CarefreeWritingsontheWall

Canadian MA programs are a good place to get your feet wet when it comes to seeking academic MA programs that will prepare you for academically oriented PhDs. I think your profile has good foundations, but a few things will need attention to give you a good chance of admission (particularly at English speaking institutions). First, your GPA is a little confusing. A shift from a 3.6 to a 3.48 indicates a pretty stark degeneration. I'm assuming as a native Quebecois that you're completing your degree in 2.5 years because you attended CEGEP. Overall this means you've probably taken fewer courses than the norm. Your CGPA will be the one that matters - and a CGPA of 3.7-3.8 is what will make you competitive for admission at programs like McGill or UofT. The other issue is whether you intend to study in English or French. Based on the grammar in your profile, it's evident that you're not a native English speaker which isn't a huge disadvantage (McGill and UdeM will prioritize you as a Francophone applicant) but others might be wary. Be sure that if you can submit a writing sample that it's clean. If your professor isn't a native English speaker (for those statements that can't be submitted in French) it might be to your benefit to have an Anglophone friend, or someone at a writing center on campus who is Anglophone, review it. When it comes to your research agenda, this also has to be clear. For 1 year academically oriented MA programs like UofT they really want to know what you intend to study because you won't have time to explore a number of topics. You do coursework, and then you write and then you're done. The same applies for two year programs like McGill. For every application you should also specify who you want to work with. Lastly, you really should do what you can to get good letters from professors. Given that there isn't much time left before most deadlines, try to be good about keeping in contact with those who know you well, and getting closer to those who don't. If you haven't gone to office hours a lot before, be sure to do so now. Seek advice about applications. Ask about what they think of their peer institutions, and be inquisitive about the courses you're taking with them more generally (which shows interest). Given that you've worked in policy it would also be good to indicate what you prefer an academically oriented MA to an MPP or MPA. Given that you want to pursue a PhD, I would include this in your SOP.

Of course! I ultimately forced myself to stop re-reading and had my roommates cut me off from revising things further (they are a great commitment device - lol). What's done is done - best thing to do now is to work hard and divert your attention to other things until mid-February. I think it's a good call on the working papers link though.

I personally wouldn't. As I mentioned previously, having a publication (or something under review) is a bonus but not the be all end all thing that will tip your application into being accepted. If your writing sample was a portion of that paper, then they will be able to look at the quality of work and judge it for themselves as well. It's a good signal that you can get published, but still a noisy one unless the article is available to be read and reviewed by people on the committee. There are a lot of bad articles out there in good journals (not that yours falls into this category, but this fact leads to the noisy signal that even good papers give off as publications coming into a program).

When it comes to teaching, it highly varies. Some require you to be a TA every year from the get-go, with the opportunity to teach summer courses or take on a lecturer position in your 4th or 5th year. These tend to be larger public institutions, because it allows them to give you better funding options in return for work. Some require a combination of TA and RA work, with some "fellowship" semesters where you're off and able to focus on your coursework. Others don't require teaching at all (exceeding rare) or only that you act as a TA for a limited number of students (e.g. leading tutorial sessions for two groups of 5-15 students) for a few semesters. Every program is different, so researching that is really up to you. As an example, UW-Seattle fits the first category, GW the second and Princeton the third. If you're at an R1 that doesn't offer a lot of teaching opportunities, some get summer positions at LACs and state schools to build up their resume. Your preferred career trajectory is something you should mention in your SOP (most prompts will ask you to state what you hope to accomplish with their program's training). Your research agenda should be the core of your SOP, alongside why you're the best fit but a paragraph at the end as to your career ambitions is useful. I wouldn't say that all you want to do is teach though (otherwise they might wonder why you aren't just going to teacher's college). By programming knowledge, I mean knowledge of R or Stata, and a background in applied statistics. It's difficult to pick up without previous exposure to it, though Stata is more like SPSS in terms of simplicity/ease of use. R is far more common in North American statistical applications to political science though, and it's worth the investment IMO.

Nice! The secretary in question then is the graduate program coordinator at each institution.

Oh yeah. As soon as submissions are made, people on the admissions committee can start reviewing materials (same goes with job applications in academia). It likely means that someone opened your file but I wouldn't read too much into it. The under review status tends to pop up rather quickly and for most schools will stay that way until they issue their decisions in February/March. It could also be an automated thing (so I wouldn't stress). When it comes to notifying people, I wouldn't. It's unclear who is on an admissions committee in a given year (as professors rotate off and on). The most relevant person to contact is either the school's DGS or the graduate program coordinator if you wanted to edit something, or add something but they're busy people (some applications specify who you should contact if you need to correct something). My understanding is that they prefer to only add things to files if it's a grave mistake, or something crucial was missing (like an entire page from a document) as well. Trust that your application will be reviewed well and that your writing sample will speak for itself. You've put a lot of work into this.

It's not uncommon to work (either in government or the private sector) for a number of years before applying into a PhD program. I wouldn't say it hurts you - my cohort is balanced between people who came straight through, people who took time off, or people who took some combination of time off and did an MA in a related, or unrelated field. The first thing i would encourage you to do is reconnect with your professors, particularly if you had a thesis advisor who directly oversaw your work. If your letters are average, there are things you can do now, while a year out, to strengthen them. It wouldn't hurt for one to come from someone you've worked for as well who can speak to your personality, and traits that make you suited to a career within academia. Your GPA is okay, but your GRE helps. If your AW score is a 5-6 I would say your raw statistics line up well with the average. Research experience is useful, as is programming knowledge but it's not essential. What I would direct your focus to is less a matter of "studying up" and more so reflecting on the profession, and where you think you can and want to make a contribution. This needs to be clear in your statement, as well as your writing sample. You need to show that, not only do you know what political science research is, but that you have a clear research agenda coming in. If you wrote a senior thesis, a portion of that would be fine as a writing sample but it might be worthwhile to edit it, and beef it up a little. Showing that you have a sense of what graduate school entails is really important, as well as what studying political science as an academic means. You're transitioning from internalizing information to producing it. Most people I know who were out a few years before applying went back to the top journals in their subfield and read up on current work. If you can login through a university (your undergrad login should still work on any campus eduroam network) then you won't have any issue getting access to those for free. When it comes to rankings, I wouldn't hesitate to aim higher than you currently intent to. Top programs still tend to place the best at LACs and state schools - though it will be important to focus on teaching opportunitie, which are not equivalent across programs. Here researching programs that have people working on things you are interested in will be very important, as will be a few feeler emails to potential POIs. Some of the programs you mentioned might be convenient in terms of location, but there may not be any faculty there who work on the topics you want to cover. A portion of your statement should cover who you intend to work with and what about the program you like. It's about showing them that you're the person they're looking for, and that their program is the one that's best for you. Hope this helps.

It's something to keep in mind. I had a rough go of it last year when two of three people I was interested in working with at one institution were moving (or intending to move within the next few years), at another one was retiring and another moved, and at a third a junior faculty member was denied tenure (and I found out recently that the other person I intended to work with also hopes to move in the next year or two). It's underestimated, and of course completely a function of the state of the job market for juniors looking to transition, or seniors negotiating a place somewhere else. 3 of my 8 applications were wasted - but a lot of these things are harder to find out from the outside. I would be attentive to it during visits when you get to that stage - and don't be afraid to ask.

@resDQ and @Monody - I would say submitted. Under review is something I have always taken to mean that a piece is, for the most part, accepted to a journal. The exact publication date could shift given how long it takes to implement comments from reviewers. This could be wrong of course but I think there's ambiguity about it. This is why I suggest a working papers section, and as you both suggested, saying it's been submitted to journal X would be clearer. On the personal website front, there are plenty of options and it really comes down to what you're comfortable with. Squarespace has some elegant layouts. Weebly is self explanatory. I would suggest staying away from wordpress as their templates can break, and coding can fall out of date (had this happen with a research center I was apart of...). All of those hosts are easy to use on your own, or you could look into having something set up for you. Absent a website (I still don't have one yet), I've left a link to an open dropbox folder to replication files and the datasets at the end of papers before, or a note saying that I was happy to provide the files via email if desired. I don't know of anyone in my cohort who had a personal website established coming in, though a few had something hosted by their previous institutions. When it comes to rewriting SOPs - given that you've submitted everything, I honestly wouldn't worry about it. From what you've described, you wrote something that detailed what you've done with a sense of where you want to go. It's important to be able to strongly articulate a clear research agenda, but also a degree of openness about where things can go which you've done. Everyone knows that research interests change, as might your approach to a particular topic with further training so you sound set.

My CV was 1 and 3/4 pages. I modeled it after academic CVs published by professors, though I added details for a number of my positions and experiences since they weren't clear (I was held multiple RAships at once during my MA, doing different things etc.) Also - when it comes to journal submissions, I honestly wouldn't include it. It would be false to say it's under review unless you're notified that you've made it to that stage - and notifications that you've gotten past the desk-reject stage can take 3-6 months for some political science journals. Even if it's under review, it can still be rejected, or you could enter the R&R stage. Saying something is under review implies it's been accepted. Personally, I wouldn't list it as more than a working paper until it's been accepted and is formally under review for publication purposes and you've received the green light. I think this is absolutely fair -- most academics have a works in progress section on their CV and/or website. If you intend to try and publish something you've written, but are still working on, having this kind of section really doesn't hurt so long as its brief and your titles offer detail as to the contents.

UWashington-Seattle might also be worth looking into given that they have a number of faculty specializing in area studies (Asia in particular through the Jackson School) though the funding situation there isn't the best.

When I could submit one, I did. I grew up in an area that, even in a developed country, had visible inequality. As a white, native English speaker, my family lived in an incredibly diverse community to the point where were were far from the visible majority. My public school was poorly funded and as a girl, there were no after school sports programs organized. There simply wasn't any money for it (or interest on the part of teachers). At 13 I moved and the school district was the complete reverse, as was the demographic of people attending (strong white majority, all upper middle class/upper class) and it was pretty startling. I transitioned to a high school that then had a huge disparity in income across students - a lot of people were wealthy, and a lot were poorer, with very few in the middle. All of this impacted how I viewed social policy, as well as economic issues. This experience inspired me to pursue a university education - something I wouldn't have ever considered had I never moved when I was 13 (where I grew up, people rarely went to university, let alone reputable competitive programs). I didn't exactly have it rough myself (my parents were very fortunate that when money was tight, nothing bad happened and my Dad secured a very stable job) but I was very aware of what was going on around me, as well as my position as a girl throughout it all. I faced a lot of sexual harassment while working in high school so I also reflected on that, as well as my general desire to give back to communities and demographics like the one I grew up in. Gender is usually the only bit of 'diversity' I can contribute as a girl, but I focused on my socio-economic experience as a whole and surprisingly had a lot to say. I was also applying as an international student to US programs. This experience, is of course, very personal. But if you reflect on how you grew up, and how that influenced you, you might have more to provide than you would expect (as I did). I think it was helpful when I could articulate it, because it provided my application with a bit more depth than would otherwise have been the case (none of my mentors knew anything about my background before university).

I think you've got a good shot - though I would admit the first thing I thought was that you're really young. This isn't to say that young people don't get into programs but I faced the same hurdle when I was applying to MA programs out of my BA. I didn't get in anywhere, and this was largely due to the fact that I wasn't able to credibly convey that academic research was something I really wanted to do. I would stress how you've come to know that this is the career path for you, and include a sentence or two about your future goals (e.g. being a professor or professional researcher). Focus on the experience you do have, and ask your letter writers to contextualize your program. It's pretty great that you're earning your BA and MA in one go. When it came to my CV I included any jobs, clubs or volunteer positions that were relevant to my field so I would be sure to include these things - shows admissions committees that you're well rounded. Re Monody's point about the policy oriented nature of Georgetown and JHU - this isn't true. Both have policy schools (and in Georgetown's case, also a public policy school on top of SFS) that operate separately from their departments of government and political science. While some faculty are cross listed, there's largely a high degree of separation. Given your interests, I would also suggest looking into GWU - they have a ton of security studies resources and faculty if you intend to keep working on similar topics as your thesis.

Having not background in a given methodology, but showing a keen and preliminary interest in it should not preclude you from applying anywhere. Many people begin a program with no programming experience, and extremely limited knowledge of statistics and quantitative methods. Unless they have a degree in economics or math, few people come in with any knowledge of formal modelling either because undergraduate training in that field is extremely rare. I would argue that you have a good shot. Everyone I know who is current pursuing formal modelling as part of their degree came in with very limited knowledge of it, and those who are in their 5th and 6th years specializing in it also came in with no training but a strong desire to pick it up. So I wouldn't cut Rochester out the equation, especially if you're applying Princeton.

Following my application cycle, two things became evidence: program-specific rankings give you an overall sense of a university's prestige, but it can mask a department's capacity when it comes to particular subfields. Some places may lack in security studies people, area studies people, people strong in IPE, people strong in American etc. etc. It's up to you at the end of the day to investigate prospective advisors within your subfield of interest at a particular school, how they fair within the field and whether there is evidence that they are strong mentors/accessible people. It's harder to know whether certain professors make good advisors without meeting them, but professional websites can give you a good indication: does this person list their students on their website and/or CV? Some of the best mentors also may no longer be publishing, but if they're an icon in the field, they can be an invaluable resource. Fit is also far more than having one perfect person to work with, and people move all the time. I could have trashed two of my applications had I known that the people I was applying to work with were transitioning to other schools that year...though one move happened to a program I got into so that was an added plus. What's most important is knowing whether there are a range of people that align well with your research interests and being able to identify that in both your SOP but also in where you wind up applying period.

To reiterate what others have said, definitely submit your solo paper. As mentioned, if your other article is published and listed on your CV (or a publications list, if your application allows you to submit those specifically (some do)) then anyone on the committee can look it up if they're interested. Unlike @ultraultra I found that my writing sample was an important component of my application. I applied to 8 programs and got into 4. I was asked about my writing sample during two visits of three that I participated in, but I know it was a key factor for forth school that I didn't visit. Now that I'm attending, I was offered an RA job shortly after I arrived because of my writing sample - a professor approached me and referred to what they saw in my writing sample and segued into the job offer. He hadn't even read it directly but had heard about it from people on the admissions committee. I wouldn't say that the length of the sample drew more attention (i.e. I don't think that shorter samples were more likely to be read). I meddled with spacing in order to meet different page length requirements, so the total content that I provided was roughly the same for each. It was much more about the introduction, whether you have quantitative results tables, and your conclusion. My intro hooked the right people. I wouldn't underestimate how much it can help your application.

I should also add that it's well understood that your research interests will develop and change. If you have a precise research problem in your SOP, this is a plus, but everyone knows you very likely won't be pursuing that exact question in two years when you're past comps and are at the prospectus phase. I wouldn't feel hesitant to identify specific people that you can work with for now - being precise is important, as is demonstrating that you can put together a cohesive research agenda.

One of the main things I've learned, and that I try to convey to the students that I've TAed, is to read strategically. It's not important to read closely, to know every word. Like PoliticalOrder said, it's important to know three core things from any article or book: 1. What's their question? What puzzle are they trying to answer? Try to narrow this down to a sentence or two. Articles tend to be succinct, and state this but not every book puts into a nice one liner. 2. What's their answer to the question? I.e. What finding do they claim to find. 3. What evidence do they provide for this finding. 4. What is the causal mechanism or underlying theory that puts the evidence and answer together? I had a professor who told us to think of an X causing Y, with the causal arrow acting as the theory. This doesn't always work if the causal mechanism isn't necessarily positivist, but it's a helpful way to frame how you read. 5. What surprised you or interested you about this piece? - A good talking point in seminar is always a section that made you raise an eyebrow, ask a question, or confused you. Finding the answers to these questions is key and you don't need to read an entire book to find these bits of information. In articles, most of this information is in the introduction, theory, results summary and conclusion - though it's important to go back and closely read the theoretical logic after the fact. My strategy has always been to read the first sentence of any paragraph, and to skim the rest unless I stumble across something interesting, or a clear articulation of the articles key points (i.e. answers to questions 1-4). It takes a lot of practice to get to the point of reading quickly, and part of it is looking for key words. I am the type to skip parts, but I do so strategically - and how much I can do this always depends on the author's writing style and structure. Inevitably, people will adopt different perspectives on pieces and some people will focus on different parts than others but this is what seminar is for. If you want to mount an internal critique of a paper, you ultimately need to understand how the argument is built up within the piece on its own. Once you have this down, I would proceed to PoliticalOrder's questions about the wider literature, comparing a paper's argument with others that have answered similar or related research questions. As a method this strategy hasn't failed me, but everyone is different. My students always found it useful as it inevitably saved them a lot of time. When you have 1500+ pages of reading to do a week, you inevitably can't read every word.

Your profile is more competitive than mine was. You have a solid GRE, research experience, top notch GPAs. The key will be to convey your passion in your statement, and to have your LORs bolster your profile by speaking to your character and your work ethic. Also, since you've studied in both systems, be sure to market yourself towards the American system. They prioritize broader, cross-subfield training, whereas the British/European system can sometimes lead to a niched focus because degree lengths are shorter.

On the other issue of methodological balance: in the US, the methodological approach suggested by King Keohane and Verba reigns supreme, which has only served to reinforce the push towards quantitative methods. I would not say, however, that it's a waste of time to do anything else. I disagree with the comment that critical theory, or ethnographic approaches are useless: they are getting published. Maybe not in APSR, but they are out there and remain influential, especially if any of your work adopts any intuition from social theory. That archival research "just isn't done" is a massive fallacy. Archival research may not require you traveling to a national archive anymore, but if you're working with polling data, survey data, or census data beyond the early 2000s chances are you're working with archived data, or at least an archivist or librarian within some institute somewhere managing that information. If you're doing anything related to institutional functions, archival data remains essential to understanding how they were developed and how they structure interaction today. If you ignore all of this, you're completely ignoring what's happening on the ground - your work automatically loses touch with reality, which means it also loses policy relevance. And while statistics can help you make a big splash, like, e.g. Rose's paper that the WTO doesn't actually increase trade, if you don't pay attention to how the institution actually works, your results can actually turn out to be crap (See the Goldstein Rivers and Tomz reply to that piece). In Canada, programs remain mixed in their approach. It's undoubtedly a contentious issue but there is more beyond KKV and large-n analyses. It all depends on your research questions of interest. E.g. Brady and Collier - Rethinking Social Inquiry.

I agree with what most people have said - the number of quantitative methods courses in any top American program will almost always dwarf the number of qualitative courses offered. But I would view it in a different light: quantitative methods are extremely broad and they are constantly evolving with new software developments and the incorporation of new statistical methods into the field. There are usually many offered because it's important to have a mathematical foundation before you leap into the coding, and when you're coding there's so many different types of models to learn you need multiple courses. Qualitative, on the other hand, is much more practice oriented: you can only take so many courses about how to do it and what to consider. What's important is actually going out into the field, and doing it, practicing interview skills, working with archival evidence, doing fieldwork and building up experience. How you are able to tailor your methods training to your work is a huge variant, however. Some programs are more open to a mixed methods approach. Some are strictly positivist, stressing causal inference. Understanding your preferred epistemological and ontological approach to research before you apply is extremely helpful as it allows you to focus in on programs where you know you'll have a better fit.

Cannot reiterate this enough. I find that I can write a document so much quicker in LaTex than in Word, especially when dealing with a ton of figures. Compiling a bibliography through BibTex/LaTex is also a huge time saver. Also, re: my comment about Stanford's cohort size, it's about 12 according to FP in 2012 (see here: http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/01/03/the-top-10-international-relations-ph-d-rankings/) but my sense from talking to people admitted there (at least 6 this year, though likely a few more), and other faculty, is that their cohort is considerably smaller than say Princeton, Harvard or UPenn, who admit 25+ people. @Monody That you're trying to push an article through is tight. 4 months is next to impossible to move onto an R&R in any major journal of interest. I would sit on it. With everything on your plate, I would suggest keeping it in the pipeline, but don't force it. Moving to another country - huge time suck. Writing your thesis - even larger time suck. Pair that with GRE prep - which in your case, is really important - and you'll have no time if you want to do those first three things well on top of applications and wrapping up your current program on time. I personally screwed up my MA thesis submission by two months because I opted to co-author a paper, teach, move, and write my thesis at the same time which may affect my graduation timelines. For an MA program, this is less important but you'll need your BA to move on. You'll have six to seven years to learn all of these things and write these papers.

No problem. These kinds of things certainly do have a way of working out. I wouldn't say that everyone in the US uses R - it really depends on the type of quantitative work you're doing. For IPE, and large-N panel datasets, most people are using Stata or some combination of the two. For data mining, text analysis, web scraping and graphics, R is definitely superior. But the types of models matter. I know that count and MLE people are split between the two. In a way it depends on how young faculty are but even then, certain departments, and even professors within them, have their own preferences. It's a great asset to be proficient in the two (I personally jump back and forth depending on what I'm doing, with a preference for R overall because you can have multiple datasets open at once). If you don't have it going in, I wouldn't worry about it. You'll have more than enough opportunity to pick it up once you're in. I agree that prestige matters. I had a lot of people feel like the decision was made for me when I was down to considering a top 3 vs. top 50 program based on the "pedigree" I would have coming out. For me, I wasn't certain. I needed to be happy where I was going, and fit mattered a great deal. I found that in my field (IPE), overall rankings didn't necessarily match up with the ranking/prestige of where the top people in my substantive area of focus were working. People have commented elsewhere that this is the case, and the US News subfield rankings are really out of date. E.g. I applied to Harvard. Simmons left for UPenn, leaving just Frieden as the only IPE prof within the department of government...really should have saved myself the money). Ultimately I wouldn't (and didn't) apply to anywhere I wouldn't see myself living or going if it was my only choice. I personally dropped UCSD, UCLA, UCB, UMichigan and NYU from my list of schools to apply to for this reason specifically, despite preferring to be on the West coast Outside your list and given your interests, options that are worth looking at include GWU, UPenn and UChicago for sure, and maybe UMichigan, Cornell, or OSU depending on faculty fit - read bios and recent publications to get an idea. GWU and UPenn also accept larger cohorts of 20ish people, compared to Stanford's 5-7. Your mathematics position is well worth having on your CV, as is any form of employment you held related to your interests or field. It shows that you have teaching experience, as well as a solid math background. Again, I'm by no means an expert. I think the most valuable bits of advice I got throughout my application cycle came from young faculty. Two of my mentors applied to 8-10 programs each, and both were only accepted to one - the program they ultimately went to and they've certainly not put been down by where they went (top 50 programs both of them). Passion for the field is really important, as is being willing to cast a wide net for applications. No matter what you do, whichever program you go to is what you make of it. People can coast through a top-5 program and get beat out in the job market by others from top-50 programs because they put in the work.

Hi @Monody. Sorry for disappearing. When it comes to admissions, that's great to hear that you had something helpful. The range you described (very good, good etc.) is still a description of your grade breakdown, and something worth including in an official capacity. I would also check to see if there's something on the back of an official transcript explaining this - is it just blank? I don't know anything about WES, but if you do use it, be sure to say so somewhere in your application so the adcom can figure out how you did it. I would say the theoretical perspective of your LoR writers is less of an issue, though it would be worth having your first writer contextualize the kind of work you do. I would try to reconnect with that third letter writer via email. You can also forward them papers as an example of your work, while having their letter focus on your character and less your research. Happy to see your updates about potential research opportunities. Definitely keep working on those. Explaining your methods training in your SOP is useful. Try to substantiate it with some coursework, so there is a grade that represents what you know somewhere. When it comes to replicating results across programs, it's not commonly done and less so demonstrated in a paper's results section beyond a statement saying so. R results tend to be slightly different depending on the package you use, though basically the same. If you're working with panel data, Stata also remains superior. It remains so much easier to employ fixed or random effects, as well as clustered standard errors. Survival analysis is also super clean in Stata. If you're looking to pick up some R, look up John Fox's tutorials and scripts online. He's super helpful and his scripts are so easy to follow. I would also note, page counts can be remarkably shorter than 20-30. UPenn is under 10, and a number of others prefer 15 (including Colombia which is 15-20). The shorter the better. I was told by my MA supervisor that I should assume that includes tables and appendixes. Admittedly I pushed the limits a little by manipulating margins and spacing myself but it didn't always pay off. Clear tables and graphs will be key - they'll be the first thing to grab someone's attention when they scroll through, but make sure it isn't bogged down by figures. As for your list of schools, I personally applied to 8. In hindsight, I could have dropped 2 that were a poor fit for what I focus on. Be sure that you know there are a large number of people you can work with. I picked schools based on faculty fit, and whether I could see myself living in that area for 5-6 years. Cost of living and average stipends are also useful things to know, as well as whether schools offer graduate housing options. Check out http://www.phdstipends.com/results to get a sense of average stipends for political science PhDs. The other conditioning factor was rankings: I was willing to apply to universities that had an overall lower ranking if there were 3-4 great people I could work with in subfield (e.g. Georgetown for IPE, even though the program is ranked top 50). I still think this is a safe bet when you pair such application opportunities with where you fit best within the top 10 schools like Harvard etc. Right now you have a decent range, but NYU, UCSD and Emory are still very competitive programs. Without knowing what you do, I'm can't really suggest other places to consider. More generally, I think GWU is really up and coming since they moved to a fully funded program - they have a TON of money and people working on security. UPenn is also a great place and they just landed Beth Simmons from Harvard. UChicago has a lot going on for security as well and UCLA has a lot to offer as well. There is no means to "guaranteeing" a place per se. But overall I think you have a competitive profile. I mean, I had a CGPA of 3.9 coming out of my MA (3.76 for my BA), a 152Q/158V/6AW GRE score. I compensated for my shit math score with a quantitative writing sample and a grade memo from a summer statistics program, as well as comments by my LOR writers that my test scores don't reflect on my potential (I never test well on standardized tests x_x). There are ways to balance these things out. I'd certainly say you have better raw scores than I do. I'm sure you'll be set. Sounds like you're already up to some really interesting work. Best of luck to you!

When it comes to your GPA, a few of my peers in my MA program came from German universities, and a number of faculty on the admissions committee had taught in Europe and the UK prior to moving to Canada. The one thing I would stress is that if your GPA has no conversion scale, or grading scale offered period (though normally all transcripts have something on the back, even if it's a quintile ranking (where you are relative to peers in a class curve etc.), then your GRE is going to be really really important. Part of the reason its required is to ensure that one element of your profile is comparable to everyone else and is graded on the same scale etc. When it comes to explaining your GPA, have one of your letter writers contextualize your undergrad institution's ranking and workload. They can speak reputably about your university's ability to prepare you for for graduate school, and describe how you fared within this context. I've said this elsewhere, but make sure they know you well and can speak to different components of your profile. This all said, I wouldn't enter a 0.0. If you have to, use an online conversion tool and reference that in an additional document or as an addendum to your statement. As an aside, I find it really hard to believe that your university doesn't have a grading scale of any kind. How do you know where you sit relative to your peers? Is there any sort of explanation, anywhere, that explains what your grades mean? Because that's likely what they're looking for. When it comes to your research opportunities, I wouldn't include job offers you didn't take. They don't demonstrate experience, just missed opportunities. Your CV and statements should speak to what makes you qualified and the skills you do possess and want to build on. You should instead stress the work you have done that is research related - independent projects and papers in your coursework - and how that made you want to go to graduate school. You don't need to have held independent RA positions or TAships to have research experience. Perhaps some elements of your internships were really useful in teaching you about policy analysis or the political process? Stress your background in quantitative methods as well - this is a huge plus. It's also a good sign that you have a quantitative writing sample. Writing sample requirements vary across institutions - definitely try your best to keep that model in your sample no matter the page count (some will only accept a 10 page abbreviated portion for example). I would list your language skills on your CV, perhaps mention how this feeds into the type of work you want to do in your statement, if it's tied to particular regions of interest. It's a great skill to have if you want to do fieldwork or archival work on your topic in non-English speaking host country. Hope this helps.