected in virtually any field.

[linden]

The question of whether Harvard is worth loan payments of 500 or 800 more than another option cannot be answered simply by looking at the starting salary surveys that schools publish. The most recent surveys that are available from the three programs I am considering--GWU, GPPI, and HKS--show that HKS has slightly higher starting salary ranges than GPPI, which in turn leaves GWU (both Elliott and MPP) a bit behind. (And, remember, the DC-school surveys include the salaries of part-time students who are already on a career track and are obtaining a master's degree to secure better salaries or promotion potential. I wonder how much lower starting salaries for GWU and GPPI would be if part-time students were taken out of the equation...)

But, these surveys do not show what graduates are earning five or ten years after graduation. And, while these long-term salaries are in part dependent on the student's efforts and skills, I think certain names, such as HKS, will always open doors. I would like to have longer-term salary data to compare my schools. Does anyone know if this information is available? I realize that it is difficult for schools to get a good response rate from graduates ten or even five years down the road, and thus the data might not be available. Nevertheless, I have the nagging feeling that HKS graduates will leave their GWU, GPPI, SAIS, Elliott, and UMD peers behind after a few years.

[zourah]

But, these surveys do not show what graduates are earning five or ten years after graduation. And, while these long-term salaries are in part dependent on the student's efforts and skills, I think certain names, such as HKS, will always open doors. I would like to have longer-term salary data to compare my schools. Does anyone know if this information is available? I realize that it is difficult for schools to get a good response rate from graduates ten or even five years down the road, and thus the data might not be available. Nevertheless, I have the nagging feeling that HKS graduates will leave their GWU, GPPI, SAIS, Elliott, and UMD peers behind after a few years.

But now you bring in the question of correlation/causation. HKS gets to be choosier than most of these schools in terms of picking its students as well (I'd argue that SAIS is probably similarly selective, but perhaps not the others), and also self-selective in that some students choose not to take on that kind of debt risk. It could well be that those students with the confidence to take on such a debt might also be those inclined to take greater risks and then benefit from those rewards. Look, if you're comfortable with risk, HKS is a spectacular deal. Odds are, you'll be well-placed to pay back every penny. But if the stress level alone is going to cripple you, don't get into it. If you managed to get accepted at Kennedy, you're obviously doing something right and will certainly find ways to succeed coming from another program, even if you have to be a bit more creative/dedicated to make it happen.

Oh, and if you really are talking about funding from one of the other top programs (SAIS, SIPA, Fletcher, WWS...) you'd be an idiot not to take it. These are stellar schools - and though Harvard's brand is unbeatable, it's not actually magic.

[deechi]

The question of whether Harvard is worth loan payments of 500 or 800 more than another option cannot be answered simply by looking at the starting salary surveys that schools publish. The most recent surveys that are available from the three programs I am considering--GWU, GPPI, and HKS--show that HKS has slightly higher starting salary ranges than GPPI, which in turn leaves GWU (both Elliott and MPP) a bit behind. (And, remember, the DC-school surveys include the salaries of part-time students who are already on a career track and are obtaining a master's degree to secure better salaries or promotion potential. I wonder how much lower starting salaries for GWU and GPPI would be if part-time students were taken out of the equation...)

But, these surveys do not show what graduates are earning five or ten years after graduation. And, while these long-term salaries are in part dependent on the student's efforts and skills, I think certain names, such as HKS, will always open doors. I would like to have longer-term salary data to compare my schools. Does anyone know if this information is available? I realize that it is difficult for schools to get a good response rate from graduates ten or even five years down the road, and thus the data might not be available. Nevertheless, I have the nagging feeling that HKS graduates will leave their GWU, GPPI, SAIS, Elliott, and UMD peers behind after a few years.

I'd actually say it becomes less and less applicable as you enter the workforce, especially for the public sector. At that point the most important things are, what you have done and who you know, in reverse order. You have to keep in mind that the DC, Boston and New york consortium of schools are pumping out a thousand or so freshly minted MPA\MPP\MIA's a year. It's not as is you're doing something remarkable and\or extraordinary. So, if you're relying on a Harvard degree ten years in the past to set you apart from all of these people then chances are you aren't doing well as is.

I'm not saying don't go to Harvard, but what I am saying is that you need to make sure the program will give you what you want out of a graduate education and that you won't break the bank doing it. There's something to be said for being able to make some decisions without having to worry about if you're going to be able to pay off your 800 bucks a month in student loans (and on an entry level civil service position, that is not fun).

At the end of the day, an education is like anything else in this world: What you make of it. As an example, I've seen just as many people in the foreign service with degrees from State U or second tier private institutions as I have seen people with degrees from the "Harvard, Princeton and SAIS" group. In fact, I know a Deputy Assistant Secretary with a masters degree from an online institution. It's all relative.

Another example: See if you can tell me where these people went for their education: Senator J. William Fulbright, current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senator Mark Warner, House Minority Whip-elect Eric Cantor, former First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, General John Shalikashvili, Allen Dulles, John Foster Dulles, former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and President Faure Gnassingb

[thebends1996]

In the end, most of you that are still arguing for taking on the higher debt to go to HKS have already made up your mind. You have run the CBA in your head and have decided that the value of going to HKS is worth more than the debt you will take on (or the incremental debt). If you have come to that decision, then you should go that route. However, to think that the HKS degree in and of itself will put you ahead of other people in the long term is pretty absurd. Where do people, when they are applying for an executive or management type position, put their education on their resume? At the bottom. Eventually, in the long term, that piece of paper you have earned becomes less and less important. The things you have accomplished professionaly and the people you know will trump that piece of paper very, very quickly, but that student loan payment will be with you for a very long time.

Now, can it help you land that first entry level job a bit faster than a degree from another school? Possibly. I don't think anyone can clearly say yes or no to that question. Landing your first job is always the most difficult, and I think it also has a lot more to do with what you did in graduate school and who you know than where you went to school.

I hope I don't come off as degrading your accomplishment. Getting into HKS is an amazing accomplishment that should not go unnoticed (I doubt I would have been accepted had I applied there a few years ago). However, I really think you can accomplish the same goals, with less debt, from a number of schools. I know I chose money over perceived prestige and I ended up in an amazing position without a student loan payment that equates to a mortgage.

[therunaround]

There is no counterfactual to life.

[chellie99]

Has anyone noticed that HKS's estimated living expenses are quite a bit higher than other schools, even those in more expensive areas (HKS is $26K vs $20K for Georgetown, $21K for Berkeley), which drives up estimated cost of attendance. For the sake of making my comparisons as accurate as possible, do people think that it really costs that much more to live in the Cambridge area than DC or SF area? Why?

[therunaround]

Has anyone noticed that HKS's estimated living expenses are quite a bit higher than other schools, even those in more expensive areas (HKS is $26K vs $20K for Georgetown, $21K for Berkeley), which drives up estimated cost of attendance. For the sake of making my comparisons as accurate as possible, do people think that it really costs that much more to live in the Cambridge area than DC or SF area? Why?

I've noticed this too. Having gone to school for undergrad in boston and having lived in DC for the past two years, I have some experience with this. First of all, I estimate for myself that I spend about 250 a month on food. I cook at home a lot and am frugal when i go out. Add in another 50 a month for the occasional happy hour beer and you've got 300 a month for essential food items. This is the case in both cities. Restaurant costs don't differ that much between boston and DC, nor do grocery store prices.

Housing is actually similar in both cities. If you want to live in Dupont/Georgetown or Harvard Sq, you are going to spend a ton. I would say around $1000 - 1200 a month for your apartment. If you live a little further away from the cool areas (but still in nice, safe neighborhoods), you can get away with $800 a month in DC or Boston. For less expensive DC options, check out: Rosslyn, Ballston, Friendship Heights/Chevy Chase, Tenleytown, and Columbia Heights (can get a little dicey but is improving). You can add about $200 to either of these estimates if you aren't serious about finding a good place. I took a while and I have an awesome house with three other roommates for $750 a month in the Friendship Heights area.

In Boston, look at: Porter, Somerville, Davis, Central Sq, and Kenmore. In Boston, you have to get a little more lucky but it is always possible to find some place that's reasonable. I have a friend from undergrad who lives in Porter and pays $700 a month. Another that lives in Central by the T and pays $750. I think it's reasonable to expect to find some place for around $800 if you look. Remember these are year leases, so you have to find a subletter in the summer.

So that gives us an estimate of about $1100 a month, or for nine months that's $9,900. A lot! less than the $26k that they predict. This doesn't take into account travel costs, etc. But I don't see that coming to $16k. I think they are generous with their predictions to make sure that they don't underestimate for the purpose of loans. Remember, you don't have to take out the full Harvard estimate!

Conclusion: You can live on a lot less than $26,000 in Boston and the $18,000 or so that most schools estimate for DC. But you have to be smart about what you eat and where you live. We're grad students, it comes with the territory.

PS There are a ton of Happy Hour deals in DC, I will say that. I'm geting to half priced beer and hamburgers right now. =)

[zourah]

Has anyone noticed that HKS's estimated living expenses are quite a bit higher than other schools, even those in more expensive areas (HKS is $26K vs $20K for Georgetown, $21K for Berkeley), which drives up estimated cost of attendance. For the sake of making my comparisons as accurate as possible, do people think that it really costs that much more to live in the Cambridge area than DC or SF area? Why?

I did notice, and I think it's simply a form of generosity on their part - if you really want to take out enough in loans to live very comfortably for your two years, well, they'll be enablers to that. The idea that my cost-of-living would be higher at KSG than at SIPA (SIPA!) is a bit ridiculous, but then again, I'd rather have them overestimate than underestimate...

[don]

Did any1 apply for the Reynolds Fellowship? If so, did you get a response yet?

[pepper84]

Crunching the numbers, assuming 120k of debt, between the LRAP and the Federal Loan Forgiveness Program, this is still a ginormous risk. Harvard's LRAP only lasts for 5 years, a much shorter time than any standard loan repayment program, and only substantially helps you if you're making very, very little money. The more promising program, the FLFP---when I spoke to someone in DoE yesterday about this program--they said they wouldn't know any details about the program until 2017 when the first eligible person applies for forgiveness! So, for example, they haven't hammered out the details on whether if you lose your job for a month (very possible, given this economy and our very likely slow road back) in the 10-year period between graduation and 120 monthly payments, if that will disqualify you from the program (FLFP requires that you be a FT employee in the np/government/public sector). And, as someone astutely pointed out, all of this depends on whether Congress appropriates enough funds for the program your graduating year (and seriously, when do they do that?). Basically, the woman I spoke with advised me NOT to count on this program.

I'm thinking more and more that the debt load here simply isn't worth it, especially in this economy. This makes me so incredibly sad/frustrated, because this had been absolutely where I wanted to go.

[therunaround]

Oh man, just live a little and go with it. Or don't. But stop agonizing, everyone. Look, life's an adventure and you don't know how it will turn out. Just go through it and make the best decisions you can at the time. If you think Harvard is for you and you want to deal with the risk (like me) then go for it! If you are nervous about making the decision and want to play it safe, then don't! Ultimately, none of us know what the "right" decision is, not you, not me, and not a person from DoE. Only time will tell.

Everyone just relax, make a choice, and don't look back! Be excited. We have our whole lives ahead of us. It's a great time to start a career in public service. In the words of Bobby McFerrin, "Don't worry. Be happy."

[lbjane]

I agree with TheRunAround that you have to make the best decision for yourself. I chose to choose an lower-ranked, in-state program (LBJ) over a higher-ranked, DC school (MSFS) because I was just not comfortable taking on a huge debt load. However, someone else may have different priorities and it really comes down to what you're comfortable with doing. I say to do your homework, calculate your loans and what it will look like when you repay them, then weigh the costs with the pros and cons of each program. There's probably not one "right" answer for most people, but you can probably make a good decision if you know what you're getting yourself into with each program.

It was really hard to turn down MSFS because I really loved the program, the campus, and being able to study in DC, but at the end of the day, I felt that the debt load would close more doors than going to MSFS would open. I wanted to have the option of waiting a while for a great job or taking a lower-paying job in the non-profit or development sector, and I felt that a high load of debt would prevent that. I can't know how things would have turned out if I'd gone to MSFS and whether the debt would have really been a problem, but I was very happy at LBJ and shortly after graduating from LBJ, I started a job that was one of my top career choices when I entered grad school. Plus, I don't have any debt from grad school and am able to save more for retirement and buying my first home. So, I've been very happy with my decision.

[zourah]

Since this is the only HKS thread still active, really, I thought I'd link to a longish blog post covering some of the info from today's sessions. I'll offer my own impressions here when I get the time, though for now I'll just say I'm very tempted to come, though I am still going to go see Fletch, SIPA and SAIS next week.

[therunaround]

Since this is the only HKS thread still active, really, I thought I'd link to a longish blog post covering some of the info from today's sessions. I'll offer my own impressions here when I get the time, though for now I'll just say I'm very tempted to come, though I am still going to go see Fletch, SIPA and SAIS next week.

Thanks, zourah. Nice summary. Did anyone else go to the HKS open house? I went and loved it (as most of you probably expected, ) I was especially impressed by the Institute of Politics and the JFK Forum. In fact, I went to the Forum friday and saw Ken Bruns, Doris Kerns Goodwin, and Peter Gammons talk about baseball as America's pasttime. Last monday, barney frank spoke. Next week, David Plouffe is speaking. This experience confirmed for me that the Kennedy School is an incredable place to study that offers more than just a great breadth of courses and a top-notch credential.

[don]

Hi zourah/therunaround: did they state when applicants for the Catherine B. Reynolds fellowship will be notified?

[Monika]

I also got accepted at Harvard and am having a difficult time justifying the sticker price. I think when it comes down to it, we must all remember that the main point of graduate school is to land us a good job, and that can happen from many universities.

[spitts77]

I went to HKS open house and was also impressed by institute of politics. I worry about what seems to be a lack of a strong IR program. Also, I worry whether MPAs are considered sort of below the MPP students. Any thoughts? I am deciding between HKS, SAIS, Fletcher, Georgetown. My thing is national security.

[spitts77]

...and there's the synthesis. I just read that first post after having spent two days trying to explain to family/close friends why I was still bummed about getting WL at Walsh even after hearing from HKS - there seems to be a lot of magical thinking about Harvard as the perfect institution. So long as my fellow gradcafe denizens are evaluating rationally, I'm totally unsurprised that a good many will decide that HKS is their first choice...I just read that first post and saw the same words I'd been hearing from people who really don't understand these programs very well, and I'm sorry to have implied that anyone here wasn't carefully considering all options.

My family is the same - when I got in to HKS, they were like "How can you not go?" Granted, my family is from England and so Harvard is a big familiar name over there. I almost feel guilty if I don't choose HKS.