This section of the forum always gives great great advice.
I was accepted to Columbia SIPA (no funding), Harvard Graduate School of Education (waiting on package) and USC Sol Price (waiting on package).
Ultimately, I am interested in studying urban policy and management. However, I would not mind working in consulting/private sector post-grad.
I would love to attend SIPA but the cost is just outrageous…however, if the alumni network and job prospects are worth it, I’ll consider it.
Right now, my top choice is Harvard grad considering the lower cost. I am just worried that the job prospects would not be as great as SIPA’s.
I am currently try 24 and most of my experience is in the entertainment industry. I would love to get a policy degree, and then down the line apply my background to TV/film industry somehow.
HGSE has Anne Sweeney (former Disney president) as an alum, and her journey is inspiring.
Either way, any insight you all can provide would be great.
I think SIPA is more focused on international affairs. (Hence the word “International” in their name). It ranks well on lists for international policy… but you wrote that you want urban policy.
But urban policy degree programs are geared more toward individuals aiming for work in the government / nonprofit sector. You might want to think carefully about you career goals and whether the policy program is going to get you any closer to them.
Out of curiousity why didn’t you apply to the Kennedy School at Harvard if your interest is public policy? The Kennedy School focuses only on public policy/public administration and has a specialization in urban policy.
Okay okay I’ll dig deeper. … I don’t necessarily care about whether the degree is urban policy. I think I just want to study policy period and then make a swivel back into an entertainment career.
I know a few people at HGSE and love what they are studying and writing about. Education policy may be something I end up liking too, but I would not be interested in teaching. More so, federal policy.
USC could be a great option for my interest in media but I am concerned that if I decide to not pursue media, the USC Program may not provide me with as great of a network as the Harvard program.
Not at all clear why you think Columbia is better thanUSC. At least on the USNWR public affairs ranking USC is 4 and Columbia 19 and for.public policy analysis USC is 11 and Columbia 30. It seems that for half tuition, USC will give you what you seem to be looking for even if you decide not to do entertainment.
I would suggest you really figure out what you want to do with your degree before deciding. Educational policy at Harvard would lead in a very different direction than the others. It is a lot of time and. Money to spend without a reasonably clear goal in mind.
I don’t know about USC’s program in that area, but the network you have at HGSE is unlikely to provide you with the degree of networks necessary to fulfill your goals of policy work/analysis once you get outside of education/education related policy or much more so, working in consulting in the private sector…especially outside of education like organizational business consulting.
Why isn’t the Kennedy School on your list? That would provide you a much more suitable network for what you’re looking for.
Another part of this is also due to the fact that there’s a common perception that graduate Ed schools have far lower admission/caliber of graduate students on average than other graduate divisions on the same campus.
This was certainly the case at Harvard from what I’ve heard from friends/acquaintances who were graduate students in GSAS, Law, Med, HBS, the Kennedy School, etc. Similarly, I saw the same attitudes from friends/grad classmates from Columbia grad students regarding their counterparts at Teacher’s College.
And that perception isn’t helped by the fact I personally knew of one undergrad dormmate and a former post-college roommate/friend with whom I lived with for 5 years after undergrad who were both admitted to HGSE with some scholarship funding with GPA/GRE* stats which would have gotten shut out not only from other graduate divisions at Harvard, but also lower tiered non-Ed school graduate programs.
Both had GPAs which were below 3.0 and the post-college roommate's GRE scores were far lower than the minimal scores of admitted students in other graduate divisions at Harvard or other divisions. Also, neither of them were URMs and the undergrad dormmate admitted to HGSE with a half-tuition scholarship was from an upper-middle class SES background.
In the world of public policy, top schools in order are:
Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson
Harvard kennedy (applied but didn’t get in)
Then
Johns Hopkins SAIS and Columbia SIPA.
I want to go to SIPA sooooo bad. I just feel like the program and the alumni are top notch and I have a clear vision of what I would do with the broad MPA degree. It’s such a shame that school is so expensive. I wonder if I can find outside sources to cover the first year’s cost
Actually, I know of some SIPA and other Columbia grad students getting a fellowship if they studied certain in-demand foreign languages like Mandarin Chinese.
However, that scholarship only kicks in if one is taking language courses from the 3rd year level and up. Then again, it may be a wash as SIPA does require some foreign language proficiency in their MIA program. Not sure if this applies to their MPA.
I still don’t get the source of your perceived ranking (#14) – again, it looks like a ranking based on strength of internationally-oriented programs… not domestic- - though it still looks rather spotty. I’'d also note that I feel the reason that Woodrow Wilson is so highly ranked is that it is (I think) the only MPA program that fully funds all of its students-- so that tend to attract more applicants, allowing the school to be more selective.
But I think that your goals & expectations also seem to be a poor match for the programs. Both of my kids have MPA’s-- MPA programs are extremely practically focused, essentially designed as job training for students aspiring to management positions in nonprofit and government. My D. actually does have a job tied to entertainment, but that was happenstance – she worked full time while completing her MPA part-time, and basically worked her way up to a private sector position with a better earning capacity than whatever her MPA theoretically would have prepared her for. So she’s got a degree she doesn’t need to have for her job, and a whole lot of debt.
Getting an MPA degree won’t get you a policy job – it’s just a credential that will help qualify the person for the job, but the MPA can’t substitute for experience, and generally people don’t get policy jobs without having a good established work record in whatever area their policy focus would be.
If you want to continue to work in the entertainment field, an MPA program that includes a concentration in arts administration might be an appropriate path. USC offers a concentration in Arts Leadership; SIPA doesn’t have anything arts focused (most MPA programs don’t – it is a fairly esoteric concentration).
The thing with entertainment and where I want to be within it… as a studio or network exec…your background really doesn’t matter
I don’t think I want to do policy work in govt but if I have a position within a private organization, I want to be branded as the person that has a good grasp of how government legislation affects a business.
Like how AT&T just merged with Time Warner… heavy legislation, countless meetings with senators.
