Fall Admissions Webinar (November 2022)

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Why don't we continue to get started, um, while people continue to log on. But my name is Melissa McGinnis, and I'm the assistant director of admissions at the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University. And thank you to all of you who are introducing yourselves from all over the world and all over the country. Shout out to Paris and Dallas, TX. This is great. I love doing these webinars.

Just seeing how big and yet small the world really is. So it's exciting. Thank you all for being here, especially if you are up really early or really late. Really appreciate you being here. I'm assuming most of you are familiar with Yale University. We were founded in 1701. We are one of the Ivy League institutions in the US, fictionally known as the ancient 8. Yale has about 12,000 students.

Maybe a little more than that and approximately 7500 of those are graduate and professional students. We are in New Haven, CT have a little little image here on this line that shows where we are about halfway between New York City and Boston MA, maybe a little closer to the New York City side, easy shot to Washington DC so that's where we are if you are not familiar with the Yale.

All dogs. So Jackson itself, hopefully you are familiar with, maybe many of you have started your application or have been following us for a while. We are a new iteration of the decades Old International relations program at Yale. The IR program was a founding member of APSIA, which is the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, which you should follow if you are interested in IR and.

Related degrees there are tremendous resource.

So in 2010 we received a generous gift from John and Susan Jackson. Which?

Is how we became the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, and that happened in 2010 and we were part of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences all of that time. But as many of you may know and hopefully are following our super cool story, the Jackson Institute became the Jackson School of Global Affairs officially on July 1 of this summer. So it's been an exciting time. Lots of things happening.

And.

Lots and lots to do. So very, very busy here. It's, it's a really big deal for Jackson and for Yale because we are the first professional school founded at Yale since 1976, which was the School of Management, that's yalls Business School and we are now the 13th professional school at Yale. And plus Yale also has Yale College, which is the underground program and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, which we.

I mentioned have separated from which means we are now handling all of our own admissions and application processes. So because of the date and deadline coming up, I wanted many of you to actually drive this webinar. I if you're brand new here and you're not familiar with Jackson at all, stick around. I think a lot of the questions we may get hopefully will give a picture.

Of what Jackson is all about, I do have a slide later we where we can go over the basics, but given that our deadlines are quickly coming up, we have our first deadline of December 1st which is.

No less than two weeks, so rest assured if you're applying this year, I'm panicking as much as you are.

So I wanted to well we collectively weave. I am doing this webinar to answer any last minute questions we do have.

Holidays coming up, Thanksgiving here in the US so next week we'll be out a lot of next week and then the deadline is only like 3 or four days later. And that is just for the fee waiver, which is really for your benefit. So you wait, you automatically waive the fee as long as you apply by 1159 midnight before midnight, and otherwise you do get charged the $75 application fee. Rest assured, you do have until January 2nd to submit your.

Application, you just have to pay the fee, so it really is to your benefit and you do not have to have all of your letters or recommendation and all of your required test scores in by December 1st. So it's really your piece of the application and you have to self report your scores and you have to register your recommenders so those things can come.

By January 2nd or soon thereafter. So that's why I wanted to to hold this format of webinars so you can get your questions answered. Because yes, I confess we are woefully behind if you have emailed us or called us or left voicemails. We relied on Gsas admissions for many, many years and now having to do it all of ourselves has been a lot. And so going forward, hopefully we'll have staff to help us.

But right now, we will get to your questions as soon as possible via e-mail. But hopefully many of you have the exact same questions or very similar questions. So I wanted this opportunity to answer as many questions to as many people as possible. So I think we'll approach this webinar that way and then I can give a brief overview of Jackson a little bit later.

I think our application quiet requirements are pretty basic. They are listed on our website as well and I can paste in links as we go into the chat, but with that very very basic overview.

Why don't we open it up to questions? Let me just see if there's any specific application questions and otherwise I will keep talking and sharing links and then we can, you know, I, I often run out of time when we give a presentation about all the nuances of Jackson. And so I want to make sure we have time for your questions. So we'll start with you if that makes sense. And again, those of you who are brand new, hold tight.

And we will, we will get to you. OK. Hope this will hopefully that makes sense. Hopefully that works for you. We did this last year for the first time and it was well received, so hopefully well as well. Alright, let me check. First question, Ruth, what advice do you have for re applicants? That's a great question and this year it's going to be even more straightforward for better or worse.

Because there is no overlap in the application process, it's not like we've retained anything because I mentioned we separated from Gsas and that means our systems are all new and the application platform is all new and so we you have to start from scratch no matter what. That includes test scores. If you had test scores sent to the Gsas, they we are administratively very, very siloed.

Years, so there is no system overlap. Different professional schools have different requirements and they don't talk to each other in the background, so you do have to request any test scores to be sent directly to Jackson.

Even if you had them sent to other programs at Yale in the past.

The same goes for recommendations. So even though we've been reviewing our Jackson applications all these years, that applies to you and recommendations like you can reuse recommenders if you've applied in the past. Ideally, they would be updated recommendations, and that would be regardless of if you know you. We had been applying through Jackson for the last dozen years, right? Like it's really ideal if a recommender can update what you've been doing.

In the last year, that can be helpful, and if not, that's fine. I know it's a big ask for recommenders to do those recommendations and update them, and ideally be for each of the schools that you're applying to. So and and again, the same would be for your personal statement. It would be really helpful to know what you've been doing since you last applied, but I always say often end my typical webinars with.

Reapplying is is 100% OK. The Jackson program is very, very small. Our cohorts are only 30 to 35 students for our two year MP and about 2:00 to 5:00 for our one year Ms which is our mid career program. And we get obviously tremendous more, many more applicants than that and we are at the restriction of sheer numbers in some cases. So we get a lot of great applicants that we just can't admit because of sheer.

Size. So with that being said, it's always there's no harm in in reapplying in the future. So I hope that helps.

And whoa, this is going to be a good format because you have blown up our questions, all of you. So let's keep going. All right, let me make sure. OK, I think this is leaf, right? Leaf. Can the professional recommender be my supervisor from on campus appointment employment? Yes, absolutely. So you recommendations, as we say here, is at least one academic and one professional and the third is your choice based on where you want to apply your strengths.

You know, address your strengths or maybe even address a weakness in your application. And that can be if somebody has less postgrad work experience. Obviously it should be somebody from an on campus employer because work experience is is definitely very important to us. Most of our students do have three to five years of postgrad experience when applying, so that's just.

You know, it's not a minimum by any means, but those with less work experience have a, have a.

You know, need to have other evidence to show us that they have a commitment to doing this career in global affairs and international policy and the like. So those recommendations can be, obviously they're very important anyway, but the more career evidence that you have through your recommendation, especially if you have less work experience, is super helpful. So it's your choice. But yes, you also want to choose the strongest recommenders for you.

It's not about names, it's not about titles. It's about who knows you best. That's really your your best bet for choosing recommenders.

All right, I hope that helps, Tristan, does the Jackson School have joint degree program options with law schools? And if so, are there only select law schools that you can do a joint program currently in law school? Interested in getting an MPP?

That is a great question. We actually do and that's a normal thing that I talk about and I don't have that link up because I have all my application links up. We actually encourage joint degrees and most of them are done.

With Yales professional schools output the link to our joint programs in there in the chat.

And.

Even at Yale, the admissions like I even mentioned with the test scores and whatnot, the admissions requirements are completely siloed. So you apply to both programs and most people apply at the same time and defer their other professional degree and start at Jackson first. That's how a typical joint degree program happens just because of the way of our cohorts and our core, excuse me, so that is.

Is the most common way, but we often have people who are in their first year and then apply to the other professional school, whether it's Jackson or vice versa. It doesn't increase your chances necessarily. But you know, some people do get in even in their second year. So you obviously then have to start a Jackson right away as well because you've already completed a year of the joint degree. We do. And I think, Tristan, your question is broader about outside of Yale.

We will consider case by case, ad hoc joint degree programs. The application form should be set up to allow you to choose that option to be considered, which is that's the one exciting piece about the application. Even though it's completely overwhelming and like a whole separate job to have our own application, we can cater it to our own needs. I think there was a lot of confusion, especially if you're a real applicant, a lot of confusion over the last few years.

About the GPS application, because it didn't really seem to fit who Jackson was like who we are and what our needs are, we want an application. So hopefully this new application will signify that. And one of those is that we have another option when you choose if you want to apply to a joint degree and you do need to include an additional memo, a statement as we list here on this slide as well that obviously you'll be talking about.

3rd joint degree interest in your regular personal statement. But we want you to sort of flush it out a little bit more through that to a degree statement, maybe about your sequence, maybe in a case of obviously in a case of people who are doing it outside of Yale, even more so, like why. And obviously if you're in law school already that makes sense. But in in many cases the ad hoc programs are you need to talk to your administration, your Deans.

Because what happens with the joint degree program is each school agrees to count one of their semesters towards the other program. So you shorten the degree by a year. So that's the beauty of that. And so if another school, another University College, has not done joint degrees with Yale before, they may not be willing to forego a semester. So you have to do your work on that side as well. I hope that helps.

All right, Joshua. Sorry, morning. Still getting moving here in the morning. Let me take a quick drink.

All right. Is there additional detail on the Michael Scott Fellowship and the Letter of Intent, not additional detail. It's really straightforward. It's really one of the only fellowships and.

I will paste the tuition link in um.

Which does list all of the named fellowships that we offer, but you do not have to apply specially or specifically for any of those. They are all. It's just where the bucket of money comes if you get funding, and you will. And PV students will get some sort of funding. Everybody receives something if they're not externally funded. The last couple years it's been full tuition and even 1/3 to half our.

Classes have received full stipends as well, so our funding is really decent. So, but those named fellowships are just are determined later.

Not by admissions we give out the money and then later upon enrollment the.

Deputy Deans and and the Finance Office, they know where the donor money is coming from and it's the pools of money. The thing with them, Michael Scott Fellowship is it's the only one where you can't tell from your regular application questions what the eligibility requirements are. So I think it's pretty straightforward in the application. I don't have it off the top of my head. I think it's parental, it's us.

It's it's parents, your parents served in the US military or U.S. government, I believe so it's just a matter of.

Providing that information that that is is your background, so pretty straightforward, but thank you for the question. So I could talk about the idea of those fellowships because we do get lots of questions about that. How do I apply for those? All you do is check the box requesting funding in the application and if there is anybody on this call so to call. But we all think we all use that generically these days who are applying to the Ms Mid career program. We currently do not offer funding for that most of those.

Mid career degrees are externally funded. They're often. You can see from our the student BIOS that they're often.

Which you should be in the chat.

Funding their military, their international government and the likes. So we've had CIA, FBI and a lot of those.

Fund their students, so at this point the one year Ms is not funded. And let me find our student BIOS link because I think you'll find that really useful, especially if you're brand new here to get an idea of the type of student that we enroll here at Jackson.

All right. And feel free as I go clarify questions or if I'm raising more questions as we go. And I'll just sort of pound through these and hopefully we can get through them. We're doing really well on time so far. So I will keep going through. All right, Christine. Yes, our PCV. Yay, Christine.

You had our our PCB Coverdale thing last week this week and the name is vaguely familiar now that I'm hearing RPCV just specialized groups still have access to fee waiver post the December 1 deadline. Yes, many many apologies. That is one of the things that we slash I and woefully behind on. The form needs to be created and tied to the application and I I was hoping people wouldn't need to apply for it. It's a very small amount of people.

Who would need that fee waiver? Because it really it's primarily meant for pickerings and wrangles who don't get announced until after the December 1 deadline. But because of the nature of some of these special fellowships, including PPIA and RPCV's, we added those to the list so that form will be ready.

It's not going to be ready this week. It may. Hopefully we'll be ready before our Thanksgiving break. It should be a basic form where all you need to do is provide proof of eligibility that you are one of the one of the people who applied who have one of those or will hopefully be receiving one of those fellowships. So hopefully that makes sense. Many apologies for that, but that form is not ready.

Going going rogue from Gsas has meant a lot more work than any of us anticipated. So thanks for bearing with us and for all of you here applying this year and being our Guinea pigs if you will, on our very first year application. And whether you submit your application or not, we may survey you later this winter to find out how we could improve our application. So we're excited to just make sure it's as clear as possible.

Next year it'll be ready, especially if you're if you're just exploring now, want to apply in the future, hopefully things will be all ready by then. But yeah, so it's been a lot. Yes, that's the very long answer of apologizing that that form will be ready.

We I don't know if we'll blast it via e-mail since it is such a small group of people, but the IT will be found on the.

Fee waiver page, which I presume many of you may have found. I know our boss did an e-mail last night.

And.

Included that so if you all, if anybody here received that.

Um.

It will be. I'm sorry I did not have these pages readily available and I want to make sure these are kept in the chat.

For people who come back and watch this recording, so thank you, here it is. Thank you for your patience as I get this link. That page will have the form.

OK. All right. But we encourage you to apply that by December 1. That's really helpful to us. And and again, be mindful that the test scores and letters of recommendation do not have to be in by December 1 if you want to apply yourself. OK, let's see. Andre or Andre. Andre, how can I connect with conservative students at yields and ask about campus life from their perspective at Yale or Jackson?

Yale is a tremendous.

Tremendously large place with tremendous amount of resources that I can't even keep track of.

It's. I'm sure there's organizations and the easiest thing would probably be to.

Go to the website. It has a pretty robust um.

Search engine. That's probably the best thing I can tell you, and that goes for whether it's.

Conservative, whether it's any type of affinity group or.

You know.

ROTC or the like so.

There's.

The the resources at Yale, we like to call it the an academic playground. And I will say that when our Jackson students and alumni talk, it's one of the best things, and it's also one of the worst things. There's too much to do. There's too many things. There's too many activities and too many events going on, you know? And.

There's tremendous amount of resources, so I'm sure I don't have anything right in front of me, but I'm sure you can definitely find something about that or feel free to e-mail the Jackson dot admissions address and we can try to help find you. If it's not for the this application season, then I would encourage you to wait until after our applications online if you're thinking about for the future, but also many more resources are provided individual.

Some support for admits. So once admissions decisions go out in the middle of March, we connect our admits with our faculty one-on-one with students, current students. We have two admitted student days. So there's a lot more of those kinds of more detailed connection that happens on admits. We just can't obviously do that at the prospective student level because of volume, so.

Have patience with that if you know if if you can can wait on that a little bit. So I hope that helps Allison on the application to ask about interest in the Michael Scott where can we find more I think I answered that.

I'm pretty sure I answered that and that was asked early enough if I, if I, if you need more, ask me again later. But I answered the Michael Scott question. I think the word count is.

300 I mean, it's short, it's really it's nothing I think. I opened a test application to have it.

I'm pretty sure.

It is um.

See if it's.

I don't want to waste too much time.

Um.

Uh.

OK, yes.

Uh.

If you're correct, does not have a word count.

See y'all are helping me out here, um.

Indicate I got to make notes with apologies.

So I don't forget. Um.

Great question. But I think that that you know, 300 to 500 at most, I would think it really is just about as I mentioned, what your parental background is. All right, thanks again for your patience as I take notes and hopefully improve our resources going forward. All right. Allison, Melena, if we apply by December 1st, can we submit test results until January? Yes, I answered that question even within a couple of days.

After January is fine, but we do start reading pretty much right away after January. So you don't want to wait too long. And you might not want to tell your recommenders that because they always wait till the last minute. Tabby study brought is reflected on my main home school transcript. But you can't see the course names and but the grades are indicated. It's just my main home school unofficial transcript sufficient at this one. That is a great question we do.

Prefer to see grades, and obviously we'd like to see names. I'm surprised that course names aren't including included with the grades are.

So it might be OK, but if the courses are relevant to whether it's language or IR type courses, that could be useful to know. So if you do have a study abroad transcript, feel free to upload that. And a major major question we're getting lots of questions about because of the restriction in uploading transcripts requiring you to list a degree in a major and if obviously it's study abroad.

Or just a couple transfer credits or individual courses don't have that.

You can either combine them into one document with your undergrad transcripts and upload them together as one document, or add them to the additional questions section. There's additional documents you can upload and I don't think there's a limit to those. Use them judiciously, but that's you have a couple of different options there for uploading those tabby. If you don't have your study abroad transcripts, maybe explain that and I will add.

You can use that additional documentation question as well to upload.

Um, explanations that you think we as an admissions committee might need to know. Like This is why I don't have, you know, my study abroad transcript. This is why there's gaps in my resume. This is why.

Whatever the case may be, it's not required to do that. I'm not encouraging you to do that. It's not something everybody needs to do. It's very, very optional. But if you think there are questions that can't be answered or something that looks confused, confusing, whether it's fails or withdraws on the transcript or we often get a lot of names, words. But my Jerry sucked and I'm not reflective. We get a lot of those.

So that kind of thing can be done in the additional additional questions section. So hopefully that makes sense.

And answered your question well enough, Tappy.

And everybody else who might be asking similar questions. So let's go forward. Alright, David, to what extent did the Jerry scores way in the application process? Great question. We do not have minimum scores for a reason. It is still, we understand its weaknesses, we understand its biases, but it's still at this point a pretty good data point to have.

Never fear for a lot of people who are either international or haven't taken standardized tests, or people from, you know, underserved communities who don't have resources about those. Those are reasons why we do not have minimum scores. And a perfect GRE score does not guarantee admission either. It's it's really just a helpful piece. I know a lot of our peers are going Jerry optional.

We are not there yet. I don't know if we will ever get there. A lot of our programs have core curriculums that are very quant heavy. For example, we have stats and we have ECON and they are.

They are.

They're part of our core and they're required. We don't have prerequisites like some schools require you to have those beforehand, others don't care as much. We probably fall in the middle where we recommend that you have experience in those types of courses, or some sort of quant courses. Maybe it's even algebra, calculus or or whatnot, so those can be useful. And the GRE's come in handy in those kinds of things, so the jury wait is going to be different.

For each applicant, if somebody has no quant courses anywhere on their transcript, the GRE quantitative section is going to weigh much, much more heavily. The jury verbal is going to weigh a little bit more heavily for maybe non-native English speakers, or if they if those people have a lower TOEFL than we would like, the verbal section of the GRE could weigh more heavily. So it's it's there's no general weight.

It's not like like law schools and business schools sometimes like have equal weights to things. It really is. We are really looking at your application from a holistic point of view. So that's why I mentioned some people's address in their application.

Weaknesses or what they perceive to be weaknesses, they're not always. We know you're all high achievers, so hopefully that helps. It's it's not a straightforward question, but I hope that answers your question. David Arushi the website mentions up to four double space pages of personal statement, which may go over 1000 words. In that case you prefer applicants to edit down to 1000. It's all very approximate.

Approximately 502,000 words more concise is often better, cleaner. We like double space because we have to read hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these, and double space is honestly just easier to read. But it's not a hard rule. More is not necessarily better. If you are, you know, 1200 words, you're not going to be cut off automatically. But do you think about that?

I know we're asking a lot. We're asking you to say what is your background, why do you want to do Jackson and what are your long term career goals? How do you want to use Jackson to get there? I know sometimes that can seem like a lot and it is. But to be honest in my 20 plus year history of doing admissions in the public and international affairs space, he first did Princeton and now here at Yale. I will say that clear and concise.

Often are stronger applications because they know exactly what they want to say so, but that being said.

I if if you're like 1100 words, I wouldn't worry about it, but.

Does that make sense? That's why you have five 500 to 1002 to 4 pages.

So hopefully that makes sense. Sarah, any recommendations for the personal statement? Are there aspects that you've seen in the past that have made them particular effective? I think I just answered that a little bit. Didn't even see that question coming. But that idea that tell us your background why you're wanting to do grad school now, why Jackson? You also need to tell us what you want to study at Jackson because those of you who have been following us know that we're very, very flexible program. We only have 4 courses.

And then the rest of the courses you take at Jackson or anywhere else across sales professional schools. So that really is an the academic playground that I mentioned and most of our students take classes all across the alley. Take them at the school management at the law school, at the school Public Health School, the environment programs within Gsas, whether it's, you know, we have an architecture student who's interested in the program and has an interesting background we have.

You know, maybe it's anthropology courses. Lots of language courses. I could put that link in. I think I have that one open. The.

Entire Yale Course database is at your.

Fingertips. And so part of your you don't need to tell us these are the 16 courses that I want to take over my two years or 8 for the Ms, but you need to tell us what your plan of study is. And that's another layer that may be a little bit different than some of our peers because some of our peers maybe you're applying to development you're applying to.

You know, domestic policy, you're applying to whatever their fields or certificates are with Jackson, we don't have those. You're basically creating your curriculum and you'll see when I paste it in the student BIOS that our students are studying all different things, that that cohort of 30 to 35 people are presumably approaching Jackson with 30 to 35 different areas of study. That's what we love, that's what makes Jackson unique and but that is the, you know, you get one.

On one help when you arrive, you meet individually with the academic affairs staff. Same thing with career services for the required summer internship and your first job. But you do have to get in the door obviously first. So hopefully these webinar webinars, some of the links I've sent, the resources that provide, are showing you what you need to tell us what it is you want to do. So that's again the long answer to who you are. Why grad school now? What you want to study at Jackson? Why Jackson?

Specifically, not just why Yale? We get a lot of like Yale my dream school. OK, that's great, and it is an amazing place. But grad school's a little bit different than undergrad. So why do you want to get this degree? Because what is your career trajectory and how do you want to use this degree to get there, right? Connect those dots.

Hopefully that that answers your question. That was Sarah, I believe Hannah. How's the MPV program changed since she was National School was established? Well great question. It hasn't changed all that much besides the logo and obviously the admissions process, the application process, the biggest change and and this is rolling, this is to come the MPP degree changed.

Last year so we were a Master of Arts when we were part of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. So that was an exciting pre change that the Provost let us have in advance of becoming the school officially this summer that we could have the Masters in public policy and global affairs. So that was a huge step because often the MA signals research signals PhD that's not what we are was a professional program. So making it a little bit more obvious that this practitioners degree.

That's what we're about. So that was the lead up.

And the the biggest, I think the biggest thing would be faculty. We now have our own ladder faculty, our own tenured faculty. Again, we had to.

We belong to Gsas. It was their faculty. We had to borrow faculty and those kinds of things which we still do. Like if you go on our website and see that our faculty list, we have, affiliated faculty we have.

A lot. Most faculty have joint appointments. There are, so that's huge. And we have our senior fellows. Our senior fellows are practitioners who teach. They come for a semester, a year or two or three or more. They're very involved in the community. But having control over our own tenured faculty is is really the biggest deal we will be in the next couple years, gaining 2 more mansions across the street on this beautiful hill.

South Ave this tree line St in center campus of New Haven. So that will come. There's other construction that has to finish before we people can move out and move around. So and then finally I wanted to mention the fact that the degree the faculty the buildings the move the the the money is we are hoping our our our Dean is is in the UAE right now and you know with becoming a school and having the name of a school.

I think has given donors a lot more.

And what the word like confidence maybe. And so our hope is even though we already provide pretty decent funding, we'd like to continue to provide more if possible. So for those of you who are applying in the far future, maybe that will affect you. So those are some basic things, but the culture of who we are, the art class size is not expecting to change. I mentioned our senior fellows having them integrated is not expecting change we've been gathering.

A lot more centers are falling under Jackson, so isss and the International Leadership Center and World Fellows are part of that, which are another great community here at Jackson that are here in the fall semester that are rising in their careers that are.

You have access to as students and you have access to their their alumni network as well. I'll put the link in for them because they're an amazing group of people from all over the world.

So I hope that explains, but on one hand, the senior staff has always said really we're just changing the logo, but then obviously we're we're changing some of the other things, but it shouldn't change the student experience except for providing more resources. We've grown some new student organizations we're starting and our own student government. So there's all sorts of things like that that are happening so.

A little and a lot of that makes sense. Let's see. Sarah Hannah, that was Hannah Arushi. Could you briefly touch upon the fields in the languages section of the application, what kind of information you're looking for there? That's just obviously this is a global affairs program. We have a language requirement upon graduation from Yale.

So the more language experience you have when you apply, the less language courses you would have to take at Yale to meet that graduation requirement. You are not required to have a language to get admitted.

It it may make your application stronger just because again this is an IR program and and if you wanted to do.

Are type things. Presumably you have languages already, or working on them, or want to pursue languages. It can be pretty impossible to meet the L4 language requirement if you have zero upon enrollment, which is why we've started the Middlebury program. We're partnering with the Middlebury. Still trying to figure out the timing of how that works, but that only applies to people who have zero non-english language experience.

Prior to enrollment, admitted, students admitted and enrolling. Students would learn more about that before the summer.

We just wanna know what your experience is. I mean, if languages are obviously super cool and they add a.

Another layer to applicants and their experiences. So we're just looking for what your language background is, but there's nothing that's.

I hope I've made it clear that it's not like you have to have this much to get admitted.

The only thing is, we need to know if you have zero. The 0 is what will trigger the Middlebury thing upon enrollment. So hopefully that answers your question. But again, if you use that course database link that I gave you, Yale has amazing language resources and a lot of our students take languages.

Chinese, Arabic, all of the things, and they do it as part of their electives, even if they already have language experience. So they're tough. The Yale language, they're undergrad classes, but they're five days a week. They're language labs, and they are extremely tough and a lot of work, but.

If this is what you want to do, then it's a great place to pursue that, so I hope that helps.

All right. Sarah, is the three to five year average work experience based off total work experience at the time of matriculation or time of application? That's a great question. That is actually mathematically done by year of graduation undergrad. So it's an imperfect.

Data point because that you lose non traditional students who may have served in the military six years before even starting undergrad. Or, you know, whatever the case may be.

And it doesn't count. We don't count. You know, I took a year off here and or undergrad. It doesn't count all of those things. It's it's literally the data point that you see in our student profile is.

Here's your year of graduation from undergrad.

What?

You know at the time of you apply like how many years is that? So that's where that data point comes from. Hopefully helps.

Alright Fernando, are the average ohh.

Are the average three to five years of work experience exclusively all full time paid? Are you guys talking to each other behind the scenes? I'm just kidding. Or does it include internships and part-time work? I should have read those together because I mean, I think I answered that right. It does not include internships and part-time work. Anything done pre?

Grad and um. The same would apply for if, you know, we mathematically, the imperfection of it is.

If you backpacked around Bulgaria for a year after graduation, it doesn't subtract that from work experience either. But also that could be an interesting experience and part of your unique story and why you want to do this now, so.

I do not negate backpacking around any particular country or region, but um, so hopefully that makes sense in three to five years. Again, it's average might ebb and flow each year. We often have. We have a couple people who come from undergrad. They obviously need to have something.

Extra that stands out about that work. Um, trajectory, because they don't have that formal postgrad evidence. A lot of those who are right from undergrad are or Pickering and Rangel Fellows, which I've mentioned already there on the fast track in the Foreign service. So they're obviously in perfect alignment with Jackson's mission. So they make sense.

There are people who are in the MPP program who have 78910 years of experience, so they might be eligible for the one year Mrs, but they want or need the two year program and the internship and all of the things so and maybe the money. So it's not a there's not like.

Hard cut offs for some of those things if that if that explains that. Arushi can we describe many volunteer political experience in the public service essay? Yes absolutely. Public service? Yeah we want to know what what you've done. Obviously some of that will show up on your resume as well. Kanako I requested British Council to send my score taking a while ago they responded yes, test scores.

We are woefully hate to keep using that word, but I feel much woe and I feel guilty and terrible. We are very, very, very behind unloading all the official test scores.

It's a lot. It's a lot to create your application from scratch. Where I have a consultant, this is TMI. I'm sure we have a consultant who we are working with to help us build some of those processes. I get emails every day. You have total scores ready, you have jury scores already have been coming and I'm just getting more and more. Well, please, please, please have patience if you've sent them to ETS or IELTS or or whatever the organization is that you're using to send.

Presumably they're there. Don't worry too much because again, they're not. Even if you apply by December 1, they're not officially due till January 2nd. They will show up in your application portal. We finally got that updated just a week ago where you couldn't even see scores received or not, so that is there and it will be showing empty for most of you. We did one test batch, so maybe there's some lucky few here who have seen. I know there's some because we have some complete applications already.

Um, so.

Um, hopefully after Thanksgiving, like I said.

I know this is TMI, but I don't have the additional help right now. So you're looking at her, right? You're looking. You are now seeing the score uploader, so please have patience. Try not to keep emailing us, because that just backs up as well.

Yeah. And it confirmation by e-mail will be near impossible to stay on top of. We don't have the bandwidth to do that. They will show up in your portal and if we're reviewing applications and we are feel like something's missing, we will e-mail you if we're like this is still missing and you know give you a chance to remedy that. We try to do that as soon as possible. So I hope that helps. Sorry and thank you. Thank you for your patience. Honki, how much possibility for undergraduates with no full time work.

Experience. Yeah, I answer that question. We don't. I don't really stats on that. I answered that, that obviously we see work experience as evidence of commitment to global affairs. We often have a few people who are right from undergrad with limited experience. I don't know if I have anything more to add besides, like your recommenders can play a big role in that because we need somebody to corroborate your story that this is what you want to do for your career and your commitment to global affairs, right? You're telling us that in your personal statement.

But because you don't have any of the postgrad work experience, the three to five years is also kind of many, many of our alum have said this. And many of you have attended alumni coffee chats. Like that's kind of when like at year 3, two or three is when they have the epiphany and they're in this job and they realize that this is what they want to do. And they know now that this is what they need to do to keep going in that career. And this being grad school and ideally Jackson or any of our peers, we know you're applying to a dozen.

Schools. So.

Yeah, we need to see that evidence so and often, you know, it's just people who have that work experience who can tell us.

What they want to study here, I don't need to repeat the flexibility and how you need to plan what you want to study and plan and design. Design your own curriculum.

Those who have the work experience just seem to do that stronger, if if you will. I can't think of a better way to say that. So that is why. But there's no quotas or anything like we love unique stories so often. One of my favorite stories is a student who applied and he lived in the same house his whole entire life, but ended up he lived in three different countries because his country had gone through multiple civil wars.

And even though he was right from undergrad, having that type of experience growing up.

We wanted that voice in the classroom. So think about those kinds of things. What is your unique story and how you can contribute to the classroom here at Jackson? You will be, and how you can contribute at the table with you've got military officers and you have foreign service officers and you have people who are spying to be ambassadors and you have Peace Corps fellows and you have.

People have worked in private sector and all over the place, so that's what you have to present to us is how you can contribute to the community. It's not just about what you need to get out of this program, but how you can contribute to the class. The students themselves will say the best part about Jackson are their classmates, and that's our goal here in admissions, and that's why I'm doing what I'm doing, to get you all to know that so you can prepare yourself to.

Apply. All right, Lee. Full tuition for tuition waivers and stipends will be notified at the time of admission are very close again this year. We have more control over that because we are releasing the decisions, not gsus. It's been in the past 244872 hours, so very soon thereafter. Again, this year is our very first year releasing decisions ourselves, not Gsas, so we may be able to do it.

At the same exact time or because we're too busy, it may take a week, so you would definitely know within hours days what your financial award would be and decisions go out in middle of March and the reply deadline is May 1st. So you have time in there to decide if that funding package is is good enough for you.

Alright, I'm seeing a sorry and I don't know what that was for. Joshua, you're welcome. Outside of the four core, can people say can students take classes and other scale schools? Yes, I answered that. That's exactly what our students do. Tabby, you're welcome. Clarification on transcripts helps. I'm so glad.

The advantage of the additional documentation because it's not situation. Yes, please feel free, but also I will reiterate, we don't need all of the things like we don't need writing samples or publications or.

Extra awards or diplomas, those are things that, I mean if you really, really, really think they're going to strengthen your application, but you can use that additional documentation judiciously, but additional transcripts explanations, definitely use that for those.

Alright Arthur, I see median GPA in the class profile. Do you have a minimum GPA like the Jerry? We do not have a minimum GPA requirement. That's kind of impossible to do with all the different scales as well. And it's not so much about the GPA, but it's about your transcripts and the courses that you took. We will look and see if you have an abysmal GPA. We'll figure out why did you get an F in a particular class? Was the F in?

Biophysics. Or was it in?

Your international government class and we may not care so much about the biophysics. Sorry for any of the environment people out here. The the Sciency people here.

You know, if that's what you want to do long-term in policy science and you don't do well in your science classes, then that would be a case where, yeah, maybe that after their matters, but it's more.

How did you do in the relevant courses to this type of degree? So hopefully that helps. Ohh, I'm getting to the bottom. This is great because we have a couple minutes. Will you take work experience that's not in international affairs? And yeah, going global affairs is obviously a big, big picture.

I will say there are a few people that, for lack of a better word, are trying to pivot. Pivots have a tougher sell on why they want to do this. Again, work experience is evidence of commitment to global affairs. So people, we definitely value the interdisciplinary nature of what global affairs is, which is why a lot of our students, most of our students, take classes across Yale because it's really important to be able to speak.

All of the languages, right. And I don't mean literal languages. I mean speak private sector, speak legal. Those things are very, very important to a global affairs career. So having those backgrounds is, is definitely fine. But again, as long as there appears to be evidence of a commitment to global affairs and that, that's fine. Christine, you're welcome. Oh, great. I'm glad. I thought I recognized the Christine name fellow. Melissa, shout out to Melissa's when we describe.

Future goals? Vision how specific do you want us to get? Do you want to see specific roles, titles. Focus on initiatives we want to lead? That's totally up to you. It really is up to you the different.

Types of personal statements that we see are vast. Some people are very detailed and say I want to do this job and work with this organization, and some people are a little bit more broad.

It really is up to you. More information is probably better but we really don't need to know exact jobs. So if you tell us there's no harm in that. It's great to see young people like I want to be an ambassador our president someday. So those are are are fine to say as long as they are, you know realistic right. Connect the dots if you say something that doesn't make sense with the rest of your application if it seems sort of.

Out there that might make us go hmm. So.

Maybe that helps a little bit, like.

As long as it makes sense, sure, go right ahead. But not required. The personal statement is yours. We want to hear what you want to tell us of what you think is important about your background and your future.

Raja, as an international student, I wanted to confirm whether or not to complete WS for application. Yes, that can it's.

We do not require it upon application. It may be required upon admission. If you are admitted, it may be required upon enrollment. Many applicants want to do it ahead of time because again, our peers all have different levels of recommendations. With that all of those credentials. Some require it upon application, so if you have them, feel free to submit them.

The admitted students will be required to have them sent directly to us. Please, please, please send nothing to us upon application. Don't. We don't need credentials. We don't need any of those things. We will ask you for those if and when we need them. And plus you have to upload things yourself. So it's.

Which renders everything unofficial anyway, because if you have to open a transcript that you physically received, that renders it unofficial. So if you do get admitted, you would have to request those to be sent later again. So I hope that makes sense. Oh, thank you. And that's it. Oh, my gosh, it's 9:00 AM. I don't think I've ever done this in exact time. It's 901.

But I left out talking all about Jackson. But I do hope that.

Through answering some of the practical questions you learned, especially if you were new here, brand new to learning about Jackson, that it also helped answer some of the questions about who we are, the culture of who we are.

I want to remind everybody that we are going to be out of the office most of next week and it is only three days after that that we have our first application deadline. And I will do another one of these in very late December, right before on the December 21st, right before we go on winter recess and reiterating here with my little Red Star that we do not return from recess until after the deadline.

Is over, so I am encouraging all of you to.

Apply early if you can one to get the fee waiver or somewhere between, you know, December 1 and January 1.

Because we're going to do our best to answer questions that you have, but it would be best if you answer them, you know, figure it out and ask them early to give us time. We're a very small team of admissions people. And so I don't want you having to wait for us, do not wait for our answers to submit your application because I would not want you to be late once that January 2nd passes. It's done. It's over.

So yeah, so we'll do another one of these. We will, in the next few weeks work as tirelessly as possible to answer questions you've already asked in the e-mail. I've put in our different social media. Oh goodness, if you're still on and have it cut off yet, I think it's pretty straightforward on the website. But we have our I'll just focus on MP right now because I think they're pretty easy to find. Otherwise, the application page.

The application FAQ's. I think a lot of these answer things. I think the most confusing is the international credential evaluation, but otherwise I think everything else is pretty straightforward. Our standardized testing, I think we have lots of questions about waiving we don't waive.

So.

Yeah. So we can talk about that another time.

And yeah, so I think most of you here maybe have started the application, but here's the link so you have it.

And the portal will be more updated going forward. I did not include my calendar again. I am completely booked, overwhelmed, busy. Normally like to give webinar attendees my little 15 minute zoom links, but I can't this week. I'm sorry, really, really sorry. Especially if you want me to keep answering your questions. Hopefully these questions answered multiple questions. Are these answers answered? Multiple questions? I had a quick slide.

Very general stuff. A little visual here in case somebody is watching this video later. Just a little bullets about Jackson, but I'll we'll do more webinars in the future. Obviously, we do these regularly. So if you're applying in the future, join us in the summer or next fall. Meanwhile, I hope to see your application and thanks for bearing with us. Thanks for being patient. Thanks for joining today. Sounds looks like I answered most of your questions. Yay.

Good luck on your applications. Happy Thanksgiving if you celebrate and stay warm if you're in this.

What is it? Latitude or whatever. And forget my geography, it's cold here in New Haven today. So anyway, we will see you soon in one way, shape or form. And good luck to you. Thank you. Bye.