Summer Admissions Webinar (July 2022)

Hello hello hello.

Welcome to the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs and webinar.

Well, we go over some logistics. Why don't you be great to make sure you can hear me and see me and a great way to affirm that is to go ahead and post in the chat.

Where you are logging in from. I love seeing where participants are coming from, so that would be really great if you could do that. It should just be your first name and last initial, so there's some privacy there. If you're concerned about that.

I'm getting thank you Ahmad for saying that so at least I know a couple people can hear me. So while people get logged in and check in Hello New York City, Maryland, DC, yay and all the way from Chennai, India, Wow, I love. I love doing these people from all over the world far and wide, so we'll let people.

Say hi and get connected as we go through some of the logistics. This webinar is being recorded and you will receive a link to it. So if something happens technologically you will have access to the recording at a later time. This is obviously audio and it's me and my new slides, so just it's one sided but take advantage of the chat as we go along.

And.

As I mentioned, many of you already found the chat, so that's great, so you know where that is. You can turn on closed captioning if need be, and there is also a full screen by clicking the arrows. If you have trouble seeing some of the slides and just refresh your browser if something gets a little funky, so those are a little bit of the logistics. So anyway you you are checking in, I'm seeing people from.

Hawaii, very nice.

Mulan and Brooklyn so.

Very exciting, I love seeing people coming from just down the road and across the world and Cape Town. Wow, that's amazing. I love this. So anyway hello everybody, my name is Melissa McGinnis and I am the assistant director of admissions here at the Jackson School of Global Affairs. This is our first admissions webinar as the Jackson School, so very exciting times. The last webinar I did, we were days away from transferring from becoming the Jackson.

Institute.

To the Jackson School and I was, I think also in the middle of COVID when I did my last webinar, but all is well actually in the office. Today we're doing a hybrid summer, so those of you local, especially in New York City who keep asking, not you specifically who are allowed in here right now, but a lot of people are like can we come visit? We're still in this weird.

You know COVID ish hybrid sort of summer, so this is my week in the office, but all our buildings are still sort of locked down and.

You found this event this webinar on our calendar.

You will, that's where we will post any future events, including in person events. We're hoping that we will be able to have some in person visit days this fall. Those will be TBD as we kind of get settled into this really interesting year coming out of hopefully coming out of a pandemic. I hope everybody's being safe out there and also we're going to have some lunch parties this fall with us becoming officially a school. So for those of you who.

Maybe you're new to following Jackson. We definitely it's. There's not a lot of changing. I mean, these are our brand new slides, so hopefully you enjoy our our new PowerPoint template. Very excited. I threw this together last minute again, July one. We just sort of flipped the switch, changing the logos. So bear with us. If you still see some things that are still saving.

Shoot, but this has been a long time coming and we're really, really excited about this. So we've been the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs since. I think it was 2009 or 10 and prior to that we were the IR program at Yale. For decades and decades. So we're new in name and it's a new iteration. But if you've been following Jackson for the last handful of years, we are going to remain who we are, but we are separating from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Becoming yields next professional school, so I think we make 14. I think it is so super exciting times. There's a lot of back end technical issues that we're dealing with and we can talk about that a little bit later, especially if those of you who are planning on applying this coming fall.

So those are our exciting times here at Jackson and thanks for joining the webinar and I will go through some of these slides again. Feel free to use the chat, let me do a little peek through. Yes Peru. Get Peru goodness people from all over again. I love it. I'm in New Haven right now. So greetings New Haven for those of you don't know or sort of halfway between Boston and New York City, right on the Northeast Corridor Amtrak line. So an.

Easy shot into DC if need be, which I was just down there a few weeks ago and that's for better or worse where I ended up getting COVID. But again, hopefully everybody is all safe out there all right. So let me sort of go through some of these things. Some of the top things that.

You know you talk for a long, long time about all the things that make Jackson unique. But I'll talk about a couple different things and then we can open things up for questions we have two.

Degree graduate degree programs. We have our traditional two year NP in global affairs and we also have a one year master of Advanced Studies in Global Affairs. The master advance studies is our mid career program which requires a minimum of seven years of of related work experience. On average, people have about 12 to 15 that enroll in that program. If there is anybody here interested in the MAS program.

Just bear with us because when I talk about requirements I really am speaking to those interested in the traditional, you know, two year program because the Ms, I'm sorry the one year program doesn't have any requirements besides the eight courses, so it's simple, straightforward and it's as easy as that so. But hopefully if you are here interested in the MAS, you'll learn about the culture and personality of Yale Jackson and learn a little bit.

More about the program, but otherwise when we're talking about the requirements, it is about the two year MP.

So we'll talk about this a little bit and the requirements for the two year Masters in public policy we have. We're probably one of the most flexible programs out there. I think there might be a couple of schools that are a little bit more flexible than we are, but most schools have a lot more core requirements than we do currently. Jackson only has four core classes, and then you take the rest of your classes at Jackson or anywhere else.

Rosseels professional schools. And that's something that really makes our program super unique is you have access to all of these other professional schools at Yale, and you build your own curriculum. So on top of that, you do have to demonstrate a modern language before graduation, and if you're a non-native English speaker, you are meeting that already. And then we also have a required summer internship that you do between your freshman.

Or first and second year of the program. And obviously there's there's grades that you have to meet, and we also have. We've been incorporating some new changes I mentioned. We're not changing a whole lot of becoming a school, but there are some things that we're enhancing. We are. We have begun a leadership and ethics training workshop, which is really, it's for returning second year students. So almost like a second year orientation where they will be coming in. I think it's about a week long.

Well there will be doing those types of workshops. Some other changes to the programs we may we are making or have made our incorporating writing or writing program into the core curriculum. So we've hired a writing coordinator, and that's probably not his official title up my head. I can't think of what his official title is, but really emphasizing those types of skills in addition to some of the theoretical and the data skills that you're getting by doing the core and then mentioning again on top of that, you can choose your coursework.

From across Yale, I am going to try to occasionally post post some links into the chat that will help corroborate my story, so this is the core of the Yale Course database. So when I talk about being able to choose classes from across Yale

what I mean is being able to choose classes from across Yale. The course database link that I just sent you to you. You keyword searches. GLBL are the global affairs classes, anything 500 and above our graduate level classes, but a couple of things to keep in mind.

If there is a particular course, maybe that's at the high. A higher level undergrad course that you feel is lacking in the graduate area that a graduate level area that you can make a case for really needing to round out your curriculum and your program. You can petition to have that count as one of your electives in the program, so you need permission from the faculty member who's teaching the course, making sure they will do the extra work.

Needed with you to make it a graduate level course and then you get permission from the Student Affairs Office and so this is a great resource for you to have, because if you do a keyword search like if you typed in development, for example, hundreds of classes would come up. You have to sort through that because some might be development as in fundraising, but there are. It will show you how vast the course opportunities are and that's what makes again our program a little bit.

Unique is that you can choose from most of those classes and build your own curriculum. You will get hands-on help.

One-on-one. Help, as an enrolled student, right? So you don't have to worry that about that as much. There are some sample matrices also on our website, but you need to have some of the resources so you can put together a strong application, right? So you are not. We don't have prescribed areas of study. We do talk about here on this slide that there are a lot of diverse areas of expertise that people study from International Security diplomacy.

Regional studies, etcetera. So there's lots of reasons why people choose to attend Yale, Jackson and we are one thing that I don't believe I mentioned on one from one of the earlier slides is that our cohort is very very small. So our two year MP only has about 30 to 35 students per cohort. So when we are building that class, it's not just about the uniqueness of you and your background, and your why Jackson.

And what your career goals are? But it is also how that fits into the class as a whole. So our goal is that these 30 to 35 people will be interested in studying 30 to 35 different things. So you know, we send you this course database and also I will post in the student BIOS so you have them.

They will be updated. They currently only are the returning students because the new students we gotta get them in and get their pictures taken and all of that. But I think even this snapshot for now will show you how broad like the depth and breadth of experience that our students their backgrounds are, what they're studying at Jackson and what their long term career goals are. So that's something that we look forward to and that we try to build and having everybody.

Sort of look different from each other, so that's really important to us. Unlike some other programs who have specific fields of study, or you know they have they have certificates or fields or regional areas, we do not have prescribed areas like that. You choose your own path, and that's what makes Justin like a super exciting option for those who are who know exactly what they want to get out of a degree program like this. OK, so.

Why don't we? I want to jump into careers. Let me I see a question. Let me check that out and happy to do that as we go. Before we jump into careers a little bit.

JU has forgive me if I pronounce your name wrong. Two questions about Ms. Three years of work experience. Four year self-employed.

Can it count as seven years? That's a great question. As I mentioned, seven years is the minimum it.

You know with it being on average 12 to 15 I have to say.

It depends, right? It depends on what the rest of the applicant pool looks like. Same way with the MVP we're building that MAS class and Even so the cohort for MAS is much much smaller, usually only about 2:00 to 5:00 when the new BIOS are updated. You'll see. But wait, it looks like we have about 8 or 9. That's because we also have a special program that are mixed into the MAS. It's called the PSRK Petraeus Recanati.

Kaplan, I think is a please forgive me and this is recorded so I hope I didn't get that too wrong, which are mostly international military, so it's a partnership program that we have with international military. So you'll see that once the new BIOS show up, but of the traditional MPs, it's usually only about two to five students and the one thing we'll talk about in a moment is the funding. And currently we don't provide funding for the one year mid career program, so you'll see.

Most of our mass candidates are externally funded, so they're usually sponsored by their employers or the military or international governments. So so that's a very roundabout way to say mathematically that could count.

It would depend on what the rest of the applicant pool would look like as far as who you're competing with, right? Because of your background and how you can make a case for Jackson, because with the MAS you're actually choosing all eight of your courses with there being no core. So while you don't need to tell us, these are the exact date courses, same thing for the MPP. You don't really tell us exactly these are the 16 courses I want to take, but having a really good idea of why you want to do this.

Program and how it's going to advance your career. Whether you are MPV or mass is super important, so I hope that helps a little bit. It was a little ambiguous because there's not, it's not.

A black and white answer, so there's some Gray areas there.

Alright, let me just touch on careers a little bit because I presume that's majority of the reason why most of you are here wanting to know about what you know, why Jackson. How would Jackson benefit my long term career goals? So on our website we do have actual data. It doesn't have names for privacy, but it has their locations and the employers I'm going to post that in the chat.

You can find it, so it's a little bit buried. You'll want to go back maybe a couple of years, because obviously the last couple of years with COVID it's been a little bit different and unique, but you will be able to see that people are going all over the world doing all sorts of different things from all the UN organizations to Tik T.O.K to working for embassies and whatnot. So please take a look at that and see.

You know what people are doing and I will quickly touch on the funding piece, which again I mentioned at the Ms already that.

We're currently not funding the one year program, but our two year MPP program. We actually do pretty well with funding. Most master students aren't fully funded. I actually prior to coming to Yale Jackson. I was at Princeton down in New Jersey for over 20 years and they have the mic drop on funding, right? But we're going to try to catch up to them. I think we do sort of fall in next in line as far as generosity.

The last few years we've been able to provide all enrolling's, I think the last two specifically we've been able to provide all enrolling students full tuition and our funding is merit based. On top of that and we have about a third of our class. Third of the admitted class has been offered.

Full stipends as well, so I think we do pretty well and that's one part of.

Changing to a school that we hope will actually change. I mentioned the the sort of the crux of who we are and our personality and and what we're all about is not changing, but one of those things is funding that we do. Hope we can continue to increase our funding for our incoming MP students and it's as simple as checking a box in the application and making sure you are to make sure you're considered for funding from Jackson.

One other thing that is actually not on the slide because like I mentioned, there's a lot of moving parts with becoming a school and I just received our slide templates on Friday. So I threw these slides together and there are no slides about faculty and if any of you are repeats over the last few years, sometimes I talk about the five F's family I talk about because of our size and being so small and all that one-on-one attention that I keep talking about.

And you know, being located on a beautiful tree lined St in center campus in New Haven and a huge Victorian mansion. So we definitely have that small Community family feel. I mentioned the flexibility we've talked about the funding. I often call the career information future, but I neglected to include on this slide. I also ran out of time. Is the faculty piece and I mentioned the faculties and let me post in one of the things.

That makes Jackson unique as well. Is our relationship and incorporation of senior fellows. So if you're not following that or who they are, let me make sure you're aware of how we integrate them into our.

Into our community. So when I talk about the.

Five F's that I mentioned, I usually talk about the senior fellows and the faculty when we are talking about family as well, not just the faculty piece, because they truly are integrated into the Community and this is something that you will want to.

Research and ask about when you're looking at graduate programs and peers of ours to find out how they integrate the practitioners into their program. Because I was pleasantly surprised to find out how truly integrated they actually are, these big name people are at all of these institutions, right? So you're going to find all of these people are being represented among all of our peers and our and our colleague institutions.

And.

But one thing I want to reiterate is they're not at Jackson. They're not just coming for a long weekend or coming for a day of office hours or just giving a public lecture. They actually come to Jackson, usually from one to three-year contracts. Some have been around for much, much, much longer than that. They keep coming back. They love coming back, and they teach courses.

The office space here in the building.

Many are coming up from DC through their courses. They bring in their networks their own personal networks, personal and professional networks. So you have even added advantage to that. There's a lot of organic, informal mentoring that takes place. I think pre and hopefully post COVID, that will be a little bit more exceptional. I think in our pre COVID days it's as simple as they're in the building and they're sharing the same coffee machines and the same.

They're just around and they are really, truly integrated into the Jackson community, so that's something that I think is super important because it really helps balance the theoretical courses and the hard skills courses that you have to take with the truly practitioner experience. I mean, the one of the best, most recent examples we have is the appointment of Anne Patterson.

Last year and.

She arrived when.

The whole Afghanistan thing was happening and she had been a former ambassador to Afghanistan, and so having her on site teaching classes already and being able to integrate that into her curriculum and into public lectures was just a really huge big deal. And so I don't have a slide for them, so I wanted to be sure I mentioned that.

So that's the quickest presentation I think I've ever done, and I think it's because I really rushed to pull my slides together with our exciting new Jackson school logo and I always want to make sure there's time to answer your questions because I know there's many, many, many things that we could talk about the application process, the timing, all of those kinds of things. But I first want to see what some of your questions are. Here is a way to learn more.

After this webinar, I do have a calendar. If you go to that link and I'm happy to put it in the chat as well.

It is not required to meet with me by any means. Some people and I would encourage you to ask your questions here because you might think your question is unique, but you'd be surprised at how many people probably have the same or similar question that you're doing. Being really great for all of them, and for me to be able to answer it here. So don't be shy asking your questions, but if there is something super unique, you are welcome to reach out to me. I will say that.

My calendar is blocked out for July. There is just again still too many things going on with building our application primarily, which is one thing that you will probably want to. I'm assuming some of you will want to talk about.

We having been part of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, we have been using their application for many many many, many years and so now with that separation we have to build our own application. So that's what we are focusing on here in the Office of Admissions Right now. Working on having an application. So it's up and ready for you as soon as possible. Application usually goes live in September sometime. Anyway, I can't promise.

That it will be September will probably you know if you register for this webinar, you'll probably end up on our mailing list, so unless you opt out, you'll probably get a communication when our application is live. Or feel free to follow us on any of this social media as well where we will probably announce these kinds of things so our deadline is January 2nd, but if you apply by December 1st, your application fee is.

Dramatically waived, so we encouraged that for your own benefit and for us to get a handle on what is going to come. But there's no admissions advantage to getting your application in early. Same as there is no admissions advantage to having a one-on-one appointment with me, so you're welcome to use that, but we don't do interviews and those conversations will not have any factor in your application review. All right? I think that's it, and I see.

We see flickering, so I think the chat questions are coming in so I what I will do is I will try to plow through some of those and let me take a quick drink.

Thank you for your patience.

All right, I think the first question that I didn't get to answer was Aman asking about reaching out to current students.

Great question about we don't have a formal process like a form or anything like that. We are very protective of our students because think about the small student body. But that being said, I think I posted the student BIOS in the chat already. While the e-mail addresses aren't there, I don't believe they show up there.

Do for staff, but I don't think they show up in the.

That is correct. They don't show up.

And I hear my phone going off and I should have muted that before, so I apologize and I hope I sounds like you can all hear me. Well, I hope hopefully my fan isn't making too much noise over my my voice. Anyway, back to the contacting the students. If you check out our student BIOS and you see somebody who is sort of either interested in what you're interested in or did what you want to do or did, or whatever the case may be.

I'm trying to reach out to them directly. You can cross the list them, go to the Yale website justthemainyale.edu website and that you can do a directory search there. Obviously, you'll be easily. You'll find the website easily, but you can do a directory search if their e-mail address is there, then you should feel free to reach out to them, and if they can respond if they're willing and able, then they will. And if they can't they won't. But something to keep in mind is we.

Very actively connect you with current students and alumni as admitted students. So given the volume of prospective students that we have, we can't make those connections with the current students and alumni as readily as we would like. I think it's just a size issue and and they need to obviously focus on their academics and everything that they're doing. So with that being said, do keep in mind that.

We we actively make those connections during our admitted student program and the period between middle of March, which is when typically when decisions go out and you have until May 1st to respond to that offer of admission. If you were admitted, and so during that time we actively make those connections with students, alumni, even faculty, and senior fellows so you can rest assured that that will happen, but feel free to either use the.

Resources that I mentioned to you or check out LinkedIn to see if there's current students and alumni and just reach out to them, but I would do it in a very targeted way rather than pretty general because those things are again aren't required. But if you want to learn about the Yale experience, the Jackson experience, they're living it, or have lived it right, so they'll be able to provide better information than me telling you all of this kind of stuff. OK, so that makes sense. I'm on, hopefully.

That gives you some direction. Ellie. Are there a fair amount of people focused on social development and with what focuses and when I can remember the last time I checked, the student profiles only one seemed to be interested in education. Ellie, that's a great question and I kind of hinted to it. But you're asking it in a different way than I approached it.

That's the the thing about us.

Being such a flexible program and I'll just reiterate that our hope is that there won't be a lot of people studying one thing in particular. So chances are you're going to sort of read through the student BIOS, and you're going to find.

Very few people on social development or you're going to find few people with national security or very few people because we're trying to to pull together. People are studying all different areas of global affairs, right? All with that thread of commitment to the global good. But people are studying social entrepreneurship and International Development and economics, and so all different things and so that again is the beauty of the program that you have this small.

Older people all studying different things, and they're not competing with each other for the summer internships or first jobs, so that really enhances the experience as well.

So I would say you mentioned education depends on your focus of education. So I will say.

Of the policy issues at hand, which everything, including domestic, would be considered global affairs. We are very much an international policy type program, so we weigh much more heavily on the literal global affairs side. So when you mention education there we have courses where people are talking about education for in development in developing countries and refugee situations, less so. Domestic policy.

Education with Yale having 14 professional schools, we actually do not have a school of education here at Yale, so I would say if if if domestic policy education is what you're looking for that we might not have as much as you would like to round out if that's what you want to specialize in, we might not have exactly what you're looking for, but again, you can use that Yale course database to dive into that to see if.

We have enough offerings that you feel like you could build your an area of study in that if that makes sense. Hopefully that makes sense.

You're welcome. Do you remember what the question was? I'll keep plugging along Gonzalo. Is there any special consideration in terms of application process for people applying for joint degree programs? Great question. We get lots of people in line for joint degree programs. We very much encourage them similar to what I've been talking about building the class and people coming from all areas we can't have too many in the joint degree programs because otherwise we wouldn't have a second year class right? Because what happens is.

You have to apply to each program separately so their own different application admissions processes. There's no overlap there, so whether you're interested in the School of Management or the Yale Law School, you have to follow their requirements. We don't review the applications together. We will share admissions decision lists after the fact.

But it's as simple as that, so we do have we at Jackson. You'd have to check the other professional schools, but we at Jackson have an additional statement on top of your personal statement that what we would call a joint degree statement that you flush it out a little bit more. Maybe your order maybe a little bit more specifically why the joint degree, especially with a program like ours, where you can actually take classes at the law school.

And or the School of Management. And do you really need the additional degree right? So you can make that case? Obviously, if you're interested in it, you'll probably talk about it in your regular statement of purpose, but we want you to flush that out a little bit more in the joint degree statement you may get into both and then yay, congratulations. What we usually ask is that you start at Jackson first, so you either defer or delay or however the other school prefers to label it.

And you started Jackson the first year, the second year you are in residence at the other school, and then the third year is really your choice. Which semester you want to technically be in residence at the other program?

So that's where you probably don't see a lot of information about joint degrees because.

It's just the combination of the two.

And it's it's pretty simple as just applying with that one additional document, and I think any we usually have about maybe a dozen people across all of the different joint degree options.

Who are any given year? So that's again, those aren't quotas or anything like that, but we're looking for that sort of balance as well, so I hope that helps, and I hope I answered your question, Gonzalo.

To see, I'm apologize if I'm getting that name wrong. Tell you say ohh, I wish I could hear I wish I could hear you that's the disadvantage of the one sided. I'd love to be corrected and make sure I say your name properly. But do volunteer experiences or internships count towards experience for applying to the MSP program? Yes and no. So that's a great question. When we when you look at our student profile, which I don't think I gave you that.

Let me find that for you the MP class profile which shows these are all medians and averages, so no minimums. The only minimum requirement we have is for the English language proficiency tests for non-native English speakers, but otherwise gerres which we do still require the general GRE collective groan.

And but the jury Gpas. There's no minimums with those. Same with the amount of work experience. I think our average is about three to five years.

When we say three to five years, that's mathematically postgrad. So that's done by your year of graduation from undergrad, and so that doesn't count your non traditional students or in that does not count any work experience done during your undergrad internships and the like. So that being said.

How we view internships obviously is very, very relevant, regardless of the amount of postgrad experience that you have, because we want you to connect the dots. So we want to know.

You know why Jackson? I think I've mentioned that before what your long term career goals are, how your previous academic experience tied into all of this. So what you did in undergrad extracurriculars, internships, coursework your postgrad. Experience how Jackson can help you get to what your long term career goals are, right? So those things need to make sense. So in that regard, your internships and your volunteer experience is very, very, very important. So this is where that think about your application.

As a portfolio, all of you right? I presume, just like I keep talking about how our student body looks very different from each other, I bet if there were profiles of each of you, you're probably all coming from different types of backgrounds and areas of study. Obviously from the questions we've been getting already, that's proven to be true.

So it is. It's those who are coming with less postgrad work experience.

Those internships that you that you do during undergrad will weigh much more heavily than they might for somebody who has 10 years of experience, right? So think about that balance right. Hopefully that makes sense. Think about one other thing I want to say about that is.

It's not just about what you need to get out of this program.

The the Why Jackson, right? You need to tell us what you want to do here and what you need to get out of this and how you're going to utilize it in your long term career. But you also need to tell us.

What that is, you know what you want to do and for us it's it's again not just about what you need to learn, but it's about what you contribute to the classroom faculty themselves, students, alumni. They all say you probably learn more from each other than you do even in the classroom in many cases, right? So that's why it's very, very important to us to build this class coming from many different unique ideas and different pedagogies and regions and nations, etcetera etcetera.

So that is so important to us because we want those voices in the classroom, right? So?

That's where you know, again, looking at the student BIOS like how can you contribute to the classroom if you don't have any postgrad work experience. Maybe you are coming right from undergrad or with just one or two years of experience.

You'll need to convince the admissions committee how those internships.

Can help you you know, run with.

Military officers and international government. You know, mid level international government.

Staffers and people who've done Peace Corps and people who are on the fast track in the Foreign service, etcetera, etcetera. Those are just easy examples, so that's where you need to tell us as part of your application portfolio.

What you can contribute to Jackson, in addition to what you need from us, so hopefully that makes sense. How we doing here with time. Oh, we're doing pretty good on time. So I'm gonna keep plowing through these. Jessica is asking about if the MPP includes a thesis or dissertation. It currently does not, but with the transition to becoming a school and the feedback that we've gotten over the years from alumni and.

Faculty and whatnot. There will be offered an optional thesis opportunity, so there were enough people who were asking about it that it was something that we didn't want to incorporate, so there will be an optional. It might be on our website already.

It's something like a two course credits, I think.

Let me see, I'll give you the link if it has it, but I don't know that it has it yet.

I'm not seeing a whole lot about it because I think again I think we're still, you know, working out some of the details in the particulars. But we haven't. It's not, it's not something that we do. You know we'll say. Just to reiterate, we are professional programs, so we actually see this degree as a terminal degree and so sometimes not always, but sometimes thesis.

Can signal PhD and our program is not meant to be a stepping stone to a PhD. We consider it our terminal degree that you get this degree and you can go out and do international policy right? You can get on the ground and do the work with this degree.

So that's something to consider, and that's you know. The last few couple of years ago, the Provost office prior to us becoming a school sort of let us, you know, change our degree from an MBA and Master of Arts and Global Affairs to the Masters in public policy. Again, in in some ways more of a signal because an MA often is a stepping stone to a PhD and we just want to make sure that people know that that's not the core of who we are. Do some people go on and do that? Yes, it's a small amount. It's pretty rare, and they're often going into.

Maybe think tanks and research? Not so much.

Like academics or academia, but some people do do it and I could even go on and on and on, but going back to the flexibility of the program, I do know some current students who actually didn't want to rule out an advanced degree beyond this one, and it took PhD level classes a couple so they could.

Keep up with their research and learning how to speak that language so there are so many opportunities to do stuff like that. But again, I will reiterate that if we when we're building that class, if people are talking about future PHD's or wanting to do a lot of research, we'll consider that as a balance in the class too. We don't want to have too many people who are just doing research. We want people who actually.

Been on the ground doing field work as well, so again we're looking for that balance in the class so the strength of your application will depend on the applicant pool and how many people are interested in doing that same thing. Or maybe studying that same particular area of research that makes sense, and I hope that answers your question.

Uh, let's see Sophia do you direct commendation letters need to be in English? Or do you accept them in other languages? Yes, they do need to be in English.

We just won't would not have the time to get those sort of translated or find not all of our depending on the language, not all of our committee members will be able to read them, so it would be in your best interest to make sure that they are actually in English.

Right now, what are ways to make a joint degree application strong like the JMDP?

I think I touched on that a little bit. I'm trying to think if there's anything else that can add. Again making the case, I think that's the best thing. I mean, obviously, because the admissions processes are separate, we're considering you within the context of the applicant pool, but you're also going to be sort of looked at within the context of that subset of people who are applying to joint degrees and applying to. You mentioned the JD, the law school, right? So making that case?

And how many people are also applying to that joint degree as well? So sometimes it's sheer numbers and that additional joint degree statement will be pretty important.

I would say that another way to answer that is it depends. It depends depending on your story, right like.

If you haven't, this is a rhetorical question because we don't have time to have these one-on-one conversations, but.

Depending on which work experience you already have, so I will say that in my.

To couple decades career.

And in public policy and international affairs, it's sort of.

We're amazed at the amount of people who are in undergrad and want to do public policy and international affairs and think they have to do specifically joint law degrees. So there's a lot a lot. A lot of people who are in undergrad who think that that's what they have to do.

I've had bosses and Deans in this job and my previous job who have those law degrees and would be the first people to say you do not need a law degree to do public and international affairs. So unless you want to be a trial lawyer or work on very, very specific topics, whether it's human rights law or or whatever the case may be, and I think art again our advantage at Jackson is that you can actually take classes at those right now said that before, but we're so proud of that and everybody does it.

Like most Jackson students take classes at the law school and the School of Management, School of Public Health School and the Environment. You can even make a case for studying at the School of Drama. I think somebody a couple of years ago was approved to take a a documentary film class because it fit into what their long term global affairs career goals were. I I hope that makes sense a little ambiguous, but I hope it hones a little bit more about how we sort of look at the joint degree process.

Patrick, can you address older students, 4050 say in mid career and the one year program? Yeah, so one thing you mentioned, the one year program secondary. But first is that there's no age restriction even for the MPP we have. There's going to be somebody in the MP incoming class who I think is 40 something. I don't want to out him his age, but so you can be eligible for the MAS, but want or need.

The MP's either way it's about how you're going to utilize this degree so it isn't so much about your age versus.

How are you going to continue to use this degree? What we've taught you in your career for a significant amount of time? Make a difference in the the arena of global affairs. That's really what we're concerned about, so there's no age, but I think the age in the profile, the MP's age and I don't have any stats for the Mrs. I'm sorry is.

What is it? 21 to 35 I think it's the range last year.

Yeah, 21 to 35 was the last year's age range for the incoming class, so.

If you're older than, it doesn't mean you wouldn't have a chance to get in again, we're looking at balance. We don't want too many who are coming right from undergrad. Same thing we probably wouldn't want too many who are in their their 40s. And and again, it's a balance within the class. OK, does that help? I hope I'm getting through and answering some of your questions. I do kind of.

Believe it or not, I mean I don't want to say I miss zoom, but I sometimes miss the back and forth. But this is our platform and it works great for disseminating information. Abdul is a sequence of courses in the MPP program. Flexible or most students follow a prescribed course enrollment schedule. Great question. I keep mentioning the four core.

There is some flexibility there. Everybody takes the stats class in their fall semester and the let me see if I get this right. The economics class can be taken in the fall semester of your first year or your second year. That was a change with us becoming a school because what they were finding is there was a little bit of.

Of disparity in preparation for being ready for the quarry. COM class. So what they have started to do is have a a placement exam. For that you would take as an incoming student to see if you have to take a prerequisite class. The first semester of your first year. That would get you up to speed for the 2nd.

For for the core class that you would take in your second semester. So if you are already up to speed, you can take that ECON class in your first semester. Or if you need the prerequisite, you take the ECON class in your fall semester and the politics class political science class, I believe is offered. Gosh, I should have all this down. Can I blame it on COVID brain? It was just a few weeks ago, right?

The UM?

I think it's listed on our courses and curriculum, but it may not have that much detail. I think it's on an internal document shoot. I'm really, really sorry. Feel free to e-mail us if you want that a little bit different, but there's a class you take in the spring so you take 2 classes in the fall, one in the spring and the other you can take in the first year or second year. I think that's the breakdown of it, and I apologize if I kind of butchered that a little bit. I hope it helps though.

And then obviously.

The rest is when it's offered. When you're taking, everybody talks about the grand strategy class, which is one year. If you don't get into that class in your first year, some people get to take you in their second year, so there's there's all sorts of variations like that that people take classes at different times following when they're offered. Some classes are only offered in the spring, some are only offered in the fall, some are offered every year, some are offered every other year, so that depends on the faculty in the department and all of that.

Hope that helps.

Let's see, uh and me is the Jackson school more focused on building professional skills networks so that no further degree is required, or an academic inquiry? I think I answered that question that we're definitely more on the professional skills and networks. We see it as a terminal degree, so I think that was already answered. If not, feel free to ask it again in a little different way. Daria do. Students enrolled in the MPP program have access to advisors throughout their experience absolutely. So I mentioned.

Helping you know getting the one-on-one. Help with student affairs to pick your courses, but you also have that with our career development office. So again, size is to our advantage, so our career development Office staff starts to meet with you. Our director is already requesting the resumes of the incoming students who aren't even here on campus yet and start. They start meeting one-on-one with enrolling students to see what your dreams and passions are.

And and what you might want to do for your summer internship or what you might want to do for your first job, your long term career goals if need be, career development will even sit in on your one-on-one course. Selection meetings you know if there's something a little bit more complicated or unique that maybe you want that group to meet together. So there, yes, you definitely get access. And also.

This there's informal advising too. I think we would probably tell.

First year students talk to your second year. Student classmates. They're going to know better. Like should you take that class? No, don't take that class. Take that class. You know, like this faculty, that faculty they're going to be a really helpful resource too. So they're during orientation in the fall of your first year. There's current students involved in that, so they help as well. Maybe a little bit more informal than the actual one-on-one advising, and then connecting in your second year with.

Maybe it's the senior fellows, the practitioners who are you know, doing what you want to do and getting advice from them on what they recommend. There are all sorts of formal and informal resources to to get that that hands on help, so I hope that helps.

Let's see, that was Daria Amani answered your question. Good one. Is there a typical profile of MP? Is Yale Jackson opened the candidates whose educational professional backgrounds are not global affairs and related fields, but seeing graduate degrees to make that switch? So yes, I don't have to talk about the typical profile because there's not a typical profile. The profile is commitment to the global good. That's the one thread throughout all of our.

Current students we want that commitment to the global good. Between that. Ideally they have some quantitative experience. It's not required. The more you have is it will strengthen your application and then third, I think I've hinted to this is that unique story. So everybody has a unique story. Show us what that is, whether it's through, it's your personal upbringing, your career, your academic experience, all of it together, whatever the case may be, so your unique story what you want.

Study is important to us, so there is. That's the only thing that's typical is is, I would say the commitment to the global good.

So you get it gets a little tricky when we talk about you. Can I know? It's an overused word, but the pivot like we consider work experience as evidence of commitment to the global good, right? So those people who are pivoting just like anything else and I don't know how many people have hopped off already or are already tired of hearing this. But we are building that class and like anything else.

All of the different nuances that we've talked about, I would say even people who are from non traditional types of backgrounds.

We won't we that could be super interesting and super unique to have in the classroom, but like anything else, we don't want to have too many. So it depends on what it is right? And it depends on how many of you are from that sector or from that particular area, who and who want to pivot? We we wouldn't want too many people in the admitted class who are pivoting because.

Are they really pivoting or because we provide such decent funding? Are they looking for free access to Yale and classes? And so we have to scrutinize some things a little bit more. So sometimes people are pivoting having a tougher cell, so think about that when you're putting together your application. It's absolutely possible, but it just totally depends on the makeup of the applicant pool.

I was going to add something else, but I see some more questions so we'll keep going because we're going to run out of time any minute. I got some thank yous good. That means I'm answering questions comes on saying thank you, you're welcome. Will you consider the Jerry score that is set to expire in early September, possibly before you open the online application? Yes, so the tricky part of that is you should. We will accept Jerry Sport as long as ETS releases it. So that means you should probably get it to us even before you submit the application.

It ends up in some magical holding place that I'm still figuring out where that is, but we do have our Jackson specific ETS codes so you can request to have those four sent to us and they will be held up somewhere until you submit your application. They won't match up with your application until you submit and then it'll be up to the admissions committee if they're like, well, it's over five years. It may be fine. It's probably fine if there's any concerns with anything.

In your application, will they be concerned about?

Semi expiring scores. It's going to be case by case, but get them submitted because ETS has to release them to be official so you should be able to do that now even though there's not an application portal yet. But we've been slowly updating all of our accounts and so I think the code I don't have it memorized yet, but the code should be on our website where you can have ETS release those but again you have to submit your application before it will match up and you'll see it in your checklist.

They have been matched up with your application, but I think as long as we have them in our system it should be fine. I hope that helps good. I'm getting some make sense. How many Coverdell are awarded each year. Great question Ellie. AP score. We don't have a quota for those. Some schools utilize the Coverdell as a recruiting tool and give all of their Peace Corps all of their admitted Peace Corps applicants Coverdell. We are a little bit more.

Discriminatory discriminating what sort of discriminating about that, because again, our program is so small and so many years one year we had like 7 Peace Corps people. Even in our program, and so we didn't give all 7 Coverdell. We have an additional statement additional covered on memo that's required, and so those of you who know the covered all program.

Know that.

You have to do an additional internship that is geared towards an underrepresented US community and so you can't really do that Azure summer internship because we want you to do a global focused internship right. So most students covered all students do their internship.

During the academic year, there's numerous places, whether it's New Haven reads, Iris is the most common that people do. It's integrated in refugee services.

And.

So that memo telling us what it is you want to do for your internship actually is very, very important for us to consider. The Coverdell used to be. You didn't know until you enrolled. If you were going to get the covered up in the last couple of years, we've been trying to provide that upfront so you would know at the time of admission or within 2448 hours, 72 hours of your funding package if you would get the covered all. So hopefully we'll be able to continue that going forward that you would have it, so you would know up ahead.

The thing is, the Coverdell requires we already provide more funding than the Coverdell requires us to, so that's why it's not a funding incentive for us, so you might end up with more funding than the Coverdell itself would make us offer, so it's just a matter of if you get admitted without the Coverdell, you still want the Yale Jackson degree, but are OK without the Coverdale, so feel free to reach out if you have more questions about that, but hopefully that made sense in my rushing.

We're at 101 and we're not cut off. I always worry it's going to cut me off since that's the end of the event. I guess new people just probably can't log on after this time I think. Do I have answered all the questions?

Ohh languages, Mia used that course database again. It's not offered at Jackson, their languages that are you have access again all via Yales language offerings are completely robust, so you can use that course database type in languages and see what are offered. So people who take either the ones that are required to take a language to meet the proficiency or people who just want to take new or more of a language just because that's what they want to do and their degree.

The offerings are are immense. They're tough, right? They're taught at the undergrad level, but they're the L1234. They're daily language labs. Sometimes they can conflict with the timing of your grad classes so it can get really, really tricky. But students do it and they love it and it's you can check out the course database again, you're welcome. You're welcome, you're welcome. You're welcome.

Julia, could you give some guidance on letters of recommendation? That's a great question as well.

Really simple, because again, I know we're we're sort of out of time and people are dropping off already. We require 3 letters of recommendation. One should be academic, one should be professional and the third can be your choice choice based on your particular where you need to strengthen your application.

And yes, academic. Even for those of you applying for the MCS or who have significant amount of or been out of school for a while. But the academic letter doesn't have to be from a faculty member per SE. Somebody who speaks to your analytical skills. Somebody who is familiar could be a have been a Dean.

Solid academic letter is just somebody who can corroborate your story, that this is the kind of.

Career that you want to pursue and they saw evidence of that in your in your academic background. And hopefully people that you've connected with. So there's young people on here or applying for a while.

Develop those faculty mentors because not just Yale, Jackson, but many of our peers, no matter how professional focus we are, we we are. This is Yale. This is an Ivy League school. You have access to the number one law school in the country and all these top professional schools.

We want evidence of a good solid academic background as well, and so and and a little side note, for those who are applying with less work experience, those professional recommendations can make a big difference too. They need to corroborate your story, since you don't have necessarily significant postgrad work experience, we need more evidence to have you say proof that this is the type of degree and career that you actually want to go into.

I hope that helps. Thank you, thank yous. You're welcomes ohh goodness, thanks for my patience. No no no. Thanks for your patience as I ramble on a little bit. I see one last question in less. There's people are dropping out. I know it's we're past the hour, so let's see. Though Ellie can, academic girlfriends BPI or professor that you are a co-author of paper for. Again, that's totally up to you. If that's a solid recommender.

No, it's you'll want to choose recommenders that know you well. Can write substantive letters and a good academic letter is not, somebody says, Oh yeah, they attended my class. They got an A. They were on time.

Not important for us to just have an academic letter checked off. It just really needs to be somebody who can write something substantive for you. If any of you have any concerns about.

But I don't have a traditional academic letter or my juries were terrible. You can always. It's always recommended to. You can write additional. There's additional sections in your application. You where you can upload explanations for things that might be questions for the admissions committee, so you can explain. This is why my GPA is terrible and This is why I really, really, really, really can't get it active and letter, even though you're supposed to so.

Those kinds of things are totally fine to include with your application.

Alright, I hope that helps. I will cut us off now I think I got through all the questions and didn't go over too too much and so thank you. Thanks for hopping on whatever time it is in your time zone and thanks for being a part of our very first Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs Admissions Webinar.

Feel free to join us for future. There can be repetitive that may be the ones as we get closer to the application process.

And we'll have other events on our calendar. Just keep an eye on our calendar and we hope to see your application, whether this year or in future years, and stay in touch. If you have any questions. Thank you, bye.