<p>Hello all! Thanks so much for any advice that you have to offer me on how to make myself more attractive to graduate schools for large scholarships. I am funding my advanced degrees school myself, and doing the best that I can to have few-to-no loans to worry about when this is all said and done. I have very little knowledge of how much in the way of merit/financial aid is generally given out by graduate schools, and I thought that some of you all might have personal experience with the matter.</p>
<p>I am due to graduate from the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University in DC in May of 2012 (I went to Sarah Lawrence for my first two years of undergraduate and transferred out so that I could join a more rigorous International Affairs Program.) My degree is a BA in International Affairs with concentrations in Conflict and Security and Europe and European Studies, with minors in Political Science and Creative Writing. My cumulative GPA is about a 3.9 (a 3.94 at GW.) I am an officer in several different major academic clubs on campus (International Affairs Society, etc) I act as a student representative for the outreach departments of both the US Department of State and the United Nations Association of DC (both pro bono, thank you!,) and I volunteer within the city with several environmental/food sustainability groups. I fence for GWU competitively, as well as play with their club soccer team. I am female, and 21 years old. I have published a substantive amount in professional journals in both creative writing and IR, and so I am not particularly concerned about my application essays, and I am taking my GREs and LSATs in September but I tend to achieve fairly solid scores on standardized tests (I got a 21-something on the SATs with no test prep.) I went to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. I have traveled extensively, and I speak French and Italian with intermediate fluency.</p>
<p>I also concurrently work 40 hours a week with my eighteen credits (Yep! Year-round–it is pretty brutal, but I pay my own expenses) at a well-known private government contracting firm in the Northern Virginia area on security work and geospatial technologies. This is coming off of a year as an analyst in the US Department of State, and several internships that I arranged with US Embassies. One of these has actually sprouted into my senior honors thesis, which is getting a fair amount of funding from GWU. My current employer offers tuition reimbursement programs, but seeing as these sometimes only provide for as little as $5000 a semester depending on the case… I do not want to bank on them as a primary funding resource.</p>
<p>My top picks for graduate school are Georgetown, Johns Hopkins (SAIS), American and GWU (if I really feel like I need some safeties for those last two,) and then Harvard and Columbia if I decide to venture out of the DC metro area. I am looking at Security Studies programs–Intelligence, National Security, Counter terrorism, etc–and if there is a respectable dual-degree program at the school in question, I am also considering doing a MS/JD or MA/JD tandem in International Law.</p>
<p>So, my immensely broad question boils down to as follows: how fond are graduate schools of giving students such as myself merit scholarships? What about for law school–does that ever happen? Do you know of any private scholarships, such as the Pickering for example (but I didn’t get that this past year… unfortunately), that I should perhaps consider? Do the schools that I noted seem like reasonable fits?</p>
<p>Thanks so much for any anecdotes, insight, or contacts that you might have on any of the above; it is incredibly helpful. Have a great Thursday afternoon!</p>
<p>Christina</p>