Fall Admissions Webinar (October 2022)

Hello. Hello. Hello.

Testing. Testing.

Can you hear and see me? OK, you can find the.

The chat.

Um.

In the should be in the lower right hand corner. Yes. Hello. Good. Alright. Sound and video working. I never want to say anything too important until I know that you can see and hear me. So, greetings. Hello Miami and Ithaca and Lima. Wonderful. Thanks for being here.

All right, we'll go over some logistics while we wait for people to get connected. So this webinar is being recorded, so if you have any technical issues, you should be able to see the recording at a later date. So you can also try to refresh your window if anything glitches on your or my part I and it is an audio. This isn't a zoom call, this is just one of our.

Webinar softwares and it is just audio, so you can communicate with me via chat and I will do my best to stay on top of those questions. And there is closed captioning, there should be a little CC if you need it and you can also expand the screen if you need it. So greetings across the world. Hawaii, China, welcome, welcome. I think we'll get started.

Because I'm very mindful that at this point in time we are very, very busy and very backed up on our.

Inbox. So with apologies if anybody's on here and has been waiting to hear from us via e-mail. It is all the things are happening. So I want to make sure there's plenty of time for questions. So here we are. I'll get started really quickly and we will go from there. OK. So hello again. My name is Melissa McGinnis, and I am the assistant director of admissions at the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University.

I am entering my fifth year with Yale Jackson. I also had a 20 plus year career with our friends down in at Princeton, NJ at the School of Public and International Affairs and I worked at the University of Pennsylvania prior to that and then also did some undergrad admissions. So I have a long career in higher Ed and especially in the public and international Affairs Graduate School space. So I am very thrilled to provide you with resources about that in general.

But also specifically about Jackson. So in case you're not aware, since people are coming call calling, you're not calling, you're signing in from all over the world.

We are located in New Haven, CT, which is about partway through halfway between Boston and New York City. And forgive me, I was down in Westchester County outside of New York City today all day for appointments of my own personal appointments. So I'm a little rushed to get back home, greetings from my home, and sign on to be with all of you. So it might be a little scattered, but I hope to give you.

Plenty of resources. So Yale University, obviously, we are one of the Ivy League schools, the ancient eight. I'm assuming most of you are familiar with that university. And we are yales. I think I should count 14th professional school, just July one. We officially launched as a Jackson School of Global Affairs. We get a lot of questions about what does it mean to be new? Well, we're new in name only, so we.

Or originally, prior to this year, we were the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs since 2010 and prior to that we were Yale's International relations program, decades old. So we have we're just another iteration and we it's really exciting time. We've been growing and I popped on a little late because I was actually trying to see if I could share my screen. I've never used that functionality before in this particular software and I.

Thought unless all of you have seen it already, you might enjoy the little I think it's a 2 minute video that.

We had done for our big launch party, so we officially became school July 1. But just last Saturday we had.

Lots of things. A day of of talks with ambassadors and a visit from John Kerry who is affiliated with the school in various ways and lots of fun stuff happening. So if you all are willing I would and happy to be my Guinea pigs of trying to see if the share screen function works. I will try to share that little video with you. Hopefully you're all up for it. There isn't like a thumbs up option in this but.

Hopefully you'll be willing to try. Let's give it a try. OK, let's see how this works and only take 2 minutes. Thank you Pablo. We're getting a sort of a verbal thumbs up there, so let's see how this works.

Share screen and I have my window open. I hope this sound works on it. If it doesn't I will send you the link in the chat.

All right, sharing my window.

OK, can you see my screen of the Jackson School dedication ceremony? Anyone. Anyone. Thank you. All right, let's try this. Let me hit play and see what happens. If you can't hear it, just shout out that you can't hear it and let's go.

What would it take to build a more perfect world with nations at peace?

A healthier planet for our children?

And prosperity for all.

What knowledge will we need? What values will unite us? Who will lead the way? Today, humanity is faced with challenges that are growing increasingly serious and complex.

Climate change and environmental degradation, political extremism and war, economic development and disparity, migration and global health.

The hope of a prosperous future will require commitment, passion and planning, a multidisciplinary approach to problem solving, a willingness to consider diverse viewpoints, and an abiding belief in our ability to find answers together with wisdom, facts, insight and courage.

For more than 300 years, Yale has advanced humanities understanding of complex global issues and educated leaders committed to addressing them. By establishing the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, we further under score our commitment to cultivate an intimate community of outstanding faculty, seasoned practitioners and students who will study and develop policy to address the challenges of today and the opportunities.

Tomorrow to advance Yale's mission with outstanding research and scholarship, education and practice to prepare students for leadership and service on the global stage.

To be a champion for light and truth in the world.

To all of you who have helped make the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs possible, thank you.

And to those who will lead on behalf of humanity.

The future belongs to you.

All right. Thank you. I I hope that was as inspiring to all of you as it has been to us as this has been quite an amazing few years of this journey becoming the Jackson School, so super exciting times going on at Yale, Jackson. So that being said, why don't we get into a little brief overview about Jackson and if any of you are repeat visitors, these might be little familiar things to you.

But I think a lot of people like these words to be able to you know associate with the Yale Jackson and be able to tell what's unique about us and what might differ from our peers. So I'm going to, as I mentioned below through these pretty quickly because I want to leave time for questions for you and think about your questions now. I might just answer them at the end and.

We will. If you don't hear me answer it, I will. I promise I will get to them if time allows. So on that note, I will start rambling again. I'm sorry, a little scattered driving to to Westchester today, so with apologies. But anyway, I like to refer to some of the main unique things about Jackson as the five F's and you will see what these mean family flexibility and features, faculty funding in future, so.

Family, that's probably like what is that? That's a unique F well I like to refer to it as our community, right. We're a very small community. We have, we're located in Central campus in in New Haven, CT and on the lush green part of the city and we're a very small cohort. We are about 30 to 35 for our two year MP and our one year MAS is usually only about as few as two to maybe 10 or 11.

And so we're very tight knit community and that allows for a lot of the individualized one-on-one attention that you get whether it's for helping you design your curriculum or whether it is for organizing your required summer internship for the MP's. And also we'll talk about this a little bit later. This community of scholars, the we have senior fellows and who are the practitioners that were mentioned in the video and World Fellows, Fellows in these different.

Um, you know rising in their careers who are integrated into the Yale Jackson community. So it's not just the student body but it's the staff and the faculty and the senior fellows that really all come together to have this amazing community that takes part of the what we like to call the academic playground that is Yale. So that's that's what we mean by family and and hopefully that will stick with you on that sense of community and.

You know, the student life that we have and how integrated you can be in Jackson and also the broader community of Yale and the rest of Yale's professional schools.

That being said, the second-half is flexibility because sorry, something opened up on my screen.

And uh, you may be already aware that Yale Jackson is one of the most flexible programs out there among our peers. We have for the two year MP only four required courses, and then the rest of the courses you can take at Jackson or anywhere else across health professional schools. And that applies to all Jackson students. You don't have to be a joint degree student with one of the professional schools to be able to take.

Those classes. So we do encourage and offer joint degrees and we can talk about that later if you'd like, but you don't have to be 1 to take classes. And a lot of the other professional schools, the School of Law, the School of Management, School Public Health and School Environment are sort of the more common ones that we have joint degrees with. But them and beyond love having our Jackson students in the classroom and goes back to.

Who? All of you, the collective you if you are a future Yale Jackson student, who you are and the type of people that we do bring into the community having even among a small cohort, a depth and breadth of experience and backgrounds. That being said, I wanted to put some things in the chat as we go. So you have the links. Here is the link to our student BIOS which.

I think once you have a chance to look through them, I think you'll really see the depth and breadth that I mentioned of backgrounds and where people are coming from and what they want to study at Jackson. Pretty much everybody wants to do something different, which is exactly what we encourage and it's that individualized study that also allows for the really.

The collaborative nature of the program, there's not a lot of competition because a lot of people are not looking for the same internships or whatnot because they all want to do different things. So it's that's really something that makes Jackson unique. We also have a one year master of Advanced study. It is 8 courses, 100% your choice, no core, no other requirements, pretty straightforward the so when we talk about in this webinar.

About the different requirements, it is referring to the two year MVP because the mass is pretty straightforward. The only difference otherwise is the Ms is currently not funded and we'll talk about that when we get to the funding piece. So that's a brief overview about the flexibility of our program. I do dive in a little bit about the program features. We talked about the flexibility already and the idea that you can design your curriculum and so that's.

Something that I think is really important, I mentioned you get the individualized attention if you are an enrolling student, but you do need to be familiar with the resources ahead of time so you can organize your curriculum. So I am going to put in the link to the Yale course database, OK. So that's something we can talk about. I'm assuming in the course of this webinar there will be questions about that because that database.

Is exactly what you have access to as a graduate student at Yale Jackson. The GLBL courses are all of the Jackson courses. Courses that are 500 and above are graduate level courses. But the disclaimer to that is if there's a higher level undergraduate class that you feel like there is not a graduate class equivalent and you can get that faculty member on board and get the.

Assistant Dean of Jackson's on board as well. You can actually have an undergrad Class B count towards one of your graduate electives with extra work. And again, that's why you need the the faculty member. And there's also things like directed readings, which is basically if you create a course with a faculty member and that can be one-on-one or one on very, very small. So that's the freedom is amazing. So there's programs out there where they say.

Here are these are our fields of study, or these are our certificates of study, or these are our pathways?

We don't have any of those. You really do design your own curriculum now that can be an overwhelming, overwhelming prospect for some. So knowing what you want to do and what you want to get out of your graduate program specifically at Yale Jackson is very, very helpful to your application and we can talk about that when you when we get into the Q&A. I mentioned the faculty already. I do want to paste the link in specifically to the.

Um, senior fellows, because I want to make sure that you're aware of their interaction with the community, right? I mentioned that already in that family F.

I would say that a lot of these top IR programs all have these high level people in these practitioners who are somehow related and integrated into their programs. But I mentioned my long career in this area and traveling and recruiting with a lot of our peers, specifically in Apsia too. If you are a follower of the apsia.org, they're a great organization partner.

Organization, if you're interested in international affairs and they so we all have these these types of people.

But I was pleasantly surprised when I landed a Yale Jackson of how truly integrated these people are. So ask these questions when you are inquiring about all of the schools that you're going to be applying to these practitioners are, are they coming for a couple days to give a lecture, or are they coming for a week to to have office hours or maybe a career conversation? They do that at Jackson, but at Jackson they actually come and they teach and they do.

Informal mentoring, that's case by case, right? Each one has their own different career and where they're coming from. But some people are at Jackson for maybe a semester, most are here for a year. Many come back for two years. There's been some who have been at Jackson longer than I have. I look at the list and I think of Sue Biniaz, who's a climate person, and Howard Dean and a couple of the former ambassadors have been around for a very, very long time.

Because they they love to the community and they love to stay integrated into it. So they're an amazing, amazing resource and and people end up being teaching fellows or course assistants for these people as well. So that goes beyond just earning some money that actually.

You know, does open up networks as well.

Good segue to the money question. So at Jackson I mentioned the MAS currently is not funded where is, if you look at the student BIOS for the Ms down at the bottom you know I mentioned it's not funded because primarily those are externally funded usually by employers or by you know they're part of their military or international governments. But for the MP we are doing our best to, we're working towards hopefully.

Fully funding someday, right now, the last few years we've been able to to fully to provide tuition to all of the enrolling students who need it. So it's not need based funding it is merit based funding. But you do just simply check a box in the application that says you are applying for funding and we will consider you for funding. There's no additional paperwork or anything like that. So if you you need that funding check that box and and we you would know if you are.

Offered admission, you would know within 244872 hours of of your admission what your funding package would be. So we we also provide again merit based funding for living expenses. And the last couple of years I would say about 1/3 of the class ends up getting a stipend as well. So we're getting there, we're getting closer. That's one major change that's part of the launch.

You probably caught at the end there of the video that that we thanked donors because they are, you know, setting us up for doing just that for hopefully someday being able to to fully fund. And our goal is to try to do that until we get our budget for the each year. We don't know. But you can without guaranteeing it 100%. It's likely that.

Tuition would be covered at Jackson. So we're really excited to be able to say that. And hopefully for those of you who are just starting your journey and inquiring and looking into schools in the future, maybe we will get there and we will be fully funded. And then finally, the last F is future, right? That obviously is probably why you're here. You are thinking about what your next step is after grad school or after undergrad and after working for a while and realizing that.

You there's a next step that you need in your career and you need a Graduate School, a graduate degree to to pursue that. So that works out with Jackson.

And the flexibility of our program, you'll see from our student profile, which let me paste that in for you in the student profile you'll see that the average.

Um, years of work experience is about three to five years postgrad. That's not a minimum requirement, but like I always say, it seems to be that around three years is that sweet spot for somebody who has been in the field and they're working and they have this aha moment where they are like this is.

This is what I want to do in my career and this is.

Why I want Graduate School and why now? And what you want to do? So people who have around three years seem to formulate that better in their application because I think that that goes hand in hand with the flexibility of the program where there's not specific fields that you're applying to. You are telling us what you want to do and then you're applying for it, if that makes sense. So let me also.

Post the links in so you have them for the summer experiences because I think that is useful information to have and you might find it a little too buried. And I just, you know, you can hold on to these links and then also in the jobs after Jackson's. Obviously one of the main reasons you want to do this is.

For that dream job, your dream job is not necessarily your first job out of grad school, so that's something to keep in mind. At the bottom of the last page of that last link is the actual job titles and locations of what are the first jobs are of our students. There's no names because of privacy, but you'll see, again, reiterating back when I was mentioning the BIOS and the depth and breadth of experience, I think you'll see it through the.

The job, the first job data as well that people are going on to do just about anything. And that's our goal. That's our goal in the Admissions Office to bring in a cohort of people who all have that common thread of the commitment to the global good and yet doing it, coming at it from all different you know, backgrounds and what they've been studying or where they've been working. And so that is really.

Our goal in in bringing in the different cohorts and hopefully you see that through if you have a chance to look through some of the student BIOS and the jobs and even the senior fellows who are coming in. You know there's we've had former military generals and ambassadors and CEOs and you know people who do all of the things. So that is my very rush blurb, I'm very blur spiel I should say about Yale.

Baccin and um, just wanted to give you a quick overview because I know many of you either are at the early stages of inquiry or you've already been following Jackson and you know most of this stuff. So this slide just is a little bit of the practical information and the the facts that December 1, if you apply by December 1, there's an automatic fee waiver, so you waive the 75.

Dollar application fee, there is no admissions advantage to that. We don't have rolling admission and we make all of our decisions and in March decisions go out as soon as possible which is usually the middle of March. And you know we talk about the whole that we use the holistic approach when we're reviewing applications, but we also build the class, right. And so it's a, it's a holistic class, so it's not rolling. The only advantage to getting in your getting your application in early by December.

One is to save you that fee. I will also add that for though we do still require the GRE unfortunately for better or worse for the two year MP's. And one thing to note is if you do apply by December 1st.

That your test scores, and also if you need any English language proficiency scores, your test scores, and your letters of recommendation don't have to be in by December 1st, right? It's your part of the application that needs to be in by December 1st to submit and get that fee waiver. The letters and scores can come in by January 2nd, even a few days after. They're the the. For better or worse, the recommender portal doesn't have a deadline. You might not want to tell your recommenders that.

I mean, you should probably give them a hard deadline, um, because we do, you know, review, start reviewing very, very soon after the deadline.

Um, standard application requirements you can see here on the slide and I will paste the page in at least for the MPP for right now. It's pretty similar for the MA US.

Um minus the GRE score um.

And that's that. I think I want to leave plenty of time for questions since I know like I mentioned, we are very behind on getting back to you.

So why don't I stop there? I've seen some questions pop in as I've been going, and I've been trying to ignore them. Let me go back and get started on answering some of your questions. Let's see. Jahanara. Jahanara. I'm sorry if I butcher your name. Jahanara.

Does citizenship matter for funding? No, it does not. It's equal opportunity funding. Again, we just need to know what your funding is. It's need blind admissions. But there are questions in the application of like how you intend to fund and if you're externally funded. All of those things are super useful but not relevant to the admissions process. It is relevant to the funding process though. So yes, no, just doesn't matter. There's no federal forms or anything like that.

That are required Anurag if someone has a few more years, should they go for MP or MAS? Great question. Honoring that really is totally up to you there. We have a number of students. Once you have a chance to look at the the BIOS, you'll see that there's a number of MPP students who would be eligible for the Ms. The Ms requires a minimum of seven years of relevant work experience and the average is about 12 to 15.

So there are people who have more than seven in the MP. So there's a difference, right? Some people who have significant work experience want to get in and out. Their employer has said you need these tools, whether it's maybe you need languages, maybe you need area studies, maybe you need the tools like the stats or econ or whatever the case may be. So and then you get to move up the.

The chain or maybe go on to a new assignment. So whereas the MP you have it's two years, you have the required summer internship between your first and second year, so a little bit more robust. And so some people have been out working for a while, like I do not want to do 2 years or another internship. So it really depends on your needs and your wants. It's not, it's not an age thing, I just will say and there is a minimum for the MAS and otherwise.

That's the only restriction. Alright. I hope that helps. Christine. Hi, Christine. Hello. We like our Peace Corps volunteers. Yes, the again, many apologies. So with the launch of the US becoming a school, it meant from an admissions office standpoint that we had to remove ourselves from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences who has been managing our application for many, many, many years, decades, right. And so.

When we got the word this summer that we were being cut off from Gsas, we had to build everything from scratch.

So there are I think those who have started your applications, the portals, not even completely 100% up yet, like I'm not a tech guru and also trying to do all of these things like helping you out in general and we're going back on the road recruiting this week. And so that being said.

Please have patience, especially with the portal. But you mentioned the fee waiver form. There's no urgency for the fee waiver form, and you won't need to fill that out.

Until I would say you get into like.

Before December 1, which, oh goodness, is really just a month away, isn't it? Almost. Anyway, it will come. It will be there. And there are, yes, there are a few other fellows pickerings wrangles often who don't get notified until after the December 1 deadline. So we're offering that option for special fellowships like that. But please keep an eye out on that. You are absolutely right that that form does not exist.

Yet, but have patients will get it done.

Again, along with our backed up emails. So yes, all of the things, it's an exciting time but there's a lot to do so, but you don't need to hear that. You just need your application materials and hopefully it will. I wouldn't worry about it too much. We'll be able to work around it if something if there's a glitch in any way. And also heads up if there are any other RPCV's out there. We are. When I get back from this week of travels we're going to try and.

Have a webinar with our current Coverdell fellows. So we will have like a zoom panel with those. So that's not scheduled yet, but keep an eye on our events calendar for that. Thank you for your patience, Christine and others as I rambled because I'm very, very apologetic that we still have things to do. We just wanted to get everything out there for you to get started, even though it wasn't perfect yet and I I had to let my perfectionism.

Know that we just wanted to get things started for you and then we'll we'll play catch up a little bit so no worries alright Anurag what is the upper end of entering age for the PMP exam. There's there's not really an age limit I think on the overview page I sent this current years range is 21 to 38 that doesn't mean 38 is the cap it it just.

You know, there there's no real age restrictions for it, so it's just about how you're going to use this degree, whether it's the MP or the Ms, the Ms is mid career, but if you're at retirement age, we might wonder why. You know you would. You know what what this next career is all about so but otherwise there's really no age restrictions. Sam, do you recommend undergraduates take gap time before applying to grad school? If so, how do you recommend them meaningfully?

Spend this time. It's a great question, Sam. I touched on that a little bit. Um.

It's not required for Jackson to have work experience.

Prior to coming, but you'll see again reiterating the average three to five years. So we would never say not to get work experience.

Having it is definitely, I don't want to use the word advantage, but it we see work experience as evidence of commitment to global affairs, right. So again, that will point to a stronger application. We're looking for you to connect the dots and we're looking for you to tell us why you want to do this program. And again, it's so interdisciplinary, so flexible that for somebody who doesn't have the work experience.

It could be a very overwhelming prospect, right? I sent the list. You can have 3000 courses available to you and you have to tell us what you want to do so.

That's where that work experience comes in handy, where I mentioned people are able to formulate what they want out of this program better. So I actually.

Would tell you, I can't tell you what how you would meaningfully spend this time and and one of our former ambassadors I think was Ryan Crocker at our launch events last Saturday.

Answered this question live on stage, and if you're interested, I think someday all those videos are going to be somewhere on their website, but the interviewer asked him a question about what advice would you give a future Jackson grad student and ambassador. Crocker said something along the lines of follow your passion.

You really you're following your passion. Don't do something because you think we want you to do it. Try not to think about it as strengthening your application. But if you're following your passion, hopefully we experienced admissions people, and the admissions committee consists of career services and student affairs and faculty members and senior fellows. You might have former ambassadors reading your application.

So everyone's looking at it from different perspectives and.

If you're doing what you love, I think we believe that that will come through in your application. And a little side note, I will mention your recommenders can be really helpful the less work experience you have. Professional recommendations can help because they can corroborate your story. They can say, hey, not in these words, but hey, this person doesn't have significant work experience. But I know them and I know that this is what they want to do, and this is how I see evidence that they're going to do it.

So I hope that helps, Sam. I hope that helps everybody because you know that.

If if you leave, this was one thing. If you leave this webinar with one thing, it is, I would say to follow your passion. We would always encourage you to do extra work. But there's always a couple people who are right from undergrad who get in to the program. So I won't tell you not to apply because you could be one of those people. We don't have quotas, but it could be 1234. It depends on the year and the applicable. Often they are pickerings and wrangles, which are U.S. citizens who are on the fast track.

The foreign service. But you'll see from our student BIOS that one thing I want to mention is also about your unique story. And I think I hinted to that with the following your passion. So you know you could have a super unique upbringing. Like you know, depending on where you were raised and whether it's civil war or whatever. The case may be, that these kinds of experiences may not be postgrad work experience, but they are something that would contribute to your experience.

Therefore, in the classroom, like that's an important voice that needs to be heard, especially in light of global affairs. OK, I'm, I'm waxing philosophical a little bit and I see the little bar raising, which means there's a lot more questions. And as usual, we're running out of time. If anybody's watched other webinars, I apologize. I definitely go off, but hopefully this waxing philosophical is is helpful and useful. Amaranta, I know we can take courses from other rural schools, but can we take part in their projects as well? Great question.

Um, that's case by case. And I would say yes, in many cases. Law School is a little trickier. If that's a I know they have clinics and they have different things. There might be courses here and there that are only open to people who have done prerequisites within their graduate program already. But I think usually, as I mentioned that the academic playground.

Is open to you. There may be random stuff. You could always reach out to the law school and find out if that's something that would be open to other other non law school students, and I apologize that.

The Yale, obviously, the resources at Yale are massive and the amounts of projects and research and centers and all of the things is so overwhelming. I don't keep track of it all. So I'm sorry, I don't know on that particular project, but you could look it up. Obviously you've been following it, so you could probably find out and reach out to somebody.

But there's a great question. Thank you for asking. Rebecca, may you apply to both the MPP and the joint MPP? MPH, you can only apply to one.

Degree at Jackson's at a time, right? So when you're applying to the joint MPP, MPH, it's it's one application, and the only thing that's different is you joint degree candidates must submit the additional approximately 500 word statement. That's in addition to your personal statement, but joint degree applicants apply to the other schools completely separately. There are there's no overlap in the admissions process.

Um, so you're you're basically applying to the the MP's and and telling us why you want to do a joint degree. So it's not really two different applications?

Um, and I will, and I just posted in the link to the joint degrees. I will spare you the technical details that in the coming days it might look like you can apply to more than one degree at Jackson, but that's something to do with our undergraduate major. And so you will be notified if you have two applications started because you can only apply for one. Hopefully that makes sense even in light of the joint degree stuff. So you will.

You will choose that the joint degree is what you want to apply for, and we might admit you and the school of Public Health might not. And then that's the decision you have to make, or vice versa, right? So again, they're completely separate, so hopefully that makes sense. Happy to to follow up with that if that makes sense.

Rebecca's asking how many hours a day a week? Ohh.

I that's going to be different as well. I mean it depends on how your classes are set up. I mean most people do four classes per semester. So how that is done? I mean some people do five. I wouldn't recommend that in your first semester. There are also half term courses, so maybe people do 5 1/2. I've heard of people in their second year doing 6. You have to be really, really on top of it if you do language.

Classes. Those are daily during a semester, so it really, really depends. But this is a full-time residential program, so I don't know if that's if that's helpful.

Alright, Jahanara graduated from undergrad a while ago, switched development a few years after graduation. Academic references will be hard as I'm 10 years out, that's a great question. A very common question.

We do recommend that at least one letter be academic. Yes, we're a professional program, and I reiterate that importance of the career and professional experience.

But we are also an academic institution. We are Yale. You have access to, you know, the law school again, which is the number one law school in the country. And so we are looking for.

You know evidence and we don't want to rely solely on jury scores and obviously we are looking at our transcripts. I would say that those who maybe have some weaknesses in their transcript, the academic letter will become much more important if you have a rock solid transcript.

Can you get away without an academic reference?

I will say that because we really want an academic reference, that if you choose not to submit one, I would address it in your application, right? Use the additional question or additional information section and upload an explanation as to why you are not submitting either an academic or whether it's professional. For people who can't get one of those if they haven't been out long, address it like tell us why you're you are not submitting that. I will also say it doesn't necessarily have to be from a faculty member.

You can get creative. We're looking for evidence of analytical skill and logical thinking and things like that. So it might be, you know, somebody who knows your academic work, or maybe it was somebody in an academic setting but was an employer, or, you know, whatever the case may be, you can get really creative with that. But if you really can't, I would definitely address it. So that's my recommendation, no pun intended, and I hope that helps.

Uh, Rebecca, what's your main points to cover in the personal statement? Great question.

I would say.

Basically.

Three main things. Tell us who you are, your background, right, what you've done, what you bring to Jackson, right. So who you are, tell us why Jackson, right there in big bold letters on this slide. Why Jackson? Again, I won't reiterate the the flexibility, the interdisciplinary nature, all of that. So you need to tell us what you want to do, what you want to study at Jackson. And also don't forget to tell us what you want to do with it, right? What is your long term career goal?

So connect the dots, right, that trajectory, you know, that's what we're looking for.

Those three pieces in that telling us your unique story that probably comes out about who you are and maybe what it is you want to do. Maybe what you want to study is your unique story. Maybe your personal background is your unique story. It's different for everybody. So that's why there's really no recommendations on how to write your personal statement besides approximately 2 to 4 pages. Ideally double space because we have hundreds and hundreds to read. Double space is easier, not a requirement, but it's easier for us to read.

So hopefully that makes sense. Um, those would be probably. I would recommend the main points. So before, during, after. I guess I can't put it more simply than that, Daniel. For the joint degree PhD you have to have biology or chemistry. Great question. That is actually a question for the School of Public Health because as I mentioned.

They're completely separate admissions processes. So we're going to look at you from a global affairs perspective and you know if you have biology and chemistry that could be great but we're going to be looking for do you have relevant IR type classes, maybe languages, do you have some quad skills. So we're going to review you pretty much the same way we would a non joint degree though we are looking at the joint degrees kind of in a subset category and and the just the joint degree makes sense.

Um.

And Umm, so that is definitely more of a technical question for the school of public Health Admissions Office. Normally we try to do a joint webinar with them, but.

And it's been a really, really, really busy summer and busy fall with the launch. So we're we're playing catch up a little bit on that. I don't know if we'll be able to do one of those, but yeah, so keep that in mind that it's it's separate, but the joint degree needs to make sense, especially in light of knowing that you can take classes at the school of Public Health even without being a joint degree student. So making your case for doing that additional year, a year and a half.

Becomes important so that additional joint degree statement is important with joint degrees, but otherwise.

I mean, we'll look at it from a perspective of it, see they have a background that actually makes sense for public health. So that could be to your advantage in a joint degree, the application. But we're not going to look at it as a requirement. We're going to assume that the public school public health is actually looking at those types of requirements. Hopefully that helps a little bit or hopefully helps a lot. Pablo, how did the GRE scores impact the application? It's a great question. It depends.

Right. There's no minimum requirement. It is still requirement required. We know we we've most of us who've been doing admissions understand the limitations understand the biases. So we we know all of that but we also especially for programs like ours that have a you know quant core or a lot of international students, so the verbal section the.

They they are still sort of, for lack of a better word, I want to say a normalizer. But they can be really helpful and again with understanding that we know that the biases and limitations in the back of our minds but it's why there's no minimum score. So I will say it can weigh more heavily if an example is the quant. So if somebody doesn't have quant courses on their transcript.

The quant section of the genre will weigh much more heavily, so that's an easy example.

So hopefully that's a useful example to to show you're not just your GRE score, right you we do look at the whole application. So all right Christine, thank you for understanding right about our our work in progress application portal and application adjacent forms and whatnot. Rebecca, which aspects may reinforce our recommenders in their LOR?

Umm.

Which aspects may reinforce our right?

I'm not sure I understand your question, but I think what I will say is your recommenders should know you well. You know, I've talked about passion. I've talked about trajectory. I think what's most useful to us is the admissions committee is recommenders who can.

Attest to who you are, you write in your personal statement. You've told us who you are and what you want to do and what you want to study at Jackson. And I can only say again, like if they can corroborate your story, that's that's really helpful. Or if you do have weaknesses that you're aware of, whether it might be academics or.

You know, whatever the case may be, gaps in your resume, you know whatever might be perceived as a weakness. If a recommender knows you and knows about that and can address that and alleviate concerns that the Admissions Committee has, that can be useful, it's really going to be.

Um case by case based on each application and what their strengths and weaknesses are.

So again, it's not the name. Don't, don't worry about the name and the branding of the people or I have this big name. Would that be useful? We want somebody who knows you well. It's not so much about title. It can be helpful if somebody on the admissions committee happens to know a recommender or that could be useful because we'll we'll know them, right, and and we'll know a little bit more about them, but otherwise.

It's it's really choosing the recommendations that I think are are best for you and your particular.

Situation. I hope that helps. I'm getting lots of things and yeses, so I must be answering your questions. Alright. Anurag, my undergraduate degree is from India. Do we need a WWS equivalency conductor for the program? Thank you for asking that. I think that is that's brand new for us at Jackson. It was something that Gsas did not require and so we are. I think that is what is buried in most of our inbox questions. It is not required.

And.

At Wes or a formal credential, international credential evaluation is not required upon application. It may be required upon admission. We do want transcripts.

Translated so if they're not in English, you need to submit, um, a translation as well. Upload with your application. Do not send us anything. Don't e-mail us anything, don't mail us anything. We do not have the bandwidth and you we can't do anything with it at this time. Only enrolled students will need the official evaluations. So I will say some international students want to get those ahead of time since other schools might.

Require them upfront for application. They know they'll need them for enrollment. There's various reasons why people might want to submit those with their application and you are absolutely welcome to, but they are not required upon application. We know there's a funding piece to that and we don't want those kinds of things to. I mean, you're already having to take the GRE and pay for that. You know, we don't want any limitation to access the application.

By having to pay for a WS, WS or other type of company to do that.

But we do need an English translation, um, so unofficial transcripts um are are required for the application. So hopefully that helps and hopefully.

I I wish there was a better way to get that out there in the application because we are getting a lot of questions about that.

Right. Uh, Jahanara, the does foreign language proficiency make your application stronger? That's a great question.

Yes and no. I mean it.

I mean, this is a global affairs program, international, right. So it makes sense that somebody would have application to have a language as part of their application. Does that mean it's required? No, it's not required. And if you followed us, you'll see we have a new program that we're partnering with. We are partnering with Middlebury and that Middlebury Summer language training is going to be for enrolling students who do not have language because Yales language.

Offerings are very robust. You can do a keyword search in the course database that I submitted in the beginning in the chat and.

So you can do your languages at Yale, but I mentioned.

They are very, very time consuming and that will limit to how much.

Other courses, other, you know super exciting elective courses at Jackson and otherwise that you might want to take. So because we do have a language proficiency that must be met by graduation. So what that partnership is that we would Jackson would actually pay for those who have no language base, no non-english language base, you know this summer before enrolling at Jackson.

So.

Obviously that means it's not required, right, because we're admitting you without that language. So that means there's something amazing about a particular applicant and your background that we're willing to admit you without the language piece. So, but having it would make your life a lot easier and obviously could strengthen your application a little bit, but it's not required. I think I want to reiterate that. So hopefully that makes that a little bit more clear. Eliza, you're doing an MPH at Yale right now. Ohh. Thank you, Liza.

Thank you for answering the question. The person who quite asked that. Thank you very, very much and super exciting. I just want to say we met the former Dean, I met the former Dean of the School of Public Health at our launch party. We had lunch together by accident and we really want to build up. It's been a long time since we've had, we have one joint MPH student this year and it's our first one in many, many, many, many, many years and obviously coming out of a global pandemic.

It it seems like, uh, it should make sense that we have more people doing that joint degree with the School of Public Health. So thank you for representing Liza and glad you. Thank you for answering Daniel's question. I wish I had seen that sooner because I rambled on about that. All right. Daniel, again, can you apply while completing your undergraduate because you've had years working before starting your undergraduate study. I think I answered that a little bit before when we say.

For three to five years, that is done mathematically based on year of graduation. So that is all postgrad. So that means nontraditional students aren't counted in there. We don't count in that average three to five years. We aren't counting internships, but those who are applying right from undergrad or with very little postgrad work experience. That's another example of something weighing much more heavily. Obviously, this summer internships that you've done is important to all of you listening.

Now or on a recording.

Connecting the dots again, showing that you're following your passion.

But, you know, keep in mind that, um, it will probably weigh. Those will probably weigh much more heavily for people who have limited postgrad work experience. So. So, yes.

It's definitely.

You know you'll want to highlight those. Maybe that's where your professional recommendations come from. If you are applying right from undergrad, alright, ohh goodness 2 minutes honor. You have a masters from Canada and the Canadian. Would I need a TOEFL or English proficiency exam?

The If English is not your native language.

Only an undergraduate degree waves the TOEFL, IELTS, etcetera, so a masters program does not waive the.

The exam. Now, if your bachelor's degree was taught in English, that would waive the exam.

OK, pretty straightforward, I think. If English is not your native language, your bachelor's degree had to be in English. If neither one of those, then you would have to take the TOEFL or IELTS or Cambridge. Hopefully that makes that clear. Oh, good. I'm glad this has been helpful. Yes, Christine, the Jackson admissions e-mail is preferred. It's the one that's very, very behind, but my personal account is very, very behind as well. Anurag, thank you if your undergrad.

In English, you should be OK my last slide here is all of our contact information. I do put my calendar in there.

It's it's blocked. I'm not here most of this week and in web.

A thing it's I'm sorry brain brain freeze next week and so I don't have any spots but I you don't need to talk to me right. Like if you hopefully you've asked your questions and if it wasn't 8:00 o'clock I'd say please ask more questions because your questions are probably relevant to most everybody on here so but if you are having trouble getting answers via e-mail we'll try to catch up on that after fall break I have.

And help with that. We'll try to get on top of that in the next couple of weeks. I do put my calendar link and I will put it in the chat. Sorry, reluctantly put in the chat, which makes it easier for you to book. But please use judiciously. I'm making you because you you know it doesn't. There's no advantage to meeting with me. It doesn't have anything to do with your application. We don't do interviews, but.

If you really have a pressing question that is, you know not answered here or via e-mail you're welcome to contact me. But as you know I've already mentioned like I'm in like ohh, we're really behind and our applications have increased exponentially since we separated from Gsas for better or worse for for you who have more people to compete with for myself and my team who have to read them all. But it's exciting time right at Yale Jackson and and we're excited to see the growth of the school.

And so it's exciting seeing all of these people interested in all of you, interested in the annual Jackson. And thank you again in advance for your patience and our replying and getting back to you. Please, you know, follow us, maybe attend if anybody is in New York City tomorrow night, I will be there, will be in Boston Thursday night and will be in DC next Monday morning.

So follow apsia. You can find those links for those in person webinars with or in person, receptions with some Jackson alum and some other epsie schools. You can find them on our events calendar and yes, e-mail newsletter. We usually ping about our events, but you can also find them just on the admissions, primarily under MP, even though Ms are allowed if you're an Ms here.

This is our events page. Um and yeah, please feel free so you can see the difference between in person and virtual. But myself and some Jackson alarm will be running around the the greater NE New England region Mid-Atlantic this next week. So maybe we'll see some of you there. All right. I will stop rambling and I will close this down. Thank you for being here and thank you for asking your questions are.

Really appreciate it. And good luck with your applications if you're applying this year. And we will get back to you as soon as possible if you have questions. And there will be another webinar next month where we do prioritize answering a lot of your application questions. All right. Thank you. Goodnight. Goodbye. Good morning wherever you might be. Goodnight to me. Alright. Thanks. Bye.