Porcupine,
Here's some real talk. The dirty little secret about Masters programs is that they're basically cash cows for universities and a lot of them exist mainly to fund the PhD programs. That being said, they generally fall into two categories: professional programs (eg MBAs, JDs, MPAs, some MS s in engineering) and everything else. Professional programs are expensive, but they generally lead to a job and a career path. The others, well, it depends on the school. I don't know anything Middlebury's program. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's not really a good thing.
Here's my advice:
-Check out their career stats. Where do most of their graduates go after graduation? What kind of salaries are they making?
-Talk to people in the program now and recent graduates. You should be able to get a sense from them what the program will prepare you to do. And you should also get a sense as to whether any of them regret it.
-Consider deferring a year. You might be able to take your acceptance and parlay that into some kind of internship or overseas work. When it's time to find a job, your going to be competing with people from Harvard, Columbia, SAIS, Gtown, the Maxwell School, etc. and they're all going to have stacked resumes. That brings me to my last piece of advice...
-If you go, remember from day one that school is great, but your number one priority is finding a job. Network with other students and alumni. Get to know your professors. You should be immediately trying to set up a summer job, preferably someplace like DC or New York or working overseas.
Here's some real talk. The dirty little secret about Masters programs is that they're basically cash cows for universities and a lot of them exist mainly to fund the PhD programs. That being said, they generally fall into two categories: professional programs (eg MBAs, JDs, MPAs, some MS s in engineering) and everything else. Professional programs are expensive, but they generally lead to a job and a career path. The others, well, it depends on the school. I don't know anything Middlebury's program. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's not really a good thing.
Here's my advice:
-Check out their career stats. Where do most of their graduates go after graduation? What kind of salaries are they making?
-Talk to people in the program now and recent graduates. You should be able to get a sense from them what the program will prepare you to do. And you should also get a sense as to whether any of them regret it.
-Consider deferring a year. You might be able to take your acceptance and parlay that into some kind of internship or overseas work. When it's time to find a job, your going to be competing with people from Harvard, Columbia, SAIS, Gtown, the Maxwell School, etc. and they're all going to have stacked resumes. That brings me to my last piece of advice...
-If you go, remember from day one that school is great, but your number one priority is finding a job. Network with other students and alumni. Get to know your professors. You should be immediately trying to set up a summer job, preferably someplace like DC or New York or working overseas.