Thank you for visiting our admissions blog! As you explore your potential graduate school path, we hope the information provided here will give you a taste of life as a Ford School student (aka Fordie).
The entering class of masters’ students for Fall 2016 numbers 116 students. You can see a variety of demographics in the list below.
- Incoming class size: 116
- 11 MPA students
- 105 MPP students
- Average age: 27
- Age range: 22-48
- Non-U.S: 29 percent
- Students of color (U.S. only): 41.5 percent
- Female: 52 percent
- Male: 48 percent
- Years of work experience: 3.6
- Countries of origin: 14
These numbers demonstrate the wide variety of paths that students take before entering the Ford School. In this class, the range of undergraduate majors range from the more traditional (economics, political science) to those that are less common (civil engineering, astronomy and architecture). Our students worked as teachers, researchers, journalists and community organizers. I am often asked the question “How would you describe a typical Ford School student”? My answer is this – they are committed to improving some aspect of our society. Their passion may relate to education, environment, housing, energy, economic development or some combination thereof but it is always about improving the lot of others.
In addition to the posts on this blog, I wanted to extend a couple of invitations to learn about the Ford School in other formats. First, we will be hosting a graduate information session on Saturday, November 12th from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Faculty, staff and current students will participate. We hope you will join us if your schedule allows. You can register here.
If you are not able to visit in person, our current students, led by our Students of Color in Public Policy and Out in Public student organizations, are conducting our Pipeline Initiative (PI) program, assigning current students to serve as mentors to prospective students through the application process. If you are interested in signing up to participate in PI, you can do that at this link.
If there are questions you would like us to address in future posts, please contact us at fspp-admissions@umich.edu.