<p>I was told that admissions offices don't really look at ECs that much for masters admissions. Is this true? I am affiliated with a lot of organizations with elected positions in most of them. Are these factors not going to help my application for public adminstration or public policy masters at all?</p>
<p>For what?</p>
<p>For science grad schools, ECs are totally irrelevant.</p>
<p>Career relevant EC’s probably are factored into an admissions decision. Since you are applying for public policy masters degrees, experience in some sort of student government or public advocate groups would be great. Now is time to pull out the semester you spent protesting the dorm cafeteria with wis-PIRG (I actually did this).</p>
<p>I have done a lot of ec’s too. They don’t look as well as they do on college applications. For public policy, political science and IR they really aren’t something bad, they are a plus. Grad schools, other than law schools, like to look at the whole package - the personal statement, the letters of recommendation, and EC’s or internships. However, of course, usually GPA and in-major GPA is the most important factor. GREs as long as you do good on will not hurt you or really even help you that much.</p>
<p>But don’t give up on the EC’s. EC’s get you good internships and good jobs. I know a guy who was a computer science major, and who had good grades and an okay GRE, but since he did so many extracircular activities and was president of so many clubs and was in the school newspaper and everything while he was in school got a really good job straight out of college for $75,000 a year with a government contractor. Right after that he’s going to grad school.</p>
<p>Work experience however, like real work experience and internships not like McDonalds, is very important to some grad programs. Basically just call each school and ask they are usually very honest and up front about it.</p>
<p>Wow I should actually read the whole post b4 giving advice. I didn’t even notice he/she was applyin to public policy.</p>