Summer Admissions Webinar (August 2022)

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Thanks for being here. This webinar is being recorded, so if you have a technical issue and end up needing to disconnect for whatever reason, it will be made available later and it is audio. Obviously you're hearing me OK, so it is just one way, so you use the chat function to communicate with me and I will keep an eye on that as we go, and great that your questions and comments.

Are going to be in the chat box which you have found and that is fabulous and if need be there should be a closed captioning button on the top right of your screen. If you do feel you want to use the closed captioning function or the arrows if you want to make the slides a little bit bigger if there's.

Timing glitch, feel free to just refresh your browser and hopefully that will help. Any technical issues you may be experiencing. So why don't we keep going? Thank you. Let me take a peek here in the chat and see where people are. I love seeing where people are connecting from because it really just shows the depth and breadth of backgrounds of people who are interested in international policy and it's super super exciting. So hello Madrid, in California and.

So this is exciting. Tokyo, Japan and Charleston, SC. This is great New York City. Just down the road England from all over the world. This is fantastic. Kudos to those of you who are on wacky time zones. It's just different from where we are now. Hopefully this is a good time. We have other webinars scheduled in the fall that will be early morning midday evening like this to hopefully capture.

You know different time zones, so if you're welcome to join us in the future if you have any follow up questions, the closer we get to the application deadlines, they may become a little bit more targeted. But otherwise we're here to talk about the Jackson Institute, the Jackson School look I already made my little chopal. We are the Jackson school. First, me I'm Melissa McGinnis and I'm the assistant director of admissions here at the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University. Super exciting time.

We are an iteration of the international relations program that has been at Yale for decades and decades and in 2000 around 2010 we became the Jackson Institute and Flash forward to just this summer. And it's finally official that as of July one we are the Jackson School of Global Affairs. So super exciting times.

As we go through this presentation in this webinar, I'll talk a little bit about maybe what's changed and what hasn't, because that is a common question that we're getting, but for the most part.

We are not changing if you've been following who we are and if you know a little bit about Jackson. If you've been following in the past, but this is a big deal. This is the first time Yale has created a professional school since 1976, so we are separating from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and becoming Independent School here at Yale. So super exciting times. All right? Well, some of you may be repeat visitors and the last year or so, most of these webinars have been about.

Transition to talking about going from an institution institute to a school and changing our degree from a Master of Arts.

To a masters of public policy. But if anybody has been following Jackson for a while and maybe attended a webinar in the past couple of years

I came up with this little acronym, the Five F's, and I'd really like to talk a little bit about these. I think it's just a nice way for you to remember what makes Jackson unique, so hopefully the five F's will be something that resonates with you and we can talk about these individually. I'm going to try to blow through this very quickly because we did have the highest number of registrants ever for this webinar, so I want to leave time for your questions.

Want to make sure you are getting some good overview about the Jackson School and then but also be able to answer some of your questions so I'll go through some of these five apps. I will keep my eye on the chat, but I might go through the basics of all of these and then we'll come back to your questions, so hopefully that will work for all of you.

All right, So what are the five apps? I would say family, it's the first one family. You know what does that mean, family? I thought it was a good description for our size. We're very small program, the community that we are. We're a tight knit community because we are a small program and because we are really integrated in with our the student of the senior fellows and the faculty at Jackson. So it really is has a tremendous sense of community here.

It doesn't hurt that we are in this giant Victorian mansion on this beautiful tree lined St in central campus of New Haven, and I think that adds to to that feel of being a family and their student lounges in the building and there's a lot of student life activities. Finally, pretty much normal in this. Hopefully post COVID age. So this is our first class in two years with. They're actually physically here for orientation and doing all of the things so.

Where we start that community building right away and that's happening right now. So that's the family and I've probably already talked about. We'll talk about more in the next slide, but family flexibility? We'll talk about the curriculum faculty I've mentioned briefly. Funding obviously, is something probably 99% of you have questions about in future. I presume that most of you are interested in grad school because you have a plan for your future that includes.

Future career, whether it's different or advancement in your current career. Following those passions. OK, so those are the five best family flexibility, faculty, funding, and future. Let's quickly go through those I really talked about. The family piece already just really being integrated. You know, do keep in mind as you're researching graduate programs that we're all different sizes slightly, and we're all in different neighborhoods and cities and suburban areas.

And all different variations of, you know, I'll keep going talking when we talk about the faculty. All of us top IR programs have these big name people who are part of the community. But do your research, see how integrated they really are into the community. And I was pleasantly surprised when I came here to Yale Jackson a few years ago of how much, especially the practitioners and the senior fellows are truly integrated in the community.

Me as I go. I will post some links in so you have them. This is the student BIOS and take a look at those at your leisure.

You might want to look a little bit later because the new students aren't there yet, so they'll fill out a little bit more, you know, as we go and get their pictures in and their BIOS in. But I think that really helps.

Give an idea of the depth and breadth of the type of student that we enroll here in Jackson, so I I encourage you to look at that, you know, because again, I feel like it will really give you a sense of the type of community that's here.

And under the flexibility, so flexibility is really about the curriculum. So when we talk about these that we do offer two different degrees. We have a two year masters in public policy which is our traditional policy degree and we also have a one year master of Advanced Studies for mid career professionals requires a minimum of about seven years of professional work experience. The Ms is the most flexible program because there's eight courses are really a credits because some courses could be.

More or less than one credit so, but keep that in mind. It is about 8 credits. Much smaller cohort than the MP. It's pretty straightforward, so most of the slides that we talk about. We talk about curriculum and one that will be about the MP, so keep that in mind because they have core and the MPP has core requirements for the MAS does not, so hopefully that makes sense as we talk about the basics of the curriculum. But regardless of the degree, there is tremendous flexibility.

So with the MVP, there's only four core classes, your stats, your econ, we have political science, and then we also have history class that is it. And then the rest of your classes you can take at Jackson or you can take anywhere across Yale's professional schools. That makes our programs super unique. We probably are one of the most flexible programs out there. A lot of programs have 678 core classes and the thing about Jackson is.

Because of that flexibility, you choose your curriculum. We don't have fields of study or certificates or area studies prescribed for you. You are choosing what those are.

I will post the link in so you have it. This link I'm giving you now.

Talks about the MPP curriculum and talks about the integration of the. I think I have a slide on that, which I call it features. That could be another F, right? I don't count that in my 5 FFS. But talking about the interdisciplinary nature of the program, one of the things that we've been working on, we not meet, but the senior administration with us transitioning to a school are changing around some of the way the core is set up. So it gives you a little bit.

Or freedom for example, they moved the ECON core to the spring semester in case somebody didn't have the the the skill needed to to do well in the ECON class. So now there is an option to take a prerequisite class in the fall. So little things like that have changed. We're also incorporating a writing program. We've been hired a writing instructor who will be integrating that those skills into the core.

As well, so there's things like that are changing, but it's it's really been part of the curriculum already, but we're sort of formalizing it a little bit more.

And the other link I want to make sure you have because it is public.

But it's a little bit buried. This is Yale's course database. Now when I give this to people, this is what I'm talking about when I talk about taking classes, not just at Jackson, but anywhere else across Yale. So if you take that course database, there's a keyword search in there. You can type any particular area of interest, all the language, or whatever the case may be.

And, you know, a dozen to hundreds of classes might come up. They'll come up not just a Jackson, which is GLBL, which is global, the Jackson code. The class is in anthropology classes at the law school, at the School of Management, at the School of Public Health, School of the Environment and on and on and on. So that's when we say flexible and interdisciplinary.

That's all available to you now. Courses that are 500 and above are the grad classes. But if you're a current student and you find a court an undergrad course that is not offered at the graduate level if it's higher level undergrad class, you may actually be able to. If you work with the professor and get permission that they're willing to do the extra work with you to make it a graduate level course, you might be able to get even one of those high level undergrad classes to count as one of your electives towards your Jackson.

Masters degree. So those are things to keep in mind, OK? So our greatest advantage could also be overwhelming for some people. So as we talk and go forward, maybe answering some questions we'll talk a little bit about.

You know what we're looking for, and one of those things is you needing to have a really good idea of what you want to do because you're telling us what you want to do. You're not just applying for this particular certificate or field, you're creating that, telling us what that is when you apply and then telling us.

How you fit into that and how that's going to, you know, connect the dots to your future career goals. OK, so hopefully that makes sense.

Keep that link for sure and let me quickly go through the faculty, which I have already mentioned a little bit and I want to make sure.

I.

Find that link. I thought I had it open, so I particularly want to talk about our senior fellows.

One of the.

The senior fellow story at Jackson is not changing. We usually have a dozen or so. Here's the link to the current ones. New ones will be rolled out on this website in the coming weeks I believe.

But the faculty themselves, which are also in the about section of the website, which let me really quickly give you those two. This is probably the biggest change if you will, about us becoming a school because we will have our own latter faculty, our own tenured faculty at Jackson will have control over that tenure process and the hiring.

And that is one of the major things, so we don't have to rely on the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and like borrowing their faculty, if you will, we definitely have a lot of affiliated faculty and faculty with joint appointments and people who are affiliated with other departments and schools that are officially affiliated with Jackson. But having our own core Jackson faculty, it's a huge huge piece of becoming a school and it's exciting times like I mentioned, so we have a lot of.

Faculty who are like our assistant Deans who meet one-on-one with students to help them plan their curriculum sort of talked in the previous slide about the flexibility. And yes, you need to have a really good idea what you want to do when you apply, because obviously you need to get in the door, but it hasn't enrolled student.

Mostly because of our size.

You get that one-on-one help, so you sit down with the Student Affairs Office and the academic affairs and the faculty members and advisors to help you navigate, whether it be the course database that I sent or what are your goals and what are your passions, and sometimes career services will even sit on those meetings if maybe your passion is super unique or you have more questions about what you should do based on what your career path is.

Maybe you should take this class versus that class so you get a lot of that individualized help, so do keep that in mind.

So, alright, so faculty, I also wanted to briefly talk about the World Fellows, because they are not faculty, they're also not students. They're fellows. And they are an amazing group of people who and I'll post their link into. They're an amazing group of people that come to Jackson in the fall.

And they are here to learn and to grow. And but they are also here too.

There's the link to.

To give and to to teach. Not literally, but we students are hired as World Fellows liaisons to work closely with them. Now it could be just helping them set up events and whatnot, but these people, if you go to that website and then you poke around and look at the current years. Well fellows BIOS. You'll see how amazing they are. They're really rising in their careers and they have their own networks that they'll bring, and they'll give talks.

And and all sorts of things like that that really.

You know, broadens your you could say alumni network. It really does broaden that often. People ask. Well, they're concerned about Jackson because they're so small or alumni. Network is small and maybe it is technically but a couple of things to keep in mind. Not only do you have the Jackson now, MPP, but the former Master of Arts alum. We also adopted the Yale IOR.

Decades old LIRR alarm into our network so you have access to them. There's also just the Yale network itself, which you get access to as a current student.

But also consider these world fellows part of your network they come to.

You know the the the career sponsored receptions and all of those kinds of things that they have won every year, usually in DC and in London and the world. Fellow alums are are often invited to those things. We have a big launch coming this October where we're doing lots of events to maybe not literally, but cut the ribbon on Jackson becoming a school and there's going to be a number of alum from the World Fellows as well as our.

Our regular academic columns so very, very integrated and literally their student lounge is across the hall from our grad student lounge, so a lot of organic things take place. A lot of those interactions, and the same with the senior fellows. They're just around. They come they, you know, like I was mentioning before. When you compare with other programs like our peers in the IR world, maybe they're coming for a weekend to give a talk. Or maybe having a week of office hours.

Jackson, they're here for minimum a semester and they might come up every week and teach classes or do events and give lectures. Or they're here for a year or two years. Some of these senior fellows have been around for a very long time, and it's super exciting, but we also have fresh new people come in all the time and that keeps us really in the vein of this professional degree, right? We're very focused on. Obviously, policy is a is an.

Ever changing world of the global affairs dynamic? Something is always ebbing and flowing, and so having people who were working in the field who are retiring or they're taking a break and they're coming into academia to share their wisdom and their knowledge and their experience. They read applications so senior fellows, former ambassadors, military generals, and the like might be reading your applications, so that's something to think about as you're putting your applications together so.

Anyway, I probably beat that to death a little bit, but just wanted to reiterate the integration of faculty into that family as well.

Alright, so to the funding. I do specifically say MP funding because if anybody here is interested in the MLS.

Currently we do not offer funding for the Ms, whether that's in the future that remains to be seen. That's above my pay grade to know that, but right now we do not offer funding for the MAS. So once the new student BIOS show up in our one year, I may ask show up there. You'll notice that many of them clearly are sponsored. They're externally sponsored because they're military U.S. military, international, military, their international government.

They are in the past we've had CIA and different people so.

Oh, I just saw something come in saying somebody might be having trouble with audio so.

I'm going to stop for a second take a drink.

Hopefully it's not my connection back at the office though, so I'm not worried about my home network.

Do if you're having trouble with audio, hit the refresh button on your browser. That might help. Sometimes it is network on the other side, but it sounds like people are hearing me so worst case scenario, you can always go back and watch the recording of this and hopefully that will fix things a little bit and I think you can.

Fast forward through the beginning. If you heard fine and then you lost it along the way. So I'm also talking really fast because I want to be mindful of allowing questions so that could be part of it. Maybe I could slow down a little bit. This is giving you time to potentially read the tuition and funding piece, which is what most of you probably really want to know.

All right, thank you for your patience. So again, MPP funding is pretty simple. Pretty straightforward. You will request it in the application. You check a box saying yes, I would like to be considered for funding from Jackson.

We do consider our funding merit based. So it's currently merit based. But I will say in the last three years I think in the end we've been able to offer full tuition to everybody who has enrolled. So that's a super big deal because it's not common to fully fund masters programs. PHD's yes, but it's not common to be fully funded. I will true confession.

My previous employer at our friends down in Central Jersey, I'll let you guess who that was. I worked there for 20 some odd years and they have the mic drop on funding right? So nobody can match them, but we are doing our best to catch up and that would probably be one of the other things about that might be a little bit different as we launch as a school. I mentioned the tenure faculty fees, the funding, our hope is that we can.

Continue to fund more than we do and I will say that in the last few years, we've also been able to ask offer about 1/3 of the class full stipends as well. And that's where the merit piece does come in. In that, like you look at the different data points, you know GRE's and which we do still require. We'll talk about that later and.

GPA's and your recommendations? And how much work experience you have? All of those things come into play when we do consider the merit based funding, so we'd love to be able to end up fully funding everybody, but not quite there yet. So but it is a straightforward is that you just check the box and if you are offered admission, if not immediately, hopefully within 244872 hours you would know what your funding offer.

Is and you can utilize that in your decision making process, so pretty straightforward.

Ohh link for funding great I'm glad I caught that. I do have it open.

So.

This page here.

Is the overview.

Something to not get too hung up on are the named fellowships that you see. Often. We get a lot of questions about how do I apply for this? If you go to the page, you'll see I'm interested in the Tomasco fellowship or the Golspie Family Scholarship. There's nothing that special that you need to do. There will be one fellowship.

The Michael Scott Fellowship is the only one that might require some information. Otherwise this is just buckets. This is probably too much information. Admissions is given a budget. We provide that funding when students enroll, that is, when not admissions, but our funding, finance, student affairs, people look at the makeup of the class and this is where it's like need blind, right? The makeup of the class and see.

Who qualifies for these particular named fellowships and based on eligibility? That's just where the money comes from. It's not additional money, and it's not something that you need to apply for separately. Hopefully that makes sense. I think that's the only thing that's sort of a little bit confusing. I will say while I'm here and we're talking about it, there's a link also on that page that does link to the.

The teaching fellows etc. So that is a way. There's and again I feel bad for you or trying to navigate all of these different schools. We all have sudden subtle nuances, not just in our curriculum and our faculty and sizes and locations, but also in the funding piece.

And some programs out there will incorporate a teaching fellow position as part of their admissions offer funding. We do not do that at Jackson, but those who are not fully funded often supplement their funding by being a research assistant or a course assistant. And that website will explain those a little bit. Those are not guaranteed, though, so it's something to keep in mind.

Jackson students get first dibs on Jackson faculty and Jackson Senior Fellows. But maybe your interests lie in the environment and maybe you can get connected with a faculty member at the School of the Environment and end up getting a TF physician there. Obviously their students would get first dibs, but I do know that many of our students have been teaching fellows for other programs, not just Jackson and at the same time, even fully funded people do this.

Not for funding per se, but because of the experience. I mean, if you end up being a course assistant, which is pretty basic, right? Like maybe your do they still do copying these days, you know, just working on the logistics of the class, but you might still be doing that with some former ambassador, and there have definitely been now alumni who had did was were teaching fellow or course assistant.

With a senior fellow and ended up getting their first job out of Jackson with that senior Fellow, so you could almost consider it a semester long or year long interview process. Even so, it's just another way to network and integrate with the faculty community, so it's something to keep in mind.

All right, thank you Rebecca, for bringing that up. It was a good time to do that and where we at funding and then future. I mentioned that already before. Presumably you're here because you have lofty career goals. Maybe you are currently in undergrad and you're thinking about your future. Or maybe you are already in the field and you're doing something and you sort of have this aha moment where you're like. Oh, this is really what I want to do, but I need.

This, that or the other thing to continue growing on that career trajectory and I now I know why any grad school and what I want to get out of grad school. So with that in mind, and I will put the links in for these that job sector piece that I showed you is here and something to keep in mind at the bottom of that. And I'll post the link because I think people miss it.

Is actual first employment first job data.

And I always, when I point this out to people go back a couple years because COVID, right. So I think the last couple of years, maybe not the 2021, but going 1920 or 202021 actually would be kind of different. As we all know, it's been a different season in these last couple of years, but it really gives you a good idea of what our Jackson students do upon graduating, which is just about everything, right? If I go back to the family piece or.

They really talks about the the commitment to, you know, global affairs, and so whether you look at the student BIOS or look at the course offerings or the jobs, or even the also required summer internship, which we also list the graduate summer.

Student experiences so you can see the kinds of things that people do.

That link is here.

So you'll notice that people are working across all sectors. People are coming from all different backgrounds, whether regionally or studying different things or working in different.

You know, just all over right and so, but the one thread is that they all have that commitment to the global good. And I always think that sounds a little bit cheesy, but it's so, so true and all the alumni events that we do with that is the theme that we get from people who've gone through Jackson. It's just.

You're in this cohort of people who are just want to make the world a better place, and maybe you're doing it with a military background. Or maybe you're doing it more nonprofit, background, or maybe you're doing it with social entrepreneurship in mind, or saving the environment or public health is obviously huge after coming out of a pandemic, so that's what Jackson is about, right? Coming from all of these global affairs, obviously so broad and in Kentucky.

And so many different things, but everybody sort of has this commitment to the global Britain, and our hope is that Jackson graduates would actually go on to to change the world. So again, may sound a little cheesy, but I can't tell you how true it actually is. I mean, I can tell you I am telling you how true it actually is.

So I hopefully that's coming across kind of like who we are. That's sort of it for the overview of Jackson, let me really, really quickly just talk about the application so you have it. We're doing really well on time and really did speak pretty quickly today again, I was mindful of the number of registrants that we have, and I actually have a heart stop at 7:00 PM Eastern Time so.

Sometimes I'm willing to stay on and answer questions, but I do have to bounce right at 7 because I have another meeting immediately following this. So applying to Jackson apply soon. Why am I? Why did I cross out? Now? Because this is another big piece of becoming a school separating from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences means we have to create our own application, so that's been I've been the lead on that.

So there it is. It's a true confession. If you are applying this year and you have problems with the application, I apologize, but we are in the testing phase of it. We're really excited because people over the last decades who have been applying using the Gsas application portal get confused sometimes because the their portal is really for the 40 different programs within the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

The majority of which are PhD so very different, not professional degrees. Academic degrees. Not what we're about. Yes. A couple of people might go on to do PhDs, but it's very rare, and so the prompts for things were like.

3 academic letters of recommendation. Really no no no no. We need some professional letters. Being able to really tailor the application to be.

All about who we are. So all of the things that we've talked about this evening or whatever time it is, wherever you are. Hopefully we want that to come across, and in the way we ask the questions through the application. So we are still building it and that's why I say soon. I'm sure if you're on this webinar, if you remain interested in Jackson after this, don't opt out of our e-mail list. We'll probably do a blast when the application is ready to go live that maybe even on social media.

So we are. We want to get it out as soon as possible, but we want it to be as accurate as possible because I can't deal with all of the questions. If it's wrong, right? So again, we're rolling it out for the first time on our own, so that's a really big big piece. Regardless of whether we roll it out next week or the first week of September or whenever we can, the deadlines will remain the same, so our final deadline is January 2nd. But if you do apply.

December 1st, the application fee is automatically waived.

There's nothing you have to do, you just will. You will not have to pay it if it asks you to, then I've done something wrong in building the applications. So December 1st automatic fee waiver. There is no advantage to getting your application in early. No admissions advantage obviously saves you some money, but I mentioned here we do not have rolling admissions, so all decisions are made in later in February we do the holistic approach so we have big committee meetings.

Lots of people reading your applications and decisions go out in the middle of March. We'll try to get them out as early as possible, but again, this will be the first year that we actually release our own decisions. Again, Gsas has been releasing those so a little bit of a learning curve for us, so Please be patient if you're applying this year, it will come. We're going to do things as soon as possible, but we also want things to be as I know we can ask for perfection, but as perfect.

As possible.

One thing that's a common question is the test scores and letters of recommendation. Those do not need to be officially received by the time you submit your application. So say you submit your application by December 1 so you can get the fee waiver. Your recommendations do not have to submit by then. Your scores do not have to be submitted by then. They do need to be in very, very close to the January 2nd deadline, so that's another advantage.

You may not want to tell your recommenders that.

That's a secret right, because they often take a long time, so it's up to you and your recommenders if you want to tell them December once the deadline, but they will have, there is no actual deadline for them that will force stop them from submitting their recommendations. But what we do is, we say, both test scores and recommendations really should be in no later than that first week of January, and within a week of the deadline.

Because we will start reviewing applications, obviously we can't review them all at the same time, so we have to roll, read them and again I mentioned there's numerous people reading these applications so.

Again.

If your application isn't complete until later in January, it's probably fine, but you we never know how many applications we're going to get, and we will keep reading and keep reading, and so you just don't want us to get to your application and it's still incomplete. So there will be portals where you'll be able to check on the status of that. That was a long winded answer to please have your test scores and letters of recommendation in within that first week of January.

I always get questions about that, so I wanted to put that out there. Yeah, Sagiri still required for the MP's, not for the Ms.

All right, I think the application requirements pretty straightforward. We have because the application is not quite ready yet. We've been trying to do our best to build out the website and the FAQs. We're still tweaking it a little bit, so again, I apologize if any of the policies change a little bit. Hopefully it won't be anything major.

The MP, the Ms is pretty similar, but I'll find that link because there's always a handful of Ms in these and I don't want you to feel left out, but we're trying to do that and you'll find links to our FAQs which the more questions we get. We build those out to try to answer your questions as much as possible, all right.

That be it with the final presentation.

Not the final presentation, but the presentation. All of my ramblings do follow us on social media. I really apologize often. More often than not, I put my calendar on here.

Uhm, knowing we had such a huge.

A volume of registrants and I'm still trying to build the application. It's really really, really, really busy and I end up with hours of 1 on one meetings. I apologize, I just could not do that this month. It's not required. It really isn't. I think this this venue is a good way to ask questions because everybody often has the same you think your question is unique, but you most people have the same questions, so we have about 20 minutes. Let me get started.

By answering some of those questions so you don't feel like you're you're left out. But again the November probably more than November webinar was last year was the first time we did that. We actually touted it as an applicant's not an applicants only, but very focused towards applicants. So whether we do that in December as well.

So if you are applying this year, you may want to sign up for one of those. The format of that is usually you first right. Not me talking, but you asking your very detailed specific application questions. Trying to do that before the December 1st deadline to help you out. And because we're often on Thanksgiving break and the winter break. So we want to make sure you get all your questions answered. You can always e-mail us at Jackson admissions.

You know I have help with that better e-mail there than me directly. My e-mail is in the hundreds and hundreds of hundreds right now and again you want me to focus on building the application. I promise you all right, so hopefully that makes sense. Let me make sure I haven't missed any questions and we will just kind of plow through these. Feel free to post questions in the chat and.

Let's see what we can get through Jackson. Have his own school code? Disregard yes. Sarah, you found that it's on the website as well. TOEFL, IELTS and we are for those of you international students, we are offering the Cambridge as well this year. That's new. We haven't offered that in the in the past. Hopefully that will open up a little bit more access for people from maybe different countries who already have that as part of their background. Having to take it for graduation.

Different things and in different countries and different educations. So all of those things will be on our on our website on the different codes, so don't feel like you have to come back to this.

Webinar for that.

All right, if you are away from academic for a while, what kind of academic letter? Great question meechie.

Very common question. OK, the way I answer that whether it's even the mid career mas or the MPs who have been out for a while, we still do want an academic letter. This is Yale. This is a very robust academic program. Yes, we're a professional program and it is all about becoming a practitioner and doing international policy right. We consider this a terminal degree that you're going to get on the ground and do the work, but we need to make sure that you would do well in the program.

And because we're such a small cohort, we want to provide everything we can for you to succeed. So we have to be very mindful and have resources to know that people can actually do this program. Obviously, your transcripts. So an example would be if your transcripts are a little bit weaker, and maybe your test scores are a little bit below average. An academic letter of recommendation would become much more important. So something to think about is.

Does it have to be from a faculty member? No, not necessarily. But it should be somebody who can speak to your analytic skill, can speak to your your your sense of logic, different things like that. A letter that says I remember them. They got a name, my class, or I've done time that's we want a substantive letter. We want people to know you who know you well.

If there is anybody on here who's currently an undergrad like even like sophomore, junior and love talking to all of you, get those mentors. Get those faculty mentors if you can. I know that doesn't help people have been out for a while. If you feel like you really can't get a good solid academic letter, I don't recommend more than three letters, really. Don't you want to keep it clean for the admissions committee?

But maybe in that case, if you know your academic letter is not going to be super strong and you want to do 3 professional, adding a fourth that is academic could be helpful. If you don't, if you want to do all academic or all professional, I would recommend that in the additional information section you acknowledge that you're doing that and telling us why why you couldn't get an academic or a professional letter. So think about the.

Big picture of your application. Hopefully that makes sense.

Oh goodness, lots and lots of questions here. Let me back up. Make sure I didn't miss anything.

What is the best link for Jackson faculty research publications? Gosh, I've never had that question. That's a really good question. I would say your best bet is to use the faculty link that I gave you and cross list it with going to the Yale web page. I've done this numerous times when I've wanted to do bias for faculty and look them up and in some cases they have.

Their own even on the BIOS links that I gave you the Jackson website, they may link to their CVS. They may link to their personal web pages. That's all up to each of them, or just following us in the articles and blogs and whatnot. You probably know better than I about faculty that you're actually interested in because you're following a similar career path. I can't keep track of all of them. That's too much for me. I'm trying to keep track of all of you so.

Hopefully that helps Google LinkedIn. All the things you have, just you know all of those kinds of things. There isn't like a a website that just has a link to all of their stuff in one place, like a depository. You'd have to kind of do a little research for that.

Oh my voice is getting a little raspy and we have almost 10 minutes.

I want to make sure I get to your questions.

All right?

Christine wants to get started on your personal statement. What's the prompt question that I'm responding to? Yes, it is vague.

It really is. I often say in these webinars I think I said that even on this last week, why Jackson?

There is a prompt, but it's I don't have it in front of me because it really is about who are you. What is your background?

Why Jackson? Why do you want to do grad school now? Why do you want to do it specifically at Jackson? I mentioned that you kind of need to tell us what you want to study at Jackson, because you can do just about anything, right? All within the vein of Global Affairs, but.

What is your unique story that is something and then connect the dots? What do you want to do with this Yale Jackson degree? What are your long term career goals now? That is not the prompt that's actually giving you a little bit more insight than even the prompt would offer, so hopefully that helps. Connect the dots right? Who you are? What you offer, what you want to do here, and how you want to use it. So hopefully that makes sense and gives you a little bit of direction until the application.

And once the application opens, you can log in and register your application and poke around and see all those prompts.

Long before you have to submit the application so you'll get access to that, so hopefully that ties you over, Christine meekly. Could you please speak more to how spouses partner fit into the community at Jackson and Jalen, Yale in general? That's a great question. I think we have a whole mix of people, I think.

With, you know, dealing with a lot of the questions now, like we had a student here who's older and worked ahead of time to figure out how to get his kids enrolled in school and even staff who have kids who helped him with that connecting previous students. So those who get admitted, we do have an admitted student visit day in the spring and we do a lot of connection there with alumni and faculty and current students and a lot of times those connections.

Work there.

It gets a little trickier with the visa stuff on what spouses and partners can do if they come, whether they can work or not. I don't know how to answer those questions. You can check the OISS web page for that. I don't have that open. I don't want to waste time OISS office of International Student Services, but otherwise I do know that one of our second year students, his wife, was at every social event.

That we had, so I think they are integrated as as you want them to be. I know that particular couple throughout COVID had a backyard invited students over all the time. So the nice thing at Jackson is you. Can you probably don't want to? I think we wouldn't let it happen, but you can either stay removed or you can be fully integrated into the community. Now there may be some things like spouses aren't invited into the orientation trip.

The Berkshires you know. With the team building stuff. But throughout the year and throughout the academic year, many, many events and we have an opening pizza party hosted by our Dean here in our backyard. The pizza trucks New Haven is famous for that. His pizza and spouses kids are often at that and the World Fellows, usually because they're rising in their careers. They often have bunches of kids as well, so there's a lot that can happen. Then there's the greater Yale.

Community as well. So I hope that helps and I hope we're still OK on time. So far so good. David, is your admissions process focused exclusively upon written application and supporting documents and do you engage in interviews? Yes, it is solely in the application. So we don't do interviews. The one on ones that I mentioned that I can't do right now are not relevant to the application process at all. We don't do interviews because we can't do them for everybody.

So we we, we don't and we can't. So think about that when you're putting together your application. Think about it as a portfolio, a big picture. What do you recommend or say about you? Balance your strengths and weaknesses and go from there. So hopefully that makes sense.

Alright Willow, how would you say the academic and professional areas of focus are weighted? For example, if an applicant did not have significant focus on economics and undergrad but worked on ECON reports during their professional career, well, you, I think, well, you almost answered your own question back to that portfolio that I mentioned. It really is a balance. So we do look.

At how you are pointing out your strengths and strengths and weaknesses, I think I mentioned before, so the quant econ quant stuff is a good example. If you don't have any coursework in that area.

And you've done it in your professional work. Maybe one of your recommenders, who you work for, can attest to your skill in that area. We definitely take that stuff into account if you completely bomb the quant section of the GRE, but you did all the things during your academic programs and had great grades in quant areas, did you? Are you may not weigh as heavily, so you're absolutely right about what those balances and that comes to like career stuff.

That's something we haven't talked about it again. We have 8 minutes, you know, young applicants, people who are applying right from undergrad. Most of our students have about three to five years of postgrad work experience before coming to Jackson, not a minimum requirement. And again because of our small cohort size, we might have a couple people from undergrad right from undergrad, or just a year out. But it's just a couple we want sort of all different levels of careers. And you know.

Represented.

But for those younger applicants who don't have the postgrad work experience, their internships are going to weigh much more heavily. We obviously look at the internships of all our applicants. And again, connecting the dots, how did those internships, you know, get you to where you are today and why you want to do grad school? And why Jackson but?

Again, important for everyone but the weight of those will weigh more heavily. If you don't have significant postgrads, so it's just another easy example, so hopefully that sort of shows how the weights and then flow based on your individual situation and your individual strengths and weaknesses.

All right, you find. I've noticed that most students have at least several years old. I got ahead of that question. How could fresh crowds were better stand out than those who had full time work experience? What kind of points would be, I think?

The only thing I have to add since I've sort of answered that already is.

Utilize your recommenders right because?

We don't do interviews we we are just looking at your application and we consider work experience as evidence of commitment to global affairs.

Right, that you've done this. You know this is what you want to do. Our alumni pretty consistently say it was about three years they hit that sweet spot where they had that aha moment that they needed a degree like this and so.

They are the ones who are often putting together a stronger application because they know what they want. And remember, Jackson is so completely flexible and interdisciplinary.

That you you don't need to tell us. These are the 16 courses I want to take or the 8 courses from yes and you don't need to name necessarily a certificate, but we need to know what you want to get out of this Yale, Jackson degree, how you want to integrate it through, whether it's the centers that are offered at Yale Jackson and the broader Yale like City, City and all these other places. And taking advantage of the other schools, and.

It needs to be done in such a way that it is not like just exploratory like I want to do all of the things because I can do all of the things and you can do all of the things. That's the beauty of the program. But we need you to sort of hone in a little bit. And that's just an example of how.

It just seems to be typical that people have worked a few years. Know that better, at least can formulate that better in their application. That again doesn't mean that people who are coming right from undergrad are with limited experience don't get in. They do often. They are pickerings and wrangles. So if there's U.S. citizens here wanting to go in the foreign service, those are very common fellows because they have to go right into the foreign service right after they finish their Masters degree and right in alignment with the mission of Jackson going into the Foreign service.

But there's often, you know, a couple. We have a we have one coming in this fall. Who is, I think 2122 year old. She's already a career.

Navy Anson I think at at her age and you know, that's something that obviously through her choices and through her recommenders and her, her path and her plan. This is what she wants to do, so I think that's where I'll reiterate. That's the recommenders can also attest to you know, yeah, maybe this person doesn't have the typical work experience to do this kind of degree, but I know them. I know they're passions. This is what they've done.

Me, whether through coursework or outside of course work, and I can attest that this is what they want to do for their career. I hope that makes sense.

I hope let's see Oh no 3 minutes.

Jason I was military service veterans service status viewed.

Alignment definitely consider military service. Part of global affairs. You'll see that when you look at our student BIOS, I think there's a couple this year. The MAS often have a lot. So yes, there's questions in the application about that as well. Ganja graduated from Syracuse, go Orange.

I'm upstate New York, so, uh, bachelors degree looking for Masters program in international relations. What are some of the requirements for merit based scholarships?

Again, no real requirements. There is an overview I did not paste this in initially, but on the main MP page.

It gives a student profile that could be helpful. There's averages, medians, and all of the things we've talked about strong letters, a significant work experience. All of those things sort of increase the merit. I hope that helps. Sorry for the question above.

I think I answered your question Jason Micci question about specific fields of study. I'm interested in Asian study. In your opinion, how strong do you think Asian economic policies is overall, gosh.

I mean, I think there's plenty. Again, the.

Course database which I sent already.

Best example I can give you is.

I type Asian and 29 courses come up. I do just Asia. 49 courses come up and they're they're all over in history and global affairs.

You know, obviously I, I think I would say the only thing that probably Yale Jackson is not would not be strong in would be like a a domestic education policy for all of the professional schools that we have.

We do not have a school of education. There's 31314 others, but not a school of education, and Jackson is obviously very heavy IR sign, so we do teach that within light of, you know, usually immigration and different things and developing countries, but otherwise I think there's almost most anything that you can do. You can use the course database, even search the Yale database itself. It really is an academic playground here.

And I might have to leave you with that cause it's 659 and I want to say thank you and give you a chance to say goodbye and we hope you apply. Oh, there's my alarm to go to my next meeting, but thank you for. I hope you didn't have too many audio problems. Watch the video later if need be even though that weirds me out a little bit that my videos are out there.

Feel free to e-mail us. Have patience as we transition with all of the things and the technical back end stuff. And yeah, we will hopefully have if you're nearby. Hopefully have some visit days in person this fall. Watch our events calendar. I'm assuming that's how you found this. Join one of our alumni coffee chats. You'll want to hear from actual students. We'll start, they're starting to roll out. There's one Friday and we'll have them as often as alumni volunteer. So sorry.

You have to cut this short, but it looks like I answered most of your questions. Feel free to join again sometime, maybe later in the you know I don't want you to feel like it's too repetitive. I'm late at 7:01. I will sign off now say thank you and good luck to you as you apply or as you research your grad school options in the future. So thank you, bye.