--- title: "My Journey to an MPA: Why I Chose Cornell" description: Needless to say, Cornell and Ithaca topped the list, especially combined with the incredibly responsive staff and faculty at CIPA. Only a month and a half into grad school and my family and I have settled into a good routine—though my husband is living in Washington State for these two years image: https://mpastories.publicpolicy.cornell.edu/hubfs/blog/Sarah%20Brown%20Head%20shot.jpg --- Search: November 15, 2018 # My Journey to an MPA: Why I Chose Cornell ![My Journey to an MPA: Why I Chose Cornell-image](https://mpastories.publicpolicy.cornell.edu/hubfs/blog/Sarah%20Brown%20Head%20shot.jpg) *Sarah Brown is a first-year CIPA student.  An organic farmer from Washington State, she spent last year in a small village in Hungary as a Fulbright Fellow, studying rural social innovation. She has come to CIPA hoping to build her tool-kit, which will allow her to be more effective in pushing a positive agenda for social change. Sarah has brought her two elementary-aged children with her to Ithaca and is single-parenting these two years while her husband stays behind to work in Washington.* I haven’t taken the straight and narrow road from high school to grad school. Sure, I was in leadership positions and running non-profits starting at about 15, but when I got to a great private liberal arts college I decided that I was seeking more hands-on experience than time in the classroom. I left college to do physical and community work. I worked on wilderness trail crews and then started my own organic farm.  Now I tell anyone who asks that I am the poster child for getting your bachelor’s degree soon after high school because after running my farm, engaging with even more non-profits and having kids I started taking a class a quarter (so I could pay as I went) and took 10 more years (!!!) to graduate-summa cum laude! After I graduated (at long last) it was time to fulfill another dream: I wanted to receive a Fulbright Fellowship and see how people live and thrive in rural areas in a completely different part of the world. Because I have such an intense passion for community development I designed and was awarded a Fulbright research position to examine rural social innovation in Hungary. My family and I rented out the farm (and had to leave our wonderful dog for the year) and took an enormous leap from being homesteaders to world-travelers. As soon as I left home I knew I was thirsty for more than just one year of exposure to a breadth and depth of new ideas and resources, and grad school seemed like an obvious great step to solidify my public administration and non-profit skills -and learn about the skills I didn’t even know I was missing. I looked at MPA programs all over the world and realized that I didn’t want a cookie cutter MPA; I wanted more of a design-your-own-adventure MPA with a strong set of core courses and faculty and the ability to mold my coursework out of classes that will present perspectives and skills I can use to round-out my existing knowledge. Of course, having a family meant my Excel spreadsheet for grad school also included things like the quality of local public schools, access to hiking and Nordic skiing, established resources on-campus for people like me with kids, public transit and easy walking, and lots of good food. I figured this selection process was a good time to be really picky. Needless to say, Cornell and Ithaca topped the list, especially combined with the incredibly responsive staff and faculty at CIPA. Only a month and a half into grad school and my family and I have settled into a good routine—though my husband is living in Washington State for these two years and we miss him. I think being a single parent going through grad school helps me stay incredibly focused on my end goal (graduating with a great job), that and staying focused on what’s for dinner on any given night.  If you have questions about attending Cornell University's Institute for Public Affairs, we encourage you to [request more information](https://mpa.human.cornell.edu/request-more-information) today!  ## Subscribe to our graduate education blog — **Public Policy in Action —** for tips and tools related to pursuing a Master of Public Administration degree!   [![Subscribe to the Blog](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/4638968/7158272b-de31-4e62-ad12-d4cffe499ba2.png)](https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/4638968/7158272b-de31-4e62-ad12-d4cffe499ba2) Previous Post Fall 2018 Capstone: Developing a Business Plan for an Afghan Coffee Start-Up Next Post Academic Life at Cornell: "Hard" Vs. "Intellectually Challenging" ## READ MORE ON THE BLOG [VIEW ALL BLOGS](https://mpastories.publicpolicy.cornell.edu/blog) BLOG ### Choosing Cornell's MPA, Domestic Policy, and an NYC Externship *Anlly Palacios graduated from CIPA in May of 2018 with a concentration in Social Policy. She is a...* BLOG ### Academic Life at Cornell: "Hard" Vs. "Intellectually Challenging" In my first blog, I wrote about my personal life, and I think a few reflections about [getting an MPA](https://mpa.human.cornell.edu/an-educational-guide-for-future-leaders-in-public-affairs) BLOG ### Pursuing a Passion for Human Rights & Social Justice at Cornell University Emily Martin graduated from CIPA in May of 2018 with a concentration in Human Rights and Social... ## Subscribe to the Blog ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Sarah Brown", "url" : "https://mpastories.publicpolicy.cornell.edu/blog/author/sarah-brown" }, "dateModified" : "2019-10-23T13:23:47.681Z", "datePublished" : "2018-11-15T14:23:00.000Z", "headline" : "My Journey to an MPA: Why I Chose Cornell", "image" : [ "https://mpastories.publicpolicy.cornell.edu/hubfs/blog/Sarah%20Brown%20Head%20shot.jpg" ], "mainEntityOfPage" : { "@id" : "https://mpastories.publicpolicy.cornell.edu/blog/my-journey-to-an-mpa-why-i-chose-cornell", "@type" : "WebPage" }, "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "url" : "https://mpastories.publicpolicy.cornell.edu/hubfs/Logos/SPP_1_line_red_black.png" }, "name" : "Cornell Inst. for Public Affairs" } } ```