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For the verbal get the Barron book and learn the vocab...I went from 550 to 660 in two weeks, if I had been a bit more militant I'm sure I could have gone higher, hit 720 twice with Kaplan practice exams. For maths I went from 560 to 780 in two weeks...again just studying with Kaplan and Barron...

Hi everyone i'm sure this type of threads must annoy people, but I'm confused by this whole process and some help (any help) would be greatly appreciated. So here is the deal, I recently graduated from one of the two top Uni in England with a Economics degree, I got a high 2:1 overall (65 and the cut for a 1:1 is 67.5...around GPA 3.66-3.7) but kind of flopped the Economics elements of it (around GPA 3.55). I've heard that some american universities like Oxbridge, but would they overlook my relatively poor GPA? I took the GRE earlier this week and got 780Q 660V AWA? (waiting)...I'm worried that my verbal is too low My main worry (amongst the lowish GPA and the verbal score) is that I don't really have work experience, I deferred a finance job for a year because I wanted to do further study rather than being trapped into a three year contract (I would rather work at think tanks than in finance but they usually require a Masters degree). I have very recently completed three months work experience as a level 1 junior consultant with the O.E.C.D (Organization for Economic cooperation n development) and I'm hopefully going back next spring when the application stuff are over (I would LOVE to work for them forever but again you need a masters for long term research posts). In addition I have volunteering experience with Solar Aid which helps people in Malawi to install solar energy and work experience in Finance (with one of the big 4) and work experience in Tokyo with a small marketing company. BUT they are all so scattered and lacks 'focus', not to mention insignificant compared to most people here/the applicants. I travelled around quite extensively when I was growing up (changed schools 8 times, 3 countries not sure whether that's worth mentioning), I wish it's for some exciting reason but I was simply following my parents n their work around. and I love traveling and go away at every opportunity to work/teach abroad (did conservation work in China and Cuba, Pandas and giant sea Turtles respectively...but again not really relevant and doesn't join up with MPP/IR!!). One thing which I thought might be an advantage is that I speak/read/write three languages fluently (English, Chinese, German) having lived there and have good working knowledge of two (Japanese and French, the latter being one of the working language of the OECD) but I'm not sure how much since I sorta got given the first three when I lived in the country...I haven't actually worked (being the problem here...) but have done work experience in Japan, China, London and Paris (in total around 7/8 months over three years of undergrad study). My main interest is in African Development and more specifically world population studies, fertility and poverty and rural credit market failures...My dream job would be to work for World Bank Africa or the UN and I'm trying v hard to get more UN languages. I'm applying to quite a few schools including Oxbridge (I know almost for sure they won't take me...Applying for the off chance miracle), I didn't even look at Harvard (MPA/ID) until today as I thought with my background it's a lost cause (no work experience, relatively low GPA...) what do you guys think? Is anyone there at the moment? Do they focus on your SOP? and Chicago CIR, Stanford IPD, U C Berkeley MPP (Haha, as if...), John Hopkins Bologna MA IR, Princeton MPA (is anyone there? how old is avg age/work experience requirement, i thought this one would be lower than their MPP program but doesn't seem like it), MIT politics MA IR track, Columbia Politics MA IR track, Yale IDE and LSE development studies Msc. I was wondering whether anyone has any advice for how i could approach my SOP/which bit i should stress and if there are any schools here would I might just as well drop with my background...also with an economics background how can I best justify my switch to IR? for the writing samples should I just sent in my economics essays or write new IR specific ones? Thanks so much!