MPA/Career Advice/Work Abroad

Graduate School
1

<p>Hi All, </p>

<p>I am currently working towards an Masters in Public Administration. I graduated from a top liberal arts college and have done numerous internship where I was fortunate enough to be exposed to a variety of situations where I actually had to problem solve and challenge myself which translated to actually experience. I graduated undergrad three years ago and have worked a variety of odd jobs and spent time maturing outside of academia. I worked for 18 months as a nanny and now have a job in a non-profit where I am getting a lot experience with supervising, managing, grant writing etc. I'm taking graduate courses and pre-regs needed for most MPA programs as well.</p>

<p>It has always been a dream to live abroad and although i've done a fair amount of traveling I have never lived abroad for more than 6 months. I'm thinking about teaching abroad in Chile or Spain next year to work on proficiency in Spanish and to have an experience living abroad. After all this background and rambling...now to the question...will spending a year teaching abroad harm my application to an MPA program? Will teaching abroad count towards work experience if I work full-time? </p>

<p>All thoughts and advice are helpful! Thanks!</p>

2

<p>Why would teaching abroad harm an MPA application? It wouldn’t, and may strengthen it depending on the focus of the program. Proficiency in Spanish will only help your application. And yes, teaching will count towards full-time experience, although it may not be exactly the kind of experience they are looking for. It depends on how you spin it in your application.</p>

3

<p>Great! Thank you for the advice Julliet. More worried that it might look funny to break up continuous work experience with a year abroad but I was thinking the spin would be helpful and of course proficiency in another language is always useful. Thanks!</p>