This is my first time on here, and I honestly don't really know how to read all the information I'm getting, so I'm hoping some of you might be willing to help me out a little bit my chancing me based on your knowledge and experience with these kinds of applications which probably far outstrips my own. I'm really hoping to end up at a PhD Program with a strong MENA Focus
So Here's what I got:
African-American Student
BA Double Major in Political Science & Middle East Studies from Top 10 Liberal Arts College
GPA: 3.2 / 4 (3.55 in Major)
GRE: 162 V / 152 Q / 4.5 AW
-Proficient in STATA
-Languages: Arabic (Professional Working Capacity) ; Moroccan Colloquial (Limited working proficiency)
-Ralph Bunche Fellow ; Presented research on Morocco at APSA Annual Conference
*4 Internship Experiences, all research based with NGO's, including 2 Abroad in Morocco and Tunisia
*Spent in aggregate over a Year Abroad (A summer each in Tunisia & Morocco, and a Fall & Winter in Morocco)
*40 Page Thesis being written on Post-revolutionary identity in Libya; Considering writing a second 40 page thesis on the Druze
-Incredibly close with my professors and advisors who'd be writing my rec and they are certainly experts in their field, all Ivy-edu-ed and all that stuff. I think my recommendations would be fine. And I while I'm fairly annoyed at the GRE AW score, I've always been good at writing and expressing myself in terms of SOP's etc.
-Also, speaking bluntly. I'm not all that great at math, as my Quant score would probably indicate. I also felt awful when I took my GRE and I'm not sure whether or not I should take it again, so any advice on this front would help as well!
-And lastly, I'm a Comparativist and an intepretivist in most of my methodology, and those techniques formed the basis for my Research presentations and papers thus far. I suppose I'd be at the cross section of Comparative / IR / and Political Identity or Sociology I suppose in my research interests thus far which have focused on political identity in newly democratized or currently democratizing states ; as well as post-conflict transformation.
My Wishlist: (no particular order)
-Harvard
-Columbia
-UCLA
-UPENN
-GWU / Georgetown
-U. Chicago
-Arizona
-University of Texas - Austin
-SOAS in London
-Penn State