<p>I went to SAIS for a Master's because it was in DC, and it was one of the best decisions I've made in my life. </p>
<p>I've had friends who went to Fletcher and had a great experience, but you'd never find me living in Medford. For those inclined, though, Fletcher has a joint degree program with Harvard Business School and Fletcher students, I believe, can cross-enroll in certain HBS classes -- or maybe it's just that some HBS profs teach there.</p>
<p>In general, SAIS had 7 or 8 different kinds of graduates: those who went on for a PhD (economics, politics, political economy, regional studies, anthropology), those who went to New York for investment banking or other financial services jobs, those who went into other general business kinds of jobs, those who did non-profit work overseas or domestically, those who did government policy or administration work overseas or domestically including the foreign service, those who work in international agencies, journalists, and, yes, those who temp for awhile and are bitter. </p>
<p>Is SAIS bad to those who end up in the last category? The problem, I found, was that people who went to SAIS without good experience and credentials weren't necessarily "remade" into someone who could go into a completely different kind of work just through the power of the SAIS degree. In this way, the degree is rather like an MBA, perhaps only more so. (I would say if you know you want to go into general business versus finance, you'd be better off getting a business degree or go to SAIS' joint degree program with Wharton (MA/MBA) which teaches courses like marketing and strategy).</p>
<p>But the great breadth of different things SAIS students choose to do is one of the things that makes it interesting. You won't necessarily get focus from SAIS if you lack that, but it will move you down the road well, if you started out with good credentials both from school and work. Of course, arguably you won't get in if you don't.</p>
<p>It's really hard to generalize about other programs that you didn't go to, but I'll try to do so:</p>
<p>SAIS: Based in DC, a great place to be if you want to launch yourself into a DC-type job and want to know how the city works. It is a separate, urban campus far from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. For me, this was great -- to be in DC and not to have to contend with undergraduates and other graduate students. There are some tremendous adjunct professors who work in the high reaches of government or think tanks and want to teach at the pre-eminent foreign policy school in DC.
Fletcher: I think Fletcher suffers from its location, on balance, but it is a fantastic program and I think has great facilities. I'll admit this reflects my bias.
SIPA (Columbia): If New York isn't a distraction for you, I think it could be a great place to be. It shares resources with other parts of Columbia, which I would not want.
When I applied and went, I was under the impression SAIS was the most difficult to get into -- and I had friends at SIPA who hadn't gotten into SAIS. But there were counterexamples too, I discovered; I think broadly speaking the quality of the students is more or less equivalent between these programs. I had a friend, high scorer on the GREs, Stanford grad with a good GPA, who didn't get into SAIS because (it seemed), he hadn't done much with himself after college except teach English in Asia. He went to SIPA and loved it. And he definitely was in a more exciting city, though living there as a student I think would be oppressive.</p>
<p>Just some random thoughts....</p>