Bush School

[txaggie10]

I am new to the site (i wish i had found it a lot sooner!) but i was just wondering if anyone had any opinions on the Bush School of Government at Texas A&M. I have been accepted and am very familiar with it due to getting my undergrad at A&M but was wondering what kind of reputation it has outside of Texas. Any thoughts?

[90sNickelodeon]

I've heard of it at least (and I live in Washington, D.C.)!

[jduds]

I am new to the site (i wish i had found it a lot sooner!) but i was just wondering if anyone had any opinions on the Bush School of Government at Texas A&M. I have been accepted and am very familiar with it due to getting my undergrad at A&M but was wondering what kind of reputation it has outside of Texas. Any thoughts?

From the career stats, it looks like people do go to federal agencies in DC. So the reputation has to be somewhat decent.

http://bush.tamu.edu/careerservices/employment/

[wendol]

Hi

I have been admitted to the Bush School for the MPIA course with 30% aid. I would like to hear some reviews on the school from other posters.

It is a very attractive option more so for the expenditure involved. Any points on recognition would be most welcome.

Regards

[georgia82]

I grew up in Texas and had not heard of it until very recently. However, it is a fairly new school so that could be one explanation. It is a smaller program so that could be good or bad depending on what type of learning environment you are looking for. Taking advantage of the in-state tuition would be great, but I would much rather be at LBJ in Austin, which I think is more highly regarded anyway. I would say it depends on what your other options are. The Bush School doesnt sound like a bad place to get an MIA in spite of the fact that you would have to live in College Station two more years. Personally I am not a huge fan of that place. And I suspect the program will become more reputable over time. What other schools are you considering?

[TTUjay]

The Bush School has a very good reputation in certain circles outside of Texas. Therefore, it really depends on what it is you want to do. Georgia82 certainly has a point in regard to College Station vs. Austin, but LBJ is nowhere near as reputable in the field of International Affairs. That's really where the Bush School stands out. If you want to study domestic policy, LBJ blows Bush out of the water, but if you are looking to study IA, Bush is definitely far more superior (this from LBJ faculty, too!). Like Georgia82, I too am interested in your other options...Cheers!

[lbjane]

Hmmmm, I'm a recent LBJ alum and I have to disagree with TTUJay that the Bush School is much stronger than LBJ in international affairs. I think that the Bush School has a decent focus in national security and intelligence aspects of international affairs, but that it's really lacking in other aspects of international affairs. I think that the LBJ School does a much better job of balancing security, development, and diplomacy, which are all integral aspects of foreign affairs.

I applied to the Bush School when I applied to schools and I attended their interview weekend. I was underwhelmed with the students that I met. It seemed like more of them were coming straight from undergrad and had less work experience than students at other programs I considered. Very few had any substantive international experience, which is also important if you're going to study international affairs. I was also concerned that their international affairs program seemed to focus primarily on intelligence and security, even though they did offer some courses in other areas of international affairs. Again, I did not ultimately attend the Bush School, so that's based almost solely on my experience at the interview weekend.

I work in DC now, and my impression is that the Bush School is reasonably well known, but that it would depend on what you want to do. If you want to work for the federal government, you'd be fine, but if you're looking to get into the private sector or to work in politics (campaigns, the HIll, etc) it's probably not as well known because it's a newer program and has not been very highly ranked (36th in the last US News and World Report rankings).

I can't say that this is true for the Bush School, but I know that the bulk of LBJ alums are in Texas and DC and I would guess that the situation is similar for the Bush School. So, if you're looking to work in state or local government in another state or to work internationally, it's probably not that well known. However, Texas A&M is well known and you would be able to tap in to A&M's general alumni network and potentially overcome that.

Good luck with your decision!

[surrender]

The Bush School was the only school that I applied to, and I was accepted to the MPIA program. I was a marginal applicant due to a dire GPA, so I didn't bother applying to the top tier schools, but my GRE and recommendations were strong enough to get me in. I had considered applying to LBJ as well, but my undergrad (U. Houston) professors steered me to A&M, since they held their IA program in higher esteem.

To be honest, I'm chuffed that I was accepted anywhere, and my campus visit and interview session left me with a positive impression of the program. Since I'm a lefty who has lived in big cities all my life, CS will take some getting used to, but at least Houston and Austin are only a short drive away :mrgreen:

[twoedge]

I think the Bush School has a very, very solid reputation when it comes to national security and intelligence studies. Don't know much about their performance in other IR fields, but I can say that having enrolled in the Bush School's distance ed. certificate in Homeland Security program over the past year no doubt helped me get into G'Town and GW's security policy programs in the fall. They have some good professors there...David McIntyre is especially well known. I've seen him quoted in various books and journals. So if security is at all your interest, you're going to a good school.

As far as what surrender said regarding life as a lefty from a big city going to College Station. One of my professors referred to himself, in homage to two of his great-grandfathers who were confederate soldiers, that in many ways he was an "old un-reconstructed rebel." I'm not really a lefty, but I have lived in L.A. practically my whole life, and this was a rather silly comment from my perspective. Then again, during my undergrad career at UCLA, I once had a history professor remark that it must sound funny to our ears that white settlers/colonists in Australia and Israel deliberately avoided using native labor because it must be hard to believe that there was a time that white people actually liked to work.

So in conclusion, the Bush School is a great place to go...a new and up and coming school with a growing reputation. Both extreme rightist and leftist professors with tenure are prone to saying things that make them look like jack asses.

[trifflin5k]

Hello y'alls. I am applying to the international affairs masters program at the Bush School at Texas A&M. So far, the admissions committee invited me to attend the MPIA Interview Conference next week on March 5 and 6. I was wondering, txaggie10, wendol, lbjane and surrender, if any of you had advice and tips on how to give a positive first-impression at the two 15-minute interviews and perform well on the writing assessment. What kind of questions will the interviewers at Bush ask me?

As for myself, I earned a BS in Biochemistry from a large public university in California with a cumulative GPA of 3.86. I was once enrolled in the microbiology Ph.D program at UT Austin for 2.5 years but decided to drop out for several reasons, mainly that I was more interested in international affairs than academic research science and that basic lab research was not for me. I managed to get out with a graduate GPA of 3.64. Outside my academic credentials, I got on my recent GRE exam a 720 for quant, 540 for verb and 4.5 for analytical writing. I am also very proficient in Mandarin Chinese, which I built up from growing up abroad in Taiwan and Hong Kong (Bush offers a China Studies certificate along with the MPIA degree, which interests me). I also acquired more than enough leadership experience through serving as a volunteer summer English teacher in Beijing, tutoring all levels of chemistry and biology to college and high school students and working as a TA twice for an first-year introductory biology course at UT. What do you think are my chances of getting into Bush?

[oxana]

I got an information packet from them after taking GREs. On the pamphlet, on the back cover, they had President George W. Bush Sr.'s quote (it may have been Jr. -- hard to recall considering the pamphlet went straight to trash as soon as I saw the quote)... The quote which had something to do with history (+), was surprisingly very stupid, grammatically incorrect, with a false logical process. It may have been a too quick of dismissal on my part, but I instantly felt negative about the school. They could have found a gramatically and logically correct quote to represent their school! Ok, he is Bush and he donated to the school, but then there are actually very influential thinkers in the world, who actually have something of value to say (who may not be rich). I just can't believe they chose that quote. Plus, public policy at a school paid for by the Bush family's oil money? Ridiculously contradictory. I wish I could find the quote for you... Did you read the article about how some philanthropists and very rich people actually get richer by donating because the government pays them back from our taxes at a 1:1 rate. Yup, they donate, and we, the people, pay them back an equal amount. It's just more advertising for them, so don't be fooled.

I am new to the site (i wish i had found it a lot sooner!) but i was just wondering if anyone had any opinions on the Bush School of Government at Texas A&M. I have been accepted and am very familiar with it due to getting my undergrad at A&M but was wondering what kind of reputation it has outside of Texas. Any thoughts?

[flyers29]

On 2/23/2010 at 7:55 AM, oxana said:

I got an information packet from them after taking GREs. On the pamphlet, on the back cover, they had President George W. Bush Sr.'s quote (it may have been Jr. -- hard to recall considering the pamphlet went straight to trash as soon as I saw the quote)... The quote which had something to do with history (+), was surprisingly very stupid, grammatically incorrect, with a false logical process. It may have been a too quick of dismissal on my part, but I instantly felt negative about the school. They could have found a gramatically and logically correct quote to represent their school! Ok, he is Bush and he donated to the school, but then there are actually very influential thinkers in the world, who actually have something of value to say (who may not be rich). I just can't believe they chose that quote. Plus, public policy at a school paid for by the Bush family's oil money? Ridiculously contradictory. I wish I could find the quote for you... Did you read the article about how some philanthropists and very rich people actually get richer by donating because the government pays them back from our taxes at a 1:1 rate. Yup, they donate, and we, the people, pay them back an equal amount. It's just more advertising for them, so don't be fooled.

Surprised it took 11 posts till someone replied with this...