<p>I am interested in MARSEA and have worked as a China affairs research intern in D.C., but Id also like to take some quantitative classes/electives to try out something new. I see on the website that MARSEA students can take two elective courses. How difficult would it be to cross-register and take a course a Columbia Business School? I know it will be hard, but will it be impossible?</p>
<p>Wow–haven’t checked this thread in years and am surprised to see new responses.</p>
<p>@ephraim: While you probably long-ago graduated from whatever program your search and application process finally yielded, I would venture to say (for others who might be in a similar boat) that a situation like yours would not necessarily preclude one from admission to a program like MARSEA. They do like to see previous formal training, since you are expected to graduate in a year with a third-year language proficiency, but if you can demonstrate in your application that your experience has allowed you to build similar proficiency to someone who had prior formal language training, then it should not be a serious hindrance to your admission chances.</p>
<p>@GetOuttaBuffalo: I am convinced that GRE is simply a weed-out of the lowest common denominator among applicants. 600 on each section should not itself keep you out of a decent MA program, especially a non-funded one. Even social science and humanities PhD programs are going to place very little emphasis on the GRE relative to other parts of the application (recs, personal statement, research potential/writing samples). I know this having fairly recently sat on the admission committee of a social science MA/PhD program.</p>
<p>@blackolive: The difficulty of taking non-GSAS classes depends on the school and the class that you are looking to take. It’s now been 5 years since I graduated from MARSEA, so things may have changed, but when I was there, certain classes of particular relevance to MARSEA students in SIPA, Business, and other schools essentially had limited space reserved for us. Once those spaces were taken, you could still come to the first class meeting and petition the professor to allow you to take the course. More often than not, such requests would be granted. Now, if you are a MARSEA student and you want to take a random class in Business without clear relevance to East Asia or to your thesis topic, then you would have to sit down with the professor and convince him/her that taking the course would be essential to your program of study. Whether or not you would be allowed to take the course would depend on the professor. You would also have to convince the East Asian Institute of the course’s relevance to your program. Again, it’s been a long time since I’ve been in the loop, but this is how it worked when I was in the program.</p>