The Columbian College oversees The Trachtenberg School. You can think of The Trachtenberg School as a unit within the Columbian College.

TSPPPA classes are held on GWU's main campus at Foggy Bottom, in Washington, DC.

No. We do not offer online courses, nor do we offer courses at GW's other campuses.

Many classes are held in the evenings (starting at 5:10pm or later) to accommodate students concurrently pursuing full time jobs, or internships. Classes held during the day either have multiple sections, including an evening section, or are held in the evening during another semester. See GW's Schedule of Classes.

PhD:
To be considered for fellowships: January 15
International students requiring a student visa: January 15
Regular admission: January 15
MPP and MPA
To be considered for fellowships: January 15
International students requiring a student visa: January 15
Regular admission: April 1
Nonprofit Management Certificate
International students requiring a student visa: January 15
Regular admission: April 1
Washington, DC 20052

PhD, MPP, MPA, Certificate
International students requiring a student visa: September 1
Regular admission: October 1

SPRING ADMISSIONS SUSPENDED FOR SPRING 2010; instead, please apply for fall 2010.

No.

No. Our application is online, only.

Applying early does not increase an applicant's chances of gaining admission. We make admissions decisions very carefully through a thorough review process. It is not our goal to fill the entering class in the early months of the admissions cycle. Rather, we are looking to admit the strongest of our applicant pool. Therefore, even if you submit your application ahead of the deadline, you may not have a final decision until after the application deadline.

There is greater demand for seats for entry starting in the fall semester. However, entry into the spring semester depends in part on the number of students who started in the fall.

SPRING ADMISSIONS SUSPENDED FOR SPRING 2010; instead, please apply for fall 2010.

Our admission standards are the same for both full-time and part-time applicants. Learn more about the difference between part-time and full-time here.

Please send them to the CCAS Admissions office:
Graduate Admissions Office
Columbian College of Arts & Sciences
801 22nd Street, NW, Suite 107
Washington, DC 20052

You may check your status by logging into your online account. Please note that the days surrounding application deadlines are extremely busy and there may be a delay between when your materials arrive at the Columbian College office and when their receipt is reflected online. If you have a question about specific materials, you may contact the College at 202.994.6210 or via email, askccas@gwu.edu. E-mail inquiries are preferred. When inquiring, please include your full name and the program to which you are applying.

Yes. Applicants who already hold a master's degree must still submit GRE scores. The GRE can only be waived with an already held JD or MD.

No. We require the GRE and cannot accept the GMAT or LSAT.

The GREs and GPA, relative to the application overall, are weighted fairly heavily as they are strong predictors of future academic success. We do consider the courses you have taken, your work experience including recommendations), and your personal statement to gain a more holistic view of each applicant.

The average GRE scores and GPAs are not a complete representation of the range of GPAs and GRE scores of admitted students. Admission is competitive.

Applicants with undergraduate grade point averages lower than a "B" may be offered admission provided that other aspects of their application show evidence of special promise. For instance, a strong performance on the GRE may compensate for a lower than average GPA. Strong letters of recommendation, proper fit with the program, professional experience, and exposure to the field of interest are also taken into consideration.

Please note: Meeting the minimum requirements for admission does not guarantee that you will be admitted.

If you have very weak GRE scores and believe you can do better, you may want to consider retaking the test. Raising a low GRE score will do a great deal to strengthen your application. While there is always the risk that you will score lower if you take the test again, we will take the best of your scores for each section. Still, you should consider this carefully.

We do not recommend that you use your personal statement to explain a poor GRE score (or a weak undergraduate GPA, for that matter). Your personal statement should not focus on making excuses or providing explanations for weaknesses in your record. Rather, your personal statement should be positive and should provide information that will help our admissions committee to understand what you will bring to our community and to the field of public service.

You can submit a separate statement explaining special circumstances that may have affected your GPA or GRE.

It depends somewhat on your individual situation as to who to ask for recommendations. As this is an academic program, academic references are preferred over professional ones (all other things being equal). If you have been in the workforce for some time, recommendations from supervisors or other employees are acceptable as well. Ideally, a recommendation will tell us something that is not already discernible in your other materials.

Letters of recommendation can be submitted via your ApplyYourself.com application account, by email to askccas@gwu.edu, or by mail, to:
Graduate Admissions Office
Columbian College of Arts & Sciences
801 22nd Street, NW, Suite 107
Washington, DC 20052

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. You must submit a transcript from each university you've attended regardless of whether a degree was earned. The only exceptions to this policy are the following:

1. Study abroad programs: You need not submit a transcript from the international university that you attended. A transcript from the US university that sponsored your study abroad program is sufficient.
2. Transfer credits: If your degree-granting university lists both the names of and the grades earned in all the courses you completed at another university, you need not submit an official transcript from the original university. In all other cases, however, you must submit transcripts from all universities that you've attended.

No. The Admissions office pulls transcripts for current students and GW
alumni; you do not need to furnish an official one.

Many applicants have an undergraduate degree in the social sciences, such as political science and economics, but we welcome applicants with a wide variety of majors. See the MPA, MPP, and PhD pages for a breakdown of student academic background.

No. Your statement of purpose doubles as your writing sample. Writing samples and other additional items are not necessary.

The Trachtenberg School is part of the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences. The admissions committee here will recommend either admission, denial, or waitlist. All final decisions are then issued by the Dean at the Columbian College.

Yes. You can request that your admission be deferred to a future semester within one calendar year. As long as your request for deferment is for a semester within one calendar year of your original application, you will not be required to pay an additional application fee. A request for deferment does not automatically guarantee that you will be admitted again. While most applicants are readmitted, your application must be re-reviewed within the applicant pool for that semester.

Yes. Requests for reconsideration must be made within the same academic year as the original application. To do this, please email CCAS (askccas@gwu.edu) your formal request.

Unless circumstances have changed considerably, denials of admission are seldom reversed.

Each year we invite a number of strong applicants to be on our wait list. We do not rank our wait list. If and when we are able to make offers of admission to wait-listed applicants, we will review the entire list before making any final decisions.

If you would like to add something to your file you certainly may do so. These items may include your last semester college grades, an additional recommendation, etc. We will consider all information in your file when the time comes for us to review our wait list. Please send these materials to the CCAS Admissions Office directly (askccas@gwu.edu).

We do our best to make decisions on wait-listed applicants as soon as we
can. However, you should understand that some wait-listed candidates may
not receive a final decision until July.

$100

Yes. Deposits are credited to the first semester tuition.

Students applying to the dual-degree programs who are currently attending GW do not need to submit a deposit; they should identify their dual-degree on the student reply form.

No. All deposits are completely non-refundable.

Trachtenberg School funding is quite competitive. For these merit-based awards we review the full application, not just the GRE scores and GPA. We consider your grades, statement of purpose, and letters of recommendation. Many applicants have some work experience, but it is not a requirement.

Those who typically receive awards have GRE scores above the 80th percentile, and a GPA of at least 3.8. But, these numbers are not absolute and depend on the qualifications of the other applicants for that year.

Note: School funding is separate from student financial assistance. See the Fellowships website for more information on types of funding available.

You should provide the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences proof of your status with the AmeriCorps program; generally, a letter from them verifying your employment and duration suffices.

You should proceed through the payment section as though you were paying by check. The Admissions Office will reconcile this request with the "missing" payment and will consider that component complete. Note that other missing materials may delay the receipt of your application by the Trachtenberg School as they send us only complete applications for review. Application status can be checked online.

Yes. AmeriCorps and Teach for America alumni are eligible to receive a $5,000 financial aid award for the MPA or MPP program. Alumni should submit an addendum with their application stating their alumni status and requesting financial aid consideration.

You can include it with your online application as an additional
document (to upload), you can email it to askccas@gwu.edu, or you can
mail it to:
Graduate Admissions Office
Columbian College of Arts and Sciences
801 22nd Street, NW, Suite 107
Washington, DC 20052

Tuition and costs are posted our website. Additionally, Colonial Central posts the tuition and fees online.

Tuition is charged by the credit hour; students pay for the courses
taken rather than a flat semester/annual rate. This allows students to switch between full-time and part-time status.

Our financial aid office is Colonial Central, which houses the Offices of Student Financial Assistance, Student Accounts, the Cashier, and the Registrar.

Billing and payment information is available Colonial Central's billing page.

All of our programs (MPP, MPA, Ph.D., and Certificate) programs can be completed full-time or part-time, as the majority of our courses are in the evenings. We do not have a separate part-time program for each degree, rather, we offer degrees that can be pursued part-time or full-time. Many of our classes contain a mixture of full-time and part-time students.

The application and admission requirements, courses, faculty, and program quality are the same; the only difference is the time to completion.

Full-time students normally take three courses (9 or 10 credits) per semester and work at a part-time (up to 20 hours per week) policy-related job or internship.

Part-time students normally take two courses (6 credits) per semester and work at a full-time job.

There are some cases in which full-time status is important including:
(1) foreign students must maintain full-time status to fulfill student visa requirements and,
(2) TSPPPA fellowships and assistantships are normally granted only to full-time students.
Please note that the "repayment status" of student loans often is affected by whether a student is enrolled part-time or full-time, and it is the responsibility of individual students to be aware of this when they consider how many courses to take.

Official policies on this are posted in the University Bulletin.

Yes. As this status is determined by the number of credits undertaken in a given semester, it is simply a matter of registering for fewer (or more) credits. If you are financing your degree with student loans, you should also notify your lender so they can disburse the appropriate loan amount. If you have received an assistantship, fellowship, or scholarship, you should review the terms of that award before switching status (some awards are predicated on full-time or part-time status).

We do allow non-degree (visiting) students and students from other GW degree programs to take TSPPPA courses, pending sufficient space. Course registration will require TSPPPA approval. Please visit the Office of University Students for application and tuition information.

To learn about transferring courses taken as a non-degree student into the Trachtenberg School, please see our Transfer Applicants page.

Many of our courses are coded such that Trachtenberg School students receive priority registration. Registration requests depend on availability of space in courses as well as a variety of factors, including year of study and degree/concentration. (Selection of students to be promoted from the waitlist is not always simply a first-come, first-served process.) The School maintains a waitlist (spreadsheet) for courses on which these restrictions are placed.

1. Start with the Office of University Students.
2. Once you have identified which course you would like to take, you should determine if it is being offered in the desired semester by viewing the Schedule of Classes. Note that some courses have labs, or are cross-listed with other departments (see "Linked" and "XList" in the far right column); an example of this is our Research Methods and Applied Statistics course, PAd 202, which is cross-listed with PPol 202 and is linked to a required computer lab.
3. Then, email the Trachtenberg School to request to be added to the waitlist for the course.
4. We will notify you the week before classes start whether (or not) we will be able to add you. This will depend on available space.
5. The week before classes begin we will evaluate space in courses and the waitlists to determine if there is space.
6. We will then notify you if there is (or is not) space; if there is space, we will request that you confirm interest and submit a Registration Transaction Form to be signed by the School. (This form can be emailed to tshelp@gwu.edu, faxed to 202-994-6792, or hand-delivered to the office in the MPA Building, Suite 601.)
7. The form is then forwarded to the Office of University Students for their signature; they will forward it to the Registrar's Office where the form is officially processed.
See also Non-Degree Students.

1. Once you have identified which course you would like to take, you should determine if it is being offered in the desired semester by viewing the Schedule of Classes. Note that some courses have labs, or are cross-listed with other departments (see "Linked" and "XList" in the far right column); an example of this is our Research Methods and Applied Statistics course, PAd 202, which is cross-listed with PPol 202, and is linked to a required computer lab.
2. Then, email the Trachtenberg School (tshelp@gwu.edu) to request to be added to the waitlist for the course.
3. We will notify you the week before classes start whether (or not) we will be able to add you. This will depend on available space.
4. The week before classes begin we will evaluate space in courses and the waitlists to determine if there is space.
5. We will then notify you if there is (or is not) space; if there is space, we will request that you confirm interest and submit a Registration Transaction Form to be signed by the School. (This form can be emailed to tshelp@gwu.edu, faxed to 202-994-6792, or hand-delivered to the office in the MPA Building, Suite 601.)
6. The form is then sent to the relevant office (Colonial Central for RTF-EZ; student's Dean's Office for regular RTF). The form is officially processed by Registrar's Office, so students may not appear immediately on the course roster (nor on the course enrollment counts in GWeb).

It is not necessary for MPA and MPP students to declare a field in the application, or even early in the program, especially since students may take mainly the core courses during their early semesters. Students should choose their field of study before they begin taking field courses.

PhD applicants are expected to indicate their desired field of concentration as part of the application process, as well as their specific research interests within that field and career plans.

Students can change their field of study by submitting a revised program of study form to their advisor for review. Then, the advisor will give it to the program coordinator for the student's file.

Comprised of thirteen universities and two colleges, the Consortium provides 130,000 students with opportunities to benefit from the combined resources of its members. Students in approved programs leading to degrees in any one of these institutions have the opportunity to select from the combined offerings the particular courses that best meet their needs. This privilege is subject to regulations of the school in which the student is enrolled. Participation is limited to degree candidates. For specific regulations and further information, please see the University Bulletin.

American University, Catholic University of America, Corcoran College of Art + Design, Gallaudet University, George Mason University, George Washington University, Georgetown University, Howard University, Marymount University, National Defense Intelligence College, National Defense University, Southeastern University, the University of the District of Columbia, Trinity University, and the University of Maryland. For more information, please see the member school listing.

Students must complete and submit the Consortium Registration Form to their advisor for signature; the form will be routed to the Registrar's Office through the CCAS Dean's Office.