Minnesota Office of Higher Education

“There are a plethora of things that I couldn’t imagine or predict before. For example, I wasn't very interested in public policy or careers related to education, much less how they were related. Yet, this internship offered me a great chance to get to familiar with the field and gave me a better understanding of how public policy is related to education and how it works. I was able to learn that making policy or obtaining funding for student grants is a whole process. The education department has to make a proposal, submit it to the governors and wait for their approval. It’s not an easy thing they could accomplish by themselves and apply it to the public immediately but a long going process of discussion, approvals, and application. I might not know the exact process for each public policymaking but I tried to learn as much as I could that is related to education in my internship. In the internship, I’m really grateful that I had taken the Quantitative Skills of Economics class this spring, which allowed me to develop Excel skills that could be applied in the Adult Learner Project. For example, some of the skills that I learned are data cleaning, organizing and making an effective chart with all labels, notes and data resources. These are all essential skills I have applied in the project and it refreshed my knowledge from the class. I believe that the prerequisites of this program are valuable for making admission decisions because those prerequisites classes helped me set up a good foundation for this internship. ”