Grad School

I’ve been receiving emails regarding the GPPN Dual Degree program between the LSE and Columbia SIPA that I am pursuing. In the interest of sharing information, here’s some key items:

If you are at LSE and looking to apply to do your 2nd year at Columbia:

Application is generally due during early February and you hear back in early March. The process is simple – just four short essays. Three of the essays is likely to be exactly as they are for next year’s incoming SIPA applicants. And then, there is typically a question similar to “If you could have dinner with anyone dead or alive, whom would it be?”. It’s important to note that since LSE doesn’t have grades until the end of the year, these essays are the only thing that really sets you apart from the rest. You are competing against others who are already at the LSE, so obviously you are all already of a certain caliber.  Therefore, the fact I was accepted into SIPA originally for the MPA mattered none. I still slaved and agonized over these essays for days. There must have been at least 5 drafts of each. I am fairly certain that I spent more energy on these essays than anything else I did at the LSE.

Why the fuss? Well, it can be rather competitive. Last year, I believe there were 19 applicants and 7 offers. Historically, it’s about 1/3 probability. I believe it depends on supply and demand. The number of spots available is determined by how many people want to come to the LSE. There may be other factors involved in the available spots, but I know this is the main one. I don’t work in the Admissions Committee, so I haven no idea what works. But I think the same rules apply for any essays: more is NOT better. Judging by the student body at SIPA, I would say highlighting previous experiences and how they motivate your wish to study at SIPA is probably more important than academic achievements. My observation is that SIPA is training people to become practitioners, not academics.

Once you do get the offer, you will immediately need to think about courses as pre-registration for the fall semester opens in the spring and courses can fill very quickly at SIPA. Your courses at the LSE will count for some of the core classes at SIPA. Basically, you will need to complete all requirements that a normal two-year SIPA student needs to complete. EC440 will count for the year long Economics classes. EC455 will count for Quantitative Analysis. GV478 will count for Politics of Policy-making. I was doing International Development, so DV441 counted for the Management requirement. If you are serious about coming to SIPA, you can plan your courses that will count, in the event that you do get in, that will give you more flexibility to take classes at SIPA. I also had LL484 Regulations of Financial Markets to count as International Banking at SIPA. In some ways, going from LSE-SIPA shortchanged me on class options since most year-long classes only counted for semester-long classes at SIPA.

Beyond the above requirements that can be satisfied from LSE courses, you are still require to take a financial management class, a professional development seminar, capstone and internship. In addition, everyone is required to pursue a concentration and a specialization. Depending on the track you choose to take, the number of required classes varies. For more information regarding requirements, refer to SIPA Academics.

For anyone considering GPPN Dual Degree between LSE/SIPA:

One great advantage about SIPA is its student body size and a wide variety of student groups within SIPA itself, completely independent from Columbia University. LSE has a number of societies, but they are usually mixed with undergrads. The student groups at SIPA host a number of events and some have insane amount of money in their budget, ranging well into thousands of dollars. Serving on a board in one of these groups give you all sorts of experience to answer those “behavior questions” you face in interviews. Caveat: the boards run from spring to fall semester between students first and second year. Thus, as a dual degree student, I was excluded from able to serve on any board. This is not to say I am excluded from participating or becoming involved, but it greatly diminishes the leadership opportunities.

The other potential difficulty is the social life. Since there is only a handful of dual degree students, you tend to fall into a strange lot that doesn’t quite fit with the first year, but most of the 2nd year already have pre-established social circle. I already had a lot of friends in New York, so this is less of an issue for me. I have heard this is a general issue to keep in mind for any dual degree students. The upside is that if you can overcome the difficulty, you walk away after the two years with a massive network of contacts from all over the world.

Academically, the LSE is much more in depth and challenging. The nature of the programs are different. LSE is much more academic. SIPA is much more practical. LSE is all about independent learning and one huge exam at the end of the year for most classes. At SIPA, classes are only one-semester long and there are assignments/projects/papers due constantly. You can think of it as a strength vs. endurance. To me, academic is all there is at the LSE. Extracurricular mattered very little. At SIPA, to get the full experience, soft skills are important, the professional development events consume your life, as well as extracurricular activities. If you come to SIPA only to excel at academics, then you really would not get your money’s worth. Personally, I love SIPA. But, we all know how the LSE and the British system in general perplexes me.

If I could do it over, I likely would have gone to SIPA in the first place and stayed there for two years. Having two degrees on the resume is a nice plus, but the experience itself lacks continuity. Since the GPPN dual degree comprises of only a handful of people in all schools, there doesn’t really exist a very good structure to help the integration. Having to learn the entire system and politics of school each year can be really frustrating. At the end of the day, it depends on what you are after and prefer. As always, there are pros and cons to all things and each decision depends on which way the balance tilts.

Good luck with your decision!

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Oh SIPA. You never cease to amaze me.  I have been so involved with my life in New York and the happenings at Columbia that I haven’t written much about these really amazing past few months. It’s finals time and stress is in the air, but what really impresses me is how my SIPA colleagues manage to handle this stress with such humor. Slight variation from the LSE exam time, when people have anxiety episodes in the library on a regular basis.

The week began with an article titled, “Write Like Columbia Grad Student in Easy 20 Steps”. My first thought was, “surely this is not a serious advice piece. That would have been really lame.”  Sure enough, it was a hilarious and a mostly true insight into how we, or certainly I, write papers. My favorite is step 14: Read a few articles in The New York Times, because you’re a grad student and it’s your responsibility to stay informed. Right? There is absolutely a positive correlation between my news intake and time spent procrastinating.

Later in the same evening, I saw a posting of our own SIPA version of Ryan Gosling. This is apparently a new trend of people putting sayings eluding to relationships, concerning a certain niche group of people, on Ryan Gosling’s pictures. I’ve seen it in a couple of places, the International Development Ryan Gosling is pretty good. The fact someone at SIPA created a SIPA Ryan Gosling Tumblr makes this a school-wide tactic on procrastination. This is my favorite:

To top it off, today, I saw a YouTube video of a Stats Jingle. Apparently two statistics TAs decided to add a little holiday cheer to stats exam prep and created this funny number:

I gotta hand it to SIPA. Talk about a bunch of well-balanced people. No reason to take life so seriously. Have a little fun, even during exams!

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School of International and Public Affairs

Happy Halloween! Somehow, November is upon us, the first snow of the year came and went, yet I had not written much about my time thus far at Columbia SIPA. Life has been busy, but in a positive and fulfilling way. Columbia is a magical place. I feel myself growing all the time. Everything I thought I wanted out of life and career changes constantly as I become inspired by a speaker, a conversation with professors/fellow students, or an intriguing lecture. People say you need to come to graduate school with a clear career purpose and direction. That makes sense, to a degree. I knew exactly what I wanted, or so I thought. The soul-searching is incredibly confusing and scary, but better now at 25 than 30 dull years of being an office monkey later and then experience some severe form of mid-life crisis.Tho perhaps this process never ends, but I am learning that it’s not a bad thing to learn about oneself.

Columbia Quad - my happy place

Anyway, all that to say that it has been an exciting few months at Columbia SIPA. This place is everything I had expected and more. I am being challenged in ways beyond my wildest imagination. Beyond academics, I find myself asking very big questions about life, global poverty, financial crisis, and more. When you have a diverse student body where people are interested in subjects ranging from energy, to development, to international finance, to security policy, conversation with your peers keep your mind constantly active and thinking of problems from different angles.

Butler Library - oldest library on campus, but one of many. Never need to worry about not getting a seat.

While academics is an important part of SIPA, and its wide range of course offerings helps tailor one’s graduate education to his/her interest, I find that the most valuable aspect of being at Columbia is the experience. It’s the diverse student body that I described, the array of career panels that help you learn more about what xyz actually does, the fact you can decide at 5:30pm that you will spend your evening listening to Jeffrey Sachs, the President from xyz country, or the UN representative speaking about one important issue or another, and the array of activities that are constantly happening not only at SIPA, but on the Columbia campus as a whole. In the end, academics constitute only a fraction of your SIPA experience, and taking advantage of all that Columbia has to offer, and cultivating this network of amazing student body will serve you well into the future.

Some highlights of Columbia SIPA happenings thus far:

• During the 2nd week of classes, my concentration (International Finance and Economic Policy) took us to a campsite two hours outside of the city for a little bonding experience. I got to meet a lot of cool 2nd year students. The downside of being a dual degree student is you get caught in a weird limbo between being new, but also a 2nd year.

• SIPA Student Association (SIPASA) throws many good parties, and the boat cruise along the Hudson is one such event.

• One day, randomly, a market appeared at the Columbia Quad.

• My love for Africa has not died and I joined SPAN (SIPA Pan-Africa Network). They hosted Taste of Africa during the first week of classes for students to try out different dishes from the continent. To create the atmosphere, African music was played; when P-square came on, I felt at home. Just a little plug for SPAN, we are hosting the African Diplomatic Forum open to all, so if you are in the NYC area, come join us for this exciting event!

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The last few weeks have been a crazy blur. I had my leaving drinks the night before I left London. I went back to the Midwest for 10 days to catch up with family and friends. Even though I have been living in the developed world for the past year, coming back to America is still a culture shock. For example, who needs a salad like this one?!

10 days of Midwest was plenty for me. More and more, I am convinced that the suburbia life isn’t for me. It is for many, but not for me. I find it very odd that although it’s 100 degrees outside, it’s possible to go through an entire day and only feel the heat for 5 minutes (walking from your house to the car in your garage, then from your car to the destination and back). Something about this life feels awfully unnatural. There is convenience, and then there is excessive laziness.

I then packed my bags again and moved to New York City. As a teen, my dream was to live in NYC. Somehow, that dream went away, and now I find myself fulfilling that desire I had so many years ago. Somehow, wishes come true, but maybe not in the order that you want. In the past week, I spent time running around getting my apartment set up, meeting new people at SIPA (School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia). I finally feel at home. This is where I am suppose to be. I walked through the building and remembered the information session I attended in the spring before I went to Cameroon. Again, my wish came true, albeit in a different order.

New York City from up top

The student body is much larger than the LSE MPA, and much much more diverse. For one, people actually are interested when I say I was in Cameroon for two years. And in exchange, they have equally fascinating stories of life before SIPA. This is what I wanted. Academic life is only a fraction of the grad school experience; your peers can teach you a great deal. Tomorrow is first day of classes, and I am looking forward to getting the ball rolling!

one of the many SIPA meet & greet events

Other impression from my first week in NYC:

• New Yorkers are so much more friendlier than Londoners. It’s so normal to strike up conversation with people in the streets, or guy selling you xyz in the stores. In some ways, this is the warmth that I missed from my Cameroonian village life.
• London has cleaner underground and trains come much more frequently, but New York has AC in its subway.
• New York in general is dirtier than London, but it’s nice to not be lost all the time thanks to the numbered streets.
• There are way too many choices in every aspect of American life.

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I received my intermediate transcript from the LSE today, and on the back, there was a grading scale that translated into the A/B/C system for the general course (study abroad). I am not sure how I didn’t know this throughout this entire year, though I’m sure it was buried somewhere deep in the LSE website. Knowing this would have alleviated a lot of unnecessary anxiety. For the newbies coming into the British system and feel like fainting when receiving a 60, this should make you feel better:

A+: 79+
A  : 74-78
A- : 68-73

B+: 60-67
B  : 55-59
B- : 50-54

C+: 45-49
C  : 40-44
C- : -

Fail: 0-39

It’s helpful to know that it’s difficult to get above a 70 (i.e. getting an actual A without the minus is pretty much damn near impossible in the graduate level unless you are gonna be the next Nobel Prize winner). This makes me feel better, but still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. For example, why is there a near 20-point distribution in the B range? And why is C- empty? I suppose I will never understand. Alas, I hope this helps the new-comers!

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