what kind of experience add point?

[zxhocean]

Dear friend in gradcafe, you are amazing.

I new guy in this forum and research you topic and idea exchange for more than one year.

While bear in mind that mpp or mpa require high score and sound experience, I was extremely concern what kind of working experience matter or make you standout from hundreds applicants?

I have 4 year full time position in NGO practice until now, 2 year in  HIV/AIDS, I.5 year in housing(right now), 0.5 year in Leprosy recover and all my practice in china.

At the same time, provide consult (paid) to local government from 2013, and casual consult to grass root( start up) community base organizations(CBO) from 2012.

Also a fellow of a workshop on citizenship and social innovation in Harvard U, organized by a student run organization.

My question as follow:

1, did it significant matter or not of my consult to local government at city level, and to grassroot CBO?

2, attending some related seminar help application or not?

3, how to standout from application pool? you may know chinese applicant usually could not tell their story good as those western. 

while I have not confidence to get in HKS, WWS or yale, I would try to fight. Do you have any commend for international applicant like me?

 

I hope to hear more from you. And I hope these no bias against chinese or any nationality, race, or color.

 

[MPPgal]

I mean this in the nicest way possible and I say this as a non native English speaker myself, your English really needs polishing, make sure you get someone you trust a lot to read over your SOP because there are A LOT of mistakes in this paragraph and that could negatively affect you. Don´t worry total immersion helps a lot and once you are here your English will rapidly improve but for now you do need some extra help. Your first question well if it matters to you it matters, whether it is what makes you want to go into public policy and should be mentioned in your statement of purpose or not is up to you. Attending seminars and experiences all go in your resume and of course they help, don´t worry you will do fine, one thing though as an international student do make sure to get decent GREs (at least a 150 in verbal as it is not your first language and a 160 in quant) remember you are against a lot of other internationals and high GREs are the easiest ways to compare you and get them to look at your amazing application, it seems you hhave a lot of relevant experience so I think you can do well but for that you do need to sell yourself well and thus try to get a few native English speakers to look over your application.

Edited January 20, 2014 by MPPgal

[zxhocean]

MPPGAL, thank you so much.

I am working to improve my English. 

[hj2012]

I would have to echo mppgal's concern about your English writing ability. You already have a lot of decent work experience, so the best thing you could do for yourself to make yourself a competitive candidate is to have stellar scores on the GRE and the TOEFL.

[zxhocean]

thank you  so  much, Hj2012

Yes, I would take you advice into my plan to practice more.