Fall Admissions Webinar (November 2023)

Hello.

Good morning.

Or good evening wherever you are.

Right. Can you hear OK, is this thing on as they say?

I was having.

Visual issues this morning so.

Sounds like you can hear as long as you can see my screen. That's great. Good evening from Australia. Yes, good evening.

Far, far and wide.

As we wait for people to get connected, feel free to say where you're logging in from. I love it's my favorite part about these.

You're only identified by your first name and last initial, so you have some privacy.

And I'm starting to hear some yard work outside, so hopefully it won't be too loud and it won't be bothersome for all of you.

All right. We'll give maybe another little bit of time for some people to connect. Meanwhile, why don't we go over some of the logistics? This webinar is being recorded, so if you have any technical difficulties or if you have to bounce early.

The recording will be available at a later date, probably as soon as tomorrow or maybe Monday.

It is audio, so make sure you can hear me OK. There's always.

Technical issues. So you may just need to sometimes refresh your browser just in case. If there's anything that happens and you're all finding the chat, which is great, that's where you'll be able to ask most of your questions.

And there is closed captioning available. There's a little CC, should be a little CC button on the top right of your screen that you can enable if you would like to utilize that.

And also there is a full screen button the four arrows if you want to make it a little larger to see the slides.

All right, great. Let's see where people are logging in from. We had Australia this morning. Pakistan, Korea, DC, hello Paris. I was just there a couple weeks ago. Georgia, Amazing. LA and in the states, New York just down the road. Wisconsin. Middle America. Great. McGuire, my old territory down in Central Jersey.

Singapore, Japan, more. DC and New York and other Tokyo, Berlin. Amazing. I love how people from all over the world come and join these. It's wonderful. It's wonderful, wonderful. So good morning and good evening, everybody. So I will. I don't think I introduced myself yet, just wanted to make sure all the technical things were working. But my name is Melissa McGinnis and I am the assistant Director of Admissions here at the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University.

And I am in New Haven, CT now and again I apologize, I just heard some maybe leaf blowing welcome to fall in New England. So hopefully it won't be too. Hopefully you can't hear it and it won't be too distracting for me. So in case you're not aware, since many of you are from far and wide, New Haven is located partway between Boston and New York City. That little QR code there below the map just takes you to the web page.

The Jackson web page that talks a little bit more about New Haven so you can be a little bit familiar with it.

Yale, as most of you know, as a member of the Ivy League and has been around for a very, very long time. And one thing that's really unique about Yale structure is I think different than a lot of our other peers and the other Ivs is we have more graduate students than we do undergrads. So Yale has, I think we are now up to 15 schools, 13 professional, plus the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Yale College, which is Yale's undergrad program.

So who are we? We are the Jackson School of Global Affairs. We became the Jackson School just in July of 2022. Prior to that, we were the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs for about a dozen years, thanks to a generous gift from John and Susan Jackson that, you know, gave us a little bit of autonomy, even though we were part of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

And prior to that we were the international relations program at Yale University. So we are new, new in name, new in structure, but our history has been around for quite a long time, but it's really, really an exciting time.

For Yale and for the Jackson School, since we are the first school at Yale. Founded at Yale since 1976, which was the School of Management.

All right, so I want to do this a little bit differently.

So we have a good batch of people here.

Normally, I give a blurb first about Jackson and the program and who we are and all of the things. And what usually happens is we end up running out of time for all of your questions. So I would like to reverse this for this particular session being mid, is it mid technically late November? I guess we're heading into the Thanksgiving holiday season.

And we have our first deadline on December 1st, so it is a fee waiver deadline, so it's not our final deadline. Our final deadline is January 2nd, and this is for the NPP. Our MAS deadline has passed, so we can if there's questions about the MAS and maybe it's just about timing and whatnot. If you're on here, feel free to ask those as well, but I want to start with making sure.

Those of you who are current applicants especially and wanting to submit by the December 1st deadline or are having some technical issues because there are a few technical quirks happening, I want to make sure you get those asked and answered 1st and hopefully through asking questions and getting those questions answered. Those of you who might have hopped on who are brand new to Yale Jackson and are not familiar with the program, please hang on because.

Presumably how we answer the questions you'll learn about the application process for sure, but maybe learn about the culture of Jackson and I can do definitely a a blurb towards the end once I make sure all of the applicants questions are answered all right. Does that sound like a good plan? I obviously can't hear you since it is an audio only.

So I don't know if any of you have thought about your questions.

So feel free to post those in the chat and if there aren't any I will just continue to ramble on. But if some of you are repeat visitors, you know I I can do that pretty well and I want to make sure this, you know, is more about you. So what I can do is while I wait for questions about the application process to come in, I can sort of go through some of the things.

The main one I would say is if you're not already where we are, still agreed school for our two year MPP. So if you want to apply this year, you need to register and take that test.

Usually by the end of December is fine and we'll get those in early January. Test scores can come in after the deadline, right, like within a week or so is ideal, and also being mindful of this December 1st deadline.

I would say is.

The I just lost my train of thought, so I'm trying to keep my eye on the chat too. But I want to finish this this thought but you actually, if you want to take advantage of the December 1 deadline.

The test scores and your recommendations can come in later. Don't wait to submit your application for those things. You can submit your application by December 1, and those things can come in later because the December 1 application fee waiver deadline is really for your advantage to save that $75. It's not an early admission process, It's not part of a rolling admissions process, so definitely keep that in mind.

As you register or re register if you want to take the test over again. So that's the biggest timing issue I would say and that will hopefully give some of you some a little bit of relief. All right, I see the chat moving, so let me take a quick drink of my morning coffee.

And get down to it. All right. So, Dylan, what advice would you give to applicants doing a last review of their statement of purpose? What is typically missing from statement of purposes or applications that are good but not excellent? That's great. It's a really great question. The way you frame that, I would say.

Often, you know graduate applications are quite different than undergrad, right? Undergrad, you can just tell us how great you are and how great we are, and that sort of seems to be sufficient. But when you're applying to Graduate School, there are so many pieces you need to connect the dots with.

So telling us not just about your background but also like why you want to do this, and I put that right here in the slide, it's why Jackson, the Y Jackson piece is important because we're a professional program and we're we're wanting to know how this degree fits into your long term career goals. So don't forget to tell us what those long term career goals are. I mean, you don't need to have like a specific, you know, organization or exact job title in mind.

But we definitely want you to connect those dots and tell us how your academic and extracurricular experiences and your work experiences thus far have gotten you to the Y Graduate School, Y Jackson piece, and then tell us what you're going to do with that. Inevitably, one of those pieces is missing from a lot from various applicants, so I think that would be.

My my advice or my answer to that question?

And I would say, don't forget to tell us about that unique story like how how are you going to stand out among a very small cohort. Many of you probably know we're only about 35 to 40 students. We're intentionally small. We like that intimacy. We like that we're able to give one-on-one attention to two enrolled students. So our goal is that those 35 students will be approaching global affairs from different perspectives or they'll have.

Unique upbringings or different stories that they can contribute to the classroom. So.

You know, those things are all different pieces that can be put together in your statement of purpose or other parts of your application. So I hope that makes sense. John, do you know how long the Michael Scott essay should be? Also, what information should be included in the essay? John, another good question. I don't know that there's a limit. It doesn't need to be long. I I I'm surprised. Let me make a note for the future to make sure we include the length somewhere in the application.

It is.

Really the only unless it's not. Just in case it's not clear, it's the only named fellowship we offer that can't already be determined by other questions in your application. So maybe what I can do is I will just to help the whole crowd here is paste in the tuition page and on the tuition page you will actually find a very long list.

Of named fellowships, but none of them you have to apply for.

IT admissions assigns the amount, and then later other offices, finance and other offices at Jackson determine where that funding comes from based on.

As you can see some in the list potentially where you're from, your citizenship. We have some for like Africa and Hong Kong.

And different places like that. So it's it's the Michael Scott is is related to your parents, right. So that information is not readily available.

So just telling us what your parental background was and if they fit into that, the military or government service. So it doesn't need to be long at all. Many of the other fellowships are determined by literal check boxes and drop downs in the application. So it's just making sure we're aware of that so when the time comes that the other offices can.

Are determining the buckets of money that that's where they'll know that that's an option for for you and others who are interested. I hope that makes sense. All right, Noah, what's the most significant piece of application requirements? Well, all of them.

I mean, I say that it sounds like I'm saying it in jest, but.

In theory, it really is true. Their requirements for a reason. So what I how I like to explain is think about all of the requirements on a baseline. They're equal for everyone. They are all important and required for different reasons, right? Your personal statements, your story, your resume is your work experience, your extracurriculars, your recommenders corroborate your story, obviously your transcripts. We need you know to know about your academics. The GRE sort of corroborate those academics. Language proficiency, all of those things are equally important.

But it all starts to ebb and flow based on each individual applicant and your own personal strengths and weaknesses. So I can potentially use a couple different scenarios. The easy ones are maybe the quantitative skill, right? We actually do not have prerequisites for quant things, but stats and econ are part of our core, so having some quant is actually can actually strengthen your application and become.

You know important to the academic review, So what does that look like in terms of how your academic requirement or how your application requirements are considered?

I would say an example would be you have taken no quant courses and there's none on your resume or on your transcripts, right? You haven't taken stats, econ algebra, calculus or the like, so that would be a concern to us. That means because we're still agreed school, the GRE quant section would weigh much, much, much more heavily.

Whereas if somebody was an econ major or a stats major or a math major or some sort of quantitative type major.

And the GRE quant section may not matter as much because we've seen it so in in an other piece of the application. So think about all of the materials as like a portfolio of sorts and a balance, think about how they balance each other out. Another example would be and this is I think important to to say for maybe new people are logging on or those of you who are applying maybe with less than average work experience.

So most of our students have three to five years of experience for various reasons. We're a professional program. We're very, very, very flexible. So people really know what they need to do. You design your own path, your own curriculum, so most people who have the work experience can formulate that better. So all of those, there's again various reasons why why our average just happens to be three to five years. So excuse me.

When people are applying with less than that.

Professional recommendations might also weigh much more heavily because they need to get them from.

Internships, advisors or or the like and we need we see work experience as sort of evidence to commitment to global affairs and the global good if you will and.

When you don't have that work experience, we need somebody to corroborate that story. So hopefully those are a couple examples to show you how the answer is always. It depends, right? So everything's sort of equal at first.

And there's reasons we're requiring them and we always revisit the requirements. Should we keep requiring the GRE? A lot of our peers have gone GRE optional, so there are reasons we're keeping them, so they are all important.

So hopefully that makes sense and gave a little practical examples for like kind of a philosophical question. All right, I hope that helps. That was Noah I believe.

My moon because the resume is only meant to be 1 to 2 pages, what information should we prioritize?

That's a that's another great question. So we just don't want CVS, right? We don't want the the 6-7 page CVS with all of the publications.

That, ideally, keeping them clean and concise is great. But you're right, we do want to know what your extracurriculars were in this field. We want to know that that shows your leadership skills. Obviously, we want to know your job path, so it is a challenge.

If they're longer than two pages that pages, that's fine.

But I think just be mindful that, you know, the admissions committee has to read hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these, so.

You know.

I would just say make sure your academics are on there, especially if they're a little bit confusing and you have like a sort of all over the place path academically that can be really useful. And then obviously your your work history and and and your involvement and your extracurricular is your volunteer work, community service and the like. So it's a challenge. Don't make the the, the the font teeny teeny tiny that won't be helpful to the admissions committee members eyes either.

But just keep that in mind, like it's clear and concise is best, but we also want If you have gaps in your resume, that'll be of concern to us.

Some people use the additional information section of the application to explain gaps in the resume, so if if you're leaving things out intentionally for space, you know, maybe that's not wise, or definitely explain it in a different part of your application. All right, I hope that makes sense.

Alexa, what offerings are unique at Jackson versus other public policy grad schools, I would say.

The idea that you design your own curriculum, so we don't have areas of study or fields of study or certificates. I mean, we do have a couple optional certificates, but that's sort of a little bit of a different.

Arm of the question, I think it's more you know a lot of our peers have you know various fields and and you apply to a specific program within the degree and for Jackson you actually.

It's almost twofold because you're applying to the Jackson School and Yale, but you also have to formulate what?

Not plan of study because then we don't need you to tell us the 16 courses and the order. That's not what we need you to talk about. We just need to know like what you know, I want to study China, Africa relations and or there's all sorts of different things and I think what might be useful in that regard is.

Checking out our student BIOS, if you haven't already, let me find the link to those because I think once you start looking through them and you'll see that students are studying and approaching global affairs from just about anything, you know. And I think that is super. That's really, I think that freedom to do that is something that I think our students and our alumni are thrilled about and that makes us really unique.

The second thing I would say, well at first was probably size. I think we're one of the smallest programs out there. But finally I will say an answer to that question is our integration of senior fellows into the community and the academic path. So those BIOS, I will paste in there now.

So unlike a lot of our peers who like have week long ambassadors and residents or diplomats and residents or however they frame that.

We are senior fellows at Jackson are actually required to teach, and so they're here at least a semester, usually a year or two or three. Excuse me.

So let me take another drink.

So they're around, and they're informally available for informal mentoring type things.

And they bring in their networks.

So they are, you know, all of us, all of these top IR programs will promote these people and having access to these people in our programs. But and in my experience, you know, I worked at another institution in New Jersey for 22 years prior to coming to Yale, were members of APSIA, the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, and we have annual meetings.

And so we know a lot about each other's programs. We just did an event last night with three other schools, two other schools.

And so we know about each other's programs. And so I I was, when I got here at Jackson five years ago, I was amazed at how integrated the senior fellows are. And some are more than others, right? Because when you look at them in their career paths, they often are retired, but sometimes they're still active and.

You know, might have some, might be a little bit more readily available than others.

But they're an amazing group and you can actually, because they're teaching, they often need teaching fellows, course assistance and the like. And so that gives another opportunity to work very closely with them. So those are sort of the three things I think, that I would say make Jackson unique. All right, Alexa.

I'm I don't know if I'm saying that right Ballpark figure competitive GRE scores that is. I can if you haven't found it already, the class profile is on our website and again because we don't have minimums.

It I always forget I I'm a percentile girl. So when I got here to to Yale, the raw numbers are hard for me. But I think the percentile averages are in in sort of the the range of the 70th percentile.

But it's not again not minimums. We've started adding ranges because we don't want people to self select out of applying because of some low score GPA or the like because you might have an amazing story and an amazing work experience that we want to have at the table. So that's that's utilizing the holistic approach and going back to what I said earlier about utilizing the strengths and weaknesses in your, in your in your life and.

Putting that together in your application, all right, Alex, how should the balance, How should we balance what motivates our public service, where we've been, where we want to go with what we want to do at Yale courses in RSA? You know, I don't, I don't know that there's a standard answer for that.

I mean, in my career I've seen thousands and thousands and thousands of of personal statements and essays and you need.

You need to, you know, be who you are. Tell us who you are. You need to find that balance. What is your balance? What you know, how? How you're wanting that motivation. I I don't know that I can answer that.

Really in a practical way.

Except for maybe hinting to the courses. Again, you don't need to list out all of the courses you want to Kate to take, but I think maybe making sure you're familiar with Jackson and with Yale and.

If I haven't done it already, I don't think I have here. I've done so many virtual events this week. I don't, I can't remember my audience and I apologize. But the Yale course database is available to you and and I think you can utilize that as a resource. But again, you don't need to list those out when you're applying. But knowing what we have, because obviously you want to make sure that we have courses that you need, that you feel like you you need and want to advance in that in in that career path, whatever that is.

So that's sort of my non answer Alex, and I hope that makes sense.

All right, Becky, what advice do you have about formatting the resume? I think that might have come in before I answered the resume question.

You know, just average sort of standard resume, but as much information as you can fit it in there without extraneous information like again we're not like APHD program, so we don't need ACV per southeast with publications and and all of those kinds of things in there. So I think feel free to ask again if I did not answer that earlier.

John, what are the four courses we need to earn a certificate and program evaluation? John, that is a great question. I think that is buried on our website. I do not have that.

Readily available. It's probably in our bulletin, which how are we doing on time? Almost 830.

Bulletins are buried. Let me see if I can find this really quickly.

The bulletins for each of the schools.

Are go much more into the really detailed academics that I don't necessarily retain because they're always coming up with new things.

Let's see.

See how quickly I found the archives of the bulletins?

Let's see, 02023 PDF Bulletins. I think I have found it.

And not too terrible of time, so it's a PDF.

I think this is what this should have it I don't want to take too much time because it's quite the long document.

But that, yeah, it's 100 pages. So it's like all of the policies and these are public. These are you have to dig, but they're on the Yale.

Website for all of the professional schools.

And there are academic requirements and whatnot in these.

And.

I might just let you poke through that and see if you can find it 'cause I don't want to just sit there and have the, you know, the webinar be me trying to find these details which you have readily available.

But I believe.

This should have it. See, I'm even curious too that I'm still sort of scanning a little to reprograms, language, the leadership summer experience, the foundational courses which there we go. All right, I found it, it's was it John, John on that link, it looks like it is on page 23, certificate and program evaluation talking about.

6 credits methods, focus classes. It lists the courses there.

Hopefully you have that link and you can open that because there it is and I will unless you I. But that's all I know. I only know what's there as well. So I don't have additional information. So I'll keep going through the questions. And if you want to follow up with that, if there's still questions, we can get to that later. All right. Thank you. Thank you for your patience.

Let's see what advice or consideration should you know for joint candidates. That's a George, that's a great question. The main advice is you apply completely separately, right. We are not involved in each other's admissions processes. The only thing that we do do is for we usually share who is enrolling if we admit them and they enroll. So we'll share that with the other programs that we do join programs with so.

With that in mind, that way we'll know that like if it's a joint with the School of Management that if they choose to enroll in both of their admitted into both and choose to enroll, then they defer the School of Management. So logistically we know about that. But what could happen is you get admitted to both and then it's pretty straightforward. If you get admitted to neither, that is also pretty straightforward. But if you get it admitted to one and not the other, you have some.

Difficult decisions to make.

Whether you want to enroll in the one program you got admitted to and take your chance and reapply to the other program as a first year student, which is a possibility, but the additional joint degree statement is really where you flush out sort of some of the more details about why the joint degree.

You'll probably talk about it briefly in your personal statement because obviously if it's going to be that important then you will talk about it. But we want you to go into it a little bit more in that joint degree statement.

And also while we encourage them, and we recommend them because we're so flexible and interdisciplinary, those make sense, but we can't have too many because of our program being such a small size, right? Again, back to that 35 students. If we had more than a dozen joint degree students, we wouldn't have a second year class because they would all be in residence technically at the other professional school, even though you're still a Yale student, you are. You have to go through some technical stuff to be in absentia.

With that in mind, we it's also don't forget that you have access to all of those schools regardless. Even if you're not a joint degree student, if you were just a two year MPP student, you have access to those classes already. So maybe you just need a couple of law school classes. A lot of our students take humanitarian law and there's an international law class and you know, or maybe you want to do some of the more.

Technical classes out of the school of the environment. So there's there's many things that you do within just the two year MPP program so.

It's while we encourage them, it might be a little bit of a tougher sell for the joint degree. So that joint degree statement is sort of pretty important on why you actually want to do the extra getting the second degree when you have access to those courses. I hope that makes sense. All right, I will keep going here. That was George Joy. Is there a second application deadline for the MAS program not for this year.

We do apologize if people were part of our sort of inquiries in the last year or longer or you applied to the MAS before because we did move up the deadline. It used to be January 2nd like the MPP. But because that program is even smaller and it's usually only about two to three people in the program plus we have a special park, it's a military international, U.S. military program that are part of the.

MAS but of the traditional MAS, there's usually only about two to three people. They're usually employee sponsor, employer sponsored, It's not funded. So that's probably why they're often employer sponsored because we don't provide the funding. So their their employers are paying them to get the one year degree and then go back.

Potentially at a higher position in their former place of employment. So with that in mind, a lot of those places.

The military they were wanting or needing earlier decision release. So there is some confusion. I know on our website that about the decision released for having the new November 1st deadline for the MAS.

We're going to try to do it before the winter holiday in December, so the break.

I think some places it does still say mid March, but we're just keeping that there to just cover ourselves in case we can't get it all done.

With having the early deadline this year. So that's the long answer for no, I'm sorry, there's not a second application deadline for the MAS for this year. All right, Miriam, you would like to ask a colleague of my level from the previous workplace to provide a recommendation to seniority matter.

Great question.

Seniority, I don't think, matters.

It shouldn't be familial, right? So you don't want one of your official letters to be?

Family or a relative? That is really our main recommendation I would think.

I think you want to make sure you choose people who know you well and know your work style.

So it.

Choose who's best for you. I think we want to know their titles. I think if people are have worked for you, it could be a little maybe confusing to the admissions committee. Like why can't you get somebody who you worked for? But you also want to choose people who know you well, so seniority doesn't necessarily matter like in terms of like.

You know, the president is the president of the company is higher than the vice president. But the vice president knew me better than choose the vice president, right? Like it's not title that matters.

It's really about who will write you the strongest letter and who knows you best, so.

Little grey area there potentially.

Recommending.

Sorry for the lack of a better word, but you know, recommending that you you have maybe senior people, but it could potentially be OK depending on the letter if they are an equal or reported to you so.

I think that depends, but choose your strongest letters. I think is really the most important.

All right. Miriam versus Miriam. OK, that's a little confusing. I'm curious to know two things. First, the average number of work years on your website is 5.1. Is the mid career professionals worth applying with somebody with two years of experience in journalism policy?

OK. I mean, I need to unpack that a little bit. So the average this year's class is 5.1 was was significantly higher. I think last year it was like 3.6.

So that average ebbs and flows every year. That being said, we have lots of people in the MPP program obviously who are would be eligible for the mid career program, but they want the two year program.

So the MID career program is requires the MAS requires a minimum of seven years of work experience. Most have 12 to 15.

So there are people who last year we had somebody who was 39 going on 40 in the two year MPP. So there's no, you don't like age out of of eligibility for the MPP program. So I wouldn't call it a mid career, but I mean maybe it feels like it if it's five years but.

Average has been three to five and as you can see from the website students, actually we do have a small handful that might come from underground.

Or may only have one or two years of experience, but we want the age. I think the age range is listed there as well. So you can see that sometimes it's 21 to 40 and there just doesn't happen to be any 21 and 22 year olds this year. So the the range I think was 23 to something. So it really depends on the applicant pool each given year and the strength of each individual application. But we can't have too many who are coming in with less.

But we like that range represented.

So second, if I've not done Qualcomm courses is a good GRE quant score enough? I I think I sort of answered that looks like your question came in pretty early 813. So I think I addressed that already talking about sort of the balance and strengths and all of that between courses and GRE and and think about like the strengths and weaknesses.

So I definitely answered that before.

Mimoon, do admitted students receive full funding Tuition. It depends. We are from the link I sent from tuition. We're a merit.

Based funding, so.

We make admissions decisions and then determine funding. So, but I will say, and it may be slightly confusing from the website, the last three years we have actually been able to give all enrolling students full tuition or top up tuition if they're coming in with an external fellowships, so.

The way you ask it, it's not guaranteed because it's merit based. I think our Deans would like us to guarantee it, but I don't think the budget people want us to guarantee it. So it's not in writing that we do provide full funding, full tuition, but we have been for the last three years and actually about 1/3 to half of the class also received stipends as well. So our funding's pretty decent. All you need to do is check the box in the application. We do want to know a lot of your background.

Like external fellowships and the like. Not because the money is relevant to the application process.

But because we try to make the funding awards within 42 hours or so of making the admissions decisions, So we need all of that up front. But yeah, you just check the box asking for funding and we'll do our best. But we hope that we can continue funding tuition going forward. But again, merit based, so there's no guarantee.

John I currently work for the Defense Logistics Agency, interested in conducting research in Graduate School to learn how to use to update a portion of the.

OK. Do you think Jackson's Research Center independent? That's a heavy question.

That's and it depends too. So on the tuition page you can see that there are, let me find that again 'cause I'll drill down to the link in it. There are opportunities for research assistance, but that's handled on a case by case basis.

Alright, it's on the funding page. OK, I got it teaching and research.

All right, let me paste that in. So what happens? Is a faculty member.

Has a project and they need researchers and they're almost handled. I don't want to say like jobs, but usually through the academic affairs office they will blast those needs out to enrolling students even as early in the summer before arrival and throughout the the year. So those opportunities come up and can be done.

The other thing, the only other way I can think I could answer that since that's so specific.

Is this is more course related, but a lot of our students do what they call directed readings, which are basically like independent study courses.

Where excuse me, if you reach out to a faculty member and you you want to work with them and create a research project, you can approach them if they're willing and to put in the work and you want to do the work and everybody agrees and.

The all of the academic affairs people agree you can create a course based on on that. So that might be a direction that you could go for that you know to see.

You know, because I don't know that. I mean, the center's information is all on our website and has what they're doing.

And if you could hop onto that, I'm sure.

Probably fine, but they're all listed and if it's happening.

Outside of what's listed on the website, I'm not aware of it. But then those are handled by. You could look at them as sort of individual research projects that people do with professors. So I don't have a list of those and what those are because they are obviously.

Ongoing and.

You know they are as needed, right? And are usually based on what the faculty or senior fellows or the students are working on, so.

I hope that makes sense.

Yeah, I will keep going. It's amazing how this time flies. It's already 8:45 and I'm guessing seeing my scroll bar, there's still a lot more questions, so let me keep going.

Let's see, where was that? Kayla, could you talk about the optional essay, how people approached in prior years? Great question. People have not approached it in prior years. So to be transparent as you all are aware of the, the, the.

The new regulations.

That we are no longer allowed to consider race and diversity as part of our application process.

You know, based on the Supreme Court decisions, that essay used to be our diversity statement. So we could no longer have a diversity statement. So based on.

You know feedback from the other professional schools at Yale and General counsel like and a lot of our peers are sort of going to that community essay. So there is no prior example for that. So we basically.

You talk about a community that's important to you. And I was just at an event, virtual event last night and somebody asked. They were concerned about being sort of repetitive because they talked about the community in their personal statement and they talked about it in their optional essay. And their recommenders are talking about it. And there's random little questions in the application about like how you heard about us. And so they they were concerned that, you know, there was too much of this, you know, one particular community, and that's fine. I wouldn't worry about that or you may have different stories to tell, so.

It really is just we we just want to know like how your commitment to community and and how you will bring that sense of community to Jackson.

And to Yale, so that hopefully that makes sense. Miriam, is there a sought for score for the GRESA section?

No, you I, I'll keep going. Those are early questions. So I think I answered those and I put the profile on the website averages and medians, I think we've been at about A5.

I think 5 has been the average. I think this year for the writing section is the MPP program STEM designated. It is not.

There is a faculty committee trying to come up with maybe a certificate option that could make it, but it's Global Affairs. So, you know, yes, you could end up taking most of your electives in in economics and maybe that would feel like it's done, but you're still getting a degree in Global Affairs. Those are governmental visa things, you know, when you're having to deal with the OPT issue and whatnot. So it's a very.

Umm, specific. Very. Umm sort of needs to be very intentional. So if we end up having a certificate that can make it STEM, I don't see that happening very soon or in the near future. But that's there are faculty who I know are talking about that. There will probably be information on the website, but it is currently not STEM designated. John, can I enroll PhD level courses and an MPP student? Absolutely.

So that's I sent the Yale course database, and I do know that we've had students in the past who, even though being a professional program, we do not consider this a stepping stone. This Masters in Public Policy is a stepping stone to the PhD, to a PhD. Jackson doesn't currently offer a PhD, but I know that some people in the program don't want to close doors and have been known to take as part of their electives, if not PhD classes, at least like.

You know, research heavy classes to sort of, you know, keep their skills honed in that area.

You would just need permission from the faculty who was teaching it, and also approval from the academic affairs office here. But all of that is pretty seamless as long as the course makes sense in what your chosen path is. And it's not all sort of all over the place, right? And I I mentioned that again because you have access to all of the resources, and I keep reiterating, you don't need to tell us the 16 classes.

You need to sort of design your path, and you need to do that yourself on the application side. But as an enrolled student, you get individual help with that, going back to our size, the small, the intimate, small attention.

That was not grammatically correct. But you know, you know what I'm saying. So you, whether it's career services or whether it's the academic affairs and the, you know, navigating the 3000 courses that are available to you, There are staff here that meet one-on-one with you to help you determine that. And they'll meet with you at various times over the two years too, as you know, because different courses are offered different semesters.

There are people here to help you navigate that, so you won't be left alone to do that.

Umm, so yeah, that is definitely again, the long answer For yes, you can absolutely take a class at the PhD level. And I will add, you can also take a higher level undergrad class potentially as one of your electives as well. Not the lower level ones, but the higher level ones. If you can get that faculty member to to work with you because you'll have to do additional work to make it be a graduate, you know, count as a graduate level course. But if there's an undergrad course.

That, you see, is not met in a graduate level course anywhere across the university. You might be able to get approval even to take a higher level undergraduate undergrad class as one of your electives. So that's the beauty of the what our you know.

Maybe what I'll do while I have that on it is just somewhere forgot about that slide. That's just the beauty of the the the academic playground that is Yale that you have access to as a graduate student, As a Jackson student. All right, Miriam, if we have significant volunteer experience from high school years, experiences that we talk about in essays, should we put them on a resume?

I, I don't know, high school may not be as, I mean if if there's a thread and it makes sense, sure. I mean I think we're more concerned about maybe what you've done at the college level versus high school. So that might go back to answering the question about the GRE, the resume, sorry and the size of it and what you included, I don't know that.

Umm.

Unless you have no other sort of relevant experience than in high school. And if that's the case, you might want to do additional information and then address that while you're, you know, sort of out of the blue doing this when you don't have any sort of experience in any of these sort of relevant areas. I mean it's hard to answer that question without knowing exactly what that is. You know what those are. We don't pre screen applicants unfortunately because we can't do that for everybody. So that's like an equity issue, but.

Yeah, I don't know that I'd worry about high school.

You know, high school, I mean, when it comes to academics and you have AP classes that could be relevant. So I don't want to necessarily say, you know, rule out high school stuff, but those AP classes usually show up on college transcripts. So, all right, I hope that helps. Becky, is there a recording of the admissions panel for Fulbright Scholars? Yes, and we sent it out to those who had registered.

That was automatically sent, so if you were a registrant, you should have gotten it. If you didn't, we might be able to find that and somehow get that to you. You could e-mail the Jackson admissions, Here's our contact information. e-mail the Jackson Admissions office and we can try to get that to you.

So.

But yeah, check your inbox. If you were a registrant, whether you attended or didn't, you should have received the recording. Miriam, can you elaborate on how curriculum is designed? What does it mean when you say you design your own curriculum? So I will. What I'll do is I don't think I've done this is the courses in curriculum page on the website.

It's it's sort of so straightforward. I think it's a little confusing. You have the four classes that you have to take, they don't all have to be taken in the first year. As a matter of fact some can be taken in the second year and they've actually instituted a pre economics class.

Sort of. There's a diagnostic test that enrolling students can take if they have any concerns about, are they up to the level of the econ core class? So some students might be taking like the first semester, I think they call it economics fundamentals or something like that.

So besides those four, the rest you choose from across Jackson and Yale. Now, one thing I will point out.

At the bottom of that page that I just put in the link.

There are sample course matrices. They may be helpful to you. We want to be mindful that they're not exhaustive, they are just in those particular semesters they do open as PDFs, so be mindful of that.

The, the in those particular semesters, those were the most common classes taken across.

The Jackson students have taken across Yale, so if you click on one of them like spring 2022, I will open that now. I don't want to waste the time to like, share my screen and all of that because you all can see this.

So it lists all of the global affairs classes that semester, but then it listed classes taken that our Jackson students have taken across anthropology.

Economics, history, political science. So these are going back to even the Graduate School, potentially PhD level classes. And then you get towards the bottom. It has all the professional school courses students take classes across, even the divinity school, school of the environment and all of the other things that we've talked about. So that helps sort of hone it down and give samples of what students have done.

To sort of narrow down that course database, which is massive. But again going back to the I think if you look through the student BIOS you'll see like this is what I'm studying at Jackson I want to approach.

Of course I'm drawing a blank because there's, you know, ideally 40 different things going on, so no two people are studying the same thing here at Jackson.

And that's, that's sort of we consider the beauty of the program as well. All right. I hope that helps. I can't believe there's only 5 minutes.

Dylan how often do teaching fellows lead discussion sessions or participate in teaching?

That's that's a detailed question that I actually don't know the answer to.

We those things would be answered. I should know, like in the Admitted student, when we have an admitted student program in the spring, usually in April. I think it's actually going to be for MPPS April 3rd and 4th. This year we do panels and we have all sorts of more formal sessions than we do in our regular fall visit days.

And that stuff I think comes up I you know, so hopefully if you're admitted you can come to visit days. We do record those some of those sessions for people who can't actually make it on campus.

But I think it depends. I think every faculty member is going to have a different need. It also depends on how many people are in their course.

Is it an undergrad course? Is it a grad course? So there's a lot of different factors.

John Does a supervised thesis, leadership and ethics workshop, and summer experience count as credits?

The the no, it's just part of the requirements, like the summer internship and it's usually done during the oh, you mentioned the summer attention. Yeah, no, they're they don't count as credits, they're just part of the requirements.

So they are not course options as far as I know. The ethics and leadership workshop is there. They might tweak it a little bit. Last year was the first year they did it. I think it was like in the fall semester of the second year. But they're talking about like trying to improve that even more. But they're not course credits, Alex. I'm hoping to take my experience from Jackson to take them back home to domestic politics in Australia where this might not satisfy the global affairs.

Mission, you know Alex, it's a really great question. That kind of thing does actually come up in the admissions committee. So obviously from here on the US side, we consider Australian global. But you're right, if somebody wants to do solely domestic policy in country, sometimes their questions come up. Is that still too domestic, right, so.

So if there is a way to tie it to global issues, then that may actually still make sense. But you're asking the right question. The fact that you're mindful of that is 100% asking the right questions and thinking about, you know, what that looks like for you and the Jackson experience. And that might be like how other countries do their electoral.

Things and whatnot, and learning from your peers or classes that are available, so definitely think about that.

Miriam, I am aware that Jackson MP degree is fully covered by Jackson. I answered that before. Probably not guaranteed, but probably. You mentioned the MPP students have access to courses from other schools, such as El law. The course of these extra classes covered by Jackson, they're just part of, even though tuition is handled separately, they're your electives for Jackson. So that would be all part of the Jackson tuition. Julia, is the optional essay a valuable addition? I talked about that, but I actually didn't talk about it in light of that question.

Is completely optional. So it depends. I mean if it's if it's something like you said, if it's something not already highlighted, that can be useful. There's also a question in the application, is there anything else we need to know? Usually people use that for more practical issues like concerns on what transcripts mean or whatever. So people do all sorts of different things. It is totally optional. But you know, if you're reiterating almost word for word, something like in your personal statement may not be necessary. But we definitely.

Anything that can teach us and help us learn more about who you are is super useful.

SOA, can the individual research projects be done with any graduate faculty, or only with faculty at Jackson School? Oh, any faculty?

We will. And again, the I think the registrar's office will usually be the ones that hear about not just the Jackson ones, but the ones school wide. Or you may just want to follow the other schools as well, just to see what their faculty might have available.

Alright, that looks like the last question. We did it alright. This is exactly 859 we have one minute. This is exactly why I wanted to do this format and I hope that even though I didn't get to give my usual spiel, maybe many of you are repeats anyway and have heard the spiel and plus they're in, they're in archived on our website so you can always see old ones. Just final reminders here that we are leaving for Thanksgiving.

Recess.

Next Wednesday we will not be here. So we are back obviously before the December 1st deadline. But with apologies that our e-mail account, mine is well over. I think it's hit 600. There's many, many, many, many emails in our Jackson inbox, so we are quite behind. So we're going to do our best to get to those. But there's a lot going on and with the holiday season and breaks and whatnot.

That's why we wanted to do this format. We will do another one of these in December, right before winter break, because we will get back from winter break, the day of the MPP deadline, the final deadline. So I I try to check in on technical issues, yes, on my Christmas vacation to to, you know, see if there's technical issues. But we always recommend not waiting till the last minute.

Just in case.

So hopefully those of you who wanted general information about Jackson still got a feel for who we are and what we're about based on the questions and the answers to the questions sort of more related to the application. We do webinars all year long, so we'll have more in the summer and next fall. But these sort of last two we try to make very application focused.

Since we're so behind on on trying to answer all of your questions, so.

I'm seeing lots of thank yous, so I hope I'm glad it was helpful and we look forward to reading your applications and.

Reach out again if you do have questions, but again, be mindful of how behind we are, so don't hold off on submitting applications. If you have, you know, issues and questions, we can probably resolve things after the fact. All right, all right, I will let you go. Have a wonderful day or evening depending on where you are.

And thanks for joining and good luck with your applications. Alright, Thank you. Bye.