Greetings from the School of Public Policy (SPP) Graduate Admissions Office! As we begin the New Year, we are very excited to launch our School's first Admissions blog. We hope this will be a site that you visit regularly for updated information on a variety of topics, ranging from the experiences of our current students, to faculty insights on our School, to recommendations from the Admissions Office. We look forward to this being an information exchange and opportunity for you to communicate your thoughts and questions directly to us.

With this inaugural blog, I'd like to take the opportunity to introduce you to one of the most important elements of SPP: our students. We are extremely proud of the student body here in the School of Public Policy and I thought you might like to hear about the types of students who enroll in our programs. With almost 1,000 students enrolled (between our Ph.D. program, five Master's degrees, Certificates and non-degree option), our students come to us with a very wide variety of academic, geographic, and professional backgrounds.

As of the Fall 2007, our student body represents 57 different nations, with citizens of such countries as Armenia, Cameroon, Indonesia, Venezuela, Cyprus, Eritrea, Malta, Tunisia and Yemen, to name a few. In terms of professional backgrounds, students also show tremendous diversity in what they have done prior to entering and while enrolled at SPP. Currently in our student body we have a former professional dancer; returning Peace Corps Volunteers from Mali, Bulgaria and Niger; civil servants from the Government of India; an ordained minister; a medical doctor; and a former White House correspondent for Bloomberg News. Certainly, students bring with them an interesting mix of work experience both in the field of policy and outside of it. Finally, students' academic backgrounds also run the gamut, with prior studies focusing in everything from criminal justice to environmental science to civil engineering to business administration to Russian literature. As you can imagine, the diversity of our student body makes for a very dynamic classroom filled with a range of perspectives and experiences.

We hope that you will become a part of this vibrant, diverse student body. We look forward to the contributions that you will make to enhance the School of Public Policy.

Leslie Metzger Levin

Assistant Dean of Graduate Admissions and Marketing

Labels: Admissions, Diversity

Hi there! My name is Brian Jacob and I'm a first year graduate student at the School of Public Policy (SPP). About a year ago, while contemplating my future, I stumbled upon the Transportation Policy, Operations and Logistics (TPOL) program website. After thorough research, I decided that this was something I wanted to pursue. My only hesitation was dealing with a dreaded application process.

It was already getting late in the year and I was worried that it would take time to get all the required documents together (transcripts, letters of recommendation, personal statement and resume). I had been out of college and had not kept in touch with old professors so getting my academic letters of recommendations was going to be my biggest challenge. Luckily the application process for GMU was not hard at all. I was able to track down two professors that actually remembered me and were willing to help me out. Soon enough, I assembled all the necessary paperwork and mailed it to GMU. Dropping that package into the mail was terrifying because I knew my part was all done and the rest was out of my hands.

The best advice I could give to future applicants would be to start early! While the application process is not that painful, it can be time consuming. Though finding professors to write letters of recommendations may be easy, it could take them a while to actually write and send the recommendation given the number of requests they receive every year. The same goes for transcripts and test scores.

The personal statement and resume are pretty straight forward, though I would always recommend having someone edit them before submission. If you do run into problems, the SPP staff is always here to assist you and is the best source for all of your questions.

Once you mail everything in, you'll realize that the worst part of it all is waiting for a decision! Good luck!

Labels: Application, Recommendation Letters, Students, Transportation (TPOL)