uncle_socks

If there's reason to think there's grade deflation, I'd make sure to have your recommenders mention it within their letters. Everyone knows Reed has grade deflation, but that's largely their knowledge of LAC grading. A lot of places will have sections on the application where you can discuss things like grades. If your ultimate goal is to get into a polisci PhD program and not full-in be a methodologist, I'd stay towards social science-y MA programs (read: not statistics programs, which are most likely to dislike your math GPA anyways). There's not really a big placement difference in between your placement at an MPP vs. MPA vs. MA political science vs. MA econ programs vs. MA in IR or Area Studies vs. a JD (don't get a JD though) once you control for stuff like program/school prestige. Some that seem like perennial feeders into top programs are QMSS at Columbia and MAPSS at Chicago (look into MCRM there too). The only annoying thing about MA programs is that they're often very expensive (and if you've got money, that's awesome and you don't need to read beyond this). The Chicago programs have alright funding opportunities. I've heard thirdhand that TA opportunities at QMSS are plentiful. Marquette has decent placement into PhD programs and funds MA students. I think Yale has money to give out in Area studies and IR MA types. State schools with MA programs but without PhD programs often fund MA students. NYU and Duke don't really fund MA students. But yeah, if I were you I'd be applying to both MA programs as well as PhDs in between 1-40ish if you're committed to staying in school next year. Obviously don't apply anywhere you wouldn't be okay going.

For you I'd really recommend applying very broadly. Without the GPA it sounds like you have a very strong profile, but obviously we can't just discount that. I have a couple of questions: is a 3.3 considered bad/good within your college class? There are LACs like Reed where a 3.6 puts you solidly into the top 10% or so. What is your career goal? If you want to teach at an R1 or selective LAC, I'd really look into applying to MA programs as a back up to boost your GPA and then applying to top schools only, as well as applying to a variety of T25ish places. If you want to get into policy, the standards are somewhat lower and you don't have to necessarily go to the best school.

Uhhh GRE scores are out of 170

Just wanted to add that Rochester (and I believe WUSTL) is very formal theory (game theory) heavy. If you're doing this, add Caltech Social Science and Stanford GSB to your list. Most top schools have a formal theorist or two (or more) on staff, so if you want to do formal work but don't want to be a formal theorist, it's hard to go wrong. NYU does good game theory but also is good in the statistics quantitative stuff. Anywhere in the top 10 or top 15 is seriously good at statistics/data science type stuff though, and you can't go wrong there either. Pretty much everyone has a seriously good methods person and also a good stats or math/econ department if you want to supplement things. Further down in the rankings is Penn State, where some grads land data science jobs. Also definitely take a look at PhD programs where you can get a master's for free in stats or econ. I know Harvard and Stanford and I think Duke (this isn't an exhaustive list, it's just what I can pull off the top of my head rn) easily let you do this.

I'm convinced that the most important things are really good letters and a really good research statement that fits well with the program. But those things only matter once you hit some arbitrary threshold on GRE and GPA. Things like conference attendence, quant courses, etc. can help you get a good grasp on what political science is, thereby allowing you to write a better research statement. But them alone won't put you over the top: Stanford or Harvard isn't going to throw anyone to the top of the list because just because one went to MPSA and is doing well at a master's program. Again, I'm going to qualify that what I'm saying is primarily about tippy top programs, but my main point is that all grad programs are not created equal: some (especially serious quant schools like NYU or Stanford) are a lot harder than others. If you're succeeding in Duke's or Columbia's or NYU's MA program and have taken classes alongside other PhD students and done just as well as them, then yeah ok, they'll probably deemphasize your GRE score if everything else in your application looks fine. But if you're succeeding at a program at a non-top school, top schools could look at it and think that the disparity between your GRE scores and your success in an MA program just indicates that your MA program is too easy.

It depends on what kind of school and what kind of GRE scores, unsurprisingly. Will a top 10 school accept a 150/150 GRE score when you have a 4.0 MA GPA? No, they'll think your MA grades are inflated and your MA program is not adequately preparing you for a top grad program. Will a top 35 be lenient about the same kind of situation? Maybe, but it probably depends on how good a case your letter writers make for you being a capable candidate despite low scores. And your writing sample better be solid and be both well written and exhibit a good knowledge of quantitative methodology. FYI things like conference attendence (most are super easy to get into), high MA grades (everyone gets A's in grad schools), and good quant grades (again, everyone gets A's in grad school) aren't all that important. Most people admitted in top 10 PhD programs have never taken a grad course (let alone a quant one) and has never been to a conference, these aren't big interests of admissions committees.

Honestly this all sounds fine to me and I'd aim for anywhere form 1-30 ranked programs if I were you. I see no reason to limit yourself to applying to anywhere. Re: writing sample. No one actually wants an MA thesis length paper, so don't bother with it. Most places want a minimum in the ballpark of 10-30 pages, which pretty much any thorough research paper will make it to once you double space (which most of them want you to do anyways), throw in the bibliography, add in a graph or two, add in tables, etc. And if you don't, I don't recall seeing any programs that specifically say that you can't attach two or three shorter papers instead -- in fact many programs say you should do this if you don't have a longer writing sample. Really. Don't sweat it. Not everyone who gets into great schools does a senior or MA thesis, and admissions committees don't expect everyone to have a 60 page paper ready to be judged. In fact places will be unhappy if you do send in a 60 page thesis -- they have to judge tons of applications, no one has the time to read 60 pages.

I'd suggest asking on the government affairs section of this forum, or maybe an MPA/MPP subreddit or even the political science subreddit. This is mostly focused on political science PhD apps and we can't give you a good an answer as they can about the MPA/MPP admissions process.

The poli sci forum here is almost exclusively focused on political science PhDs. You'll probably have better luck in the governmental affairs subforum, where they talk about programs in SAIS/SIPA/WWS etc. pretty regularly. That being said, SAIS for International Affairs says their middle 50% GRE quant range is 152-161 (https://sais.jhu.edu/academics/degree-programs/master-degrees/master-arts-international-affairs/class-profile-maia), so a 160 would be perfectly fine. I doubt anywhere would be much more stringent that JHU (perhaps WWS excluded, where admission there is a different beast altogether).

Of the top 10/near top 10, I'd consider that general ranking correlates highly with how strong the quant offerings are at a given department. Notably more quanty than meets the eye: NYU (check out their FAQ with their "if you're reading this soon enough, please take calc" section) and Stanford (relatively weaker at political theory than other top programs, and many dropouts and graduates go onto heavily technical roles). Notably less: Yale, Chicago (both historically schismed depts where the quants did not win), MIT (less dramatically schismed, but also not the math powerhouse that one may expect when one thinks about MIT the school).

I recommend as many as possible (that are a good fit, of course) if you're unsure about where you stand. Plenty of people apply to 10+. Most schools offer application fee waivers if it's a financial hardship.

Do you have any info about these programs/especially about funding for these two programs? I thought about applying to those but ultimately didn't because I couldn't find much beyond Blattman's blog post about it. They seem similar to QMSS at Columbia (I think that's what it's called) which I've seen on some CVs of CHYMPS grad students. QMSS also seems like a great quant-social science oriented master's program with a solid pipeline to awesome PhD programs, but I can't say anything about finances there either.

Also everywhere in the top 20. Notable exceptions are UCLA and Ohio State, but both fund a vast majority of students and I think TA-ships aren't too bad to obtain beyond the first year.

This probably isn't the most helpful thing, but it seems really weird to apply to those four schools. UI-Chicago and Loyola are among the worst-ranked PhD programs in the US, while Northwestern is very good (I think they admit less than 20%) and Michigan was perhaps the most selective school last year (they admitted something like 4% of applicants, although that was an anomaly). It'll be fine that your undergrad is in English lang teaching (though the total GPA could maybe hurt you), because your grad degree is relevant. For top schools, they won't care about your teaching experience. It's hard to judge how competitive you'd be without your grad GPA and GRE scores, and I doubt that anyone can really give you a good answer without those.

Everything in your profile looks quite good, though getting a couple more points on each GRE section could be helpful. I'm sure that those will bring you beyond the first cut of prospective applicants. Beyond that, things are probably going to fall onto the quality of your letters and your SoP, which I can't really judge for you.

GPA could potentially be a small red flag, especially coming from a school that is presumably not well-known. Higher major GPA helps. GRE scores are good -- raising the Q can't hurt but overall they aren't a problem. Professional quant consulting is good, a higher GRE Q score combined with quant work experience can make it known that you have serious quant chops. Here's where I think you'll get dinged: 1. Interested in theory track but none of your recs are from theory people. No one can really speak to your aptitude in political theory. 2. No one cares about professional references (the only possible exception I can think of in your case was if the employer talked about how good you are at quant stuff and you were applying as a methods applicant). 3. It's not fair that it's like this, but having unknown recommendors will hurt you. This becomes less of a problem the further down the rankings you go. There's a reason the best schools are mostly filled with students who went to prestigious undergrads/undergrads with good polisci departments, and it's not just because inherently smarter people tend to go to better undergrad departments. 4. Seemingly no research experience in theory/not a lot of previous coursework in theory classes. I think it may be difficult to write a convincing Statement of purpose if you're not well-versed with the current literature in the field. Coming from anon-polisci background, you're going to have to convince the admissions committees that you know what the field is all about, and that you belong in it. That being said, major GPA (given that it's econ related)+ great GRE scores + quant job make me think you'd get some bites in the 20-40 range. Check out MAPSS at Chicago too -- I think with your GRE score you could get a serious scholarship and it would allow you to simultaneously get polisci experience, get a higher GPA, and get recs from famous people in the field.

Why do you think there's a big discrepancy in between your methods course performance and your quantitative GRE score? What kind of topics were covered in these methods courses? I'll echo what everyone else here is saying: yes, those GRE scores need work if you want to get into somewhere in the top 25. It's really hard to imagine anyone being very good at methods and doing average on the quant portion of the GRE unless the methods courses are too easy. Pretty much all programs ranked 25 or better that publish average scores for their students has a 160+ average. 159V could also really benefit from a boost of a couple points or more. Top 50 and top 75 programs, sure, you wouldn't necessarily need to retake.

Your chances, based on what you've written here, is pretty decent. Definitely stand a chance and assuming that you have cohesive and not-too-weird research interests, and write a standard personal statement and I'd be pretty surprised if you blanket applied to the top 20 and didn't get in anywhere. CMU and Wake Forest aside (and I know you didn't go to CMU because they don't have poli sci), the schools in the top 20-30 in US News all have very well-connected people in political science, which is a plus. Bonus points if you went to Michigan because they're top 6 in political science lol. That being said, there definitely are things you can and should do to improve your profile. Work the Q score -- the V is completely fine and if you get a 165 on test day, awesome. Q is generally the easiest section to improve, and I think breaking 330 really can put you into an elite category of applicants. Also, if latin honors are based entirely on your thesis work, ask people why you didn't get summa and use that criticism to improve your sample. If that's not how it worked, ignore what I just said (my school did latin honors by gpa only so I'm not familiar with how other systems work).

Here's my two cents on everything here: 1. First, a 3.7 is ok. People on admissions committees are familiar enough with the UK grading system to not get their panties in twist when they see something like what I presume is upper second class honors. One chart I saw (from a different school) made it look like about 20% of students got a better grade, which is like, not the greatest but not the best. Clearly it means you're competent and stuff, but it doesn't scream "academic superstar". That being said, some of the smartest people I know don't have the best GPAs, and people are aware of that. It won't carry you, but maybe aside from Harvard or Stanford, won't sink you either, especially because it's in a different field. Plenty of ivy league near-4.0 types apply to top political science programs though, so the chances that a 3.7 will be seen as as a plus are very slim. 2. If you go to USC and get an MPA with a GPA over 3.8, that will probably be a good thing. Recs from economists or political scientists who teach in the program will be very very good. It's not the most efficient way to end up in a political science PhD program, but I don't think it's really the worst thing to do because you'll be exposed to a lot of a fair amount of government-related research. Also it's probably much better than doing nothing. 3. I wouldn't value an MA in Political science (or the UChicago cash cow MAs) over a top MPA/MPP. Most programs that offer political science MAs are either not that great of programs in general, or treat their MAs as cash cows (Duke, NYU, Chicago without scholarship), and committees know that. The bonus of an MPA/MPP is if you decide you like what's going on in it, you'll have employment prospects when you get the degree. 4. It is my opinion that if you go to USC and do well (3.8+ (but higher the better), very good recs, some kind of research experience), you can be in a good place to apply to PhD programs in the caliber that you want to get into. If your goal is Columbia/Stanford/NYU, will be better off doing this than directly applying without it. Bonus points if it makes you better at quantitative work and can write a quantitative writing sample. 5. To agree with someone who posted above, your internship probably will not matter very much unless there's a research component to your work. These internships might have some kind of "cool" factor but ultimately it won't make your application. 6. Your GRE scores, as-is, will get you rejected at all three programs you've mentioned. NYU and Stanford love high quant scorers. NYU loves to brag about being really hardcore with methods -- if you don't believe me read their FAQ. You need to get the quant score up. When I applied to these programs my goal was 165/165 but had decided I would settle for anything over 160/160. I recommend something similar. Is a 156 to 160 is not statistically a significant jump, but 160 seems to be some magical number that a lot of people just equate as "competent enough to read academic papers." The number used to be 700 on the old GRE, which is a much higher percentile. Are these numbers pretty much arbitrary and based off a a stupid "what is ten points beneath a perfect score" rule? Yes. Do people value these stupid magic numbers? Yes. Take a look here to see what kind of GRE/GPAs people who get into these programs have. That being said, GRE scores alone will not get you in. They'll get you rejected though.

Annotations below in bold

The best advice anyone can give you is to do both of the following: 1. Look at departments where you'd like to end up working, look at the CVs of newly hired professors, and see what kind of places they got their PhDs from. 2. Have candid conversations with faculty that have served on hiring committees and get their opinion on it. Ask if it's reasonable to expect an Australian/NZ job if you graduate from your school's PhD program. See if you can find placement statistics on it. Does your professor think the value of an American PhD is that it opens up doors to academia in the US (which aside from a couple universities in Aus/NZ are largely more "prestigious")? Or because American PhDs are generally more sought-after even outside the US? (No idea if either of those two statements are true btw, that's for you to find out) FWIW I see more people from Oxbridge/LSE PhDs than Australian PhDs on American faculty. No idea if that means anything but it's just an observation.

You mean something like this? https://fivethirtyeight.com

I'm curious what schools you think it's clear that the GRE is a big deal towards and for what schools it isn't (over other important factors like letters, of course). Having gone through the application process and done the rounds at admitted students day, and having read pretty much every thread here (because of course I'm a neurotic gradcafe type) on admissions results, I haven't formed any opinions on schools that care more or care less about the GRE. I mean of course Stanford and stuff will have higher GRE averages but pretty much everything about the profiles of those getting into H/P/S are going to be superb, but I can't pinpoint any school where I'd tell someone who isn't all around fantastic but has a perfect GRE score "hey, you'd have a good chance here." Also not trying to be too antagonistic, but I think the entire "oh no! we have two candidates that are exactly the same amount of good except one has a higher GRE score and we can only choose one" really never happens. There are so many other factors that are likely more important to the department (such as fit with the department, whether the people you want to work with are retiring before you'd finish the dissertation, the amount of people admitted into each subsubsubfield, whether someone on the adcom owes one of the letter writers a favor, not to mention stuff like writing sample and the letters) that are going to take precedent before they start squinting at GRE scores again. I mean, yeah sure a 160/160 isn't completely ideal and by all means, score higher if possible. Just know that the difference between 160V and 166V actually isn't statistically significant at the 95% level and admissions teams know this My interpretation of the 160/160 is that those are the scores you should at least have to think you have an somewhat realistic chance at a top 6 and to not get cut in the first round because of GRE score. These scores alone are absolutely not sufficient for admission (but neither is a 170/170). 155/155 (but over 320 composite) for the top 15. What I'd personally aim for is 165+/165+ for CHYMPS and about 162+/162+ for other top 15s, but I got into more than one CHYMPS even though I slightly fell short of my personal goal of 165/165. I feel like this distinction between what's good enough vs. what's ideal is probably what the two of us are disagreeing about when we define adequate scores.

Lmao at the NYU 90th percentile comment on their website. There's very little reason to believe that they only admit people with Q166s or higher (or make very few exceptions for people with under 166s). Take a look at this data which was scraped from the gradcafe results section: https://imgur.com/a/EuNTB . Obviously not a perfect sample but I believe that gradcafe skews neurotic (by this I mean more people who are obsessive about controllable factors GRE scores and GPA and subsequently have higher GRE and GPA than the overall pool). In fact, there is very strong reason to believe that these statistics skew high: looking at the verbal scores there's pretty much no way that the median verbal score for an admitted applicant is in the 97th percentile. For NYU the reported median Q for admitted students is 164, meaning half (likely more because of aforementioned skewing) of all admitted students are scoring below the 90th. Of enrolled students, that number is probably going to be lower as NYU loses a lot of the top students to CHYMPS. Same deal with Columbia. Even if you're not a fan of my somewhat-corrected statistics, we can look at some real data too. Duke (ranked higher than NYU and similar to Columbia) has theirs here: https://gradschool.duke.edu/about/statistics/political-science-phd-admissions-and-enrollment-statistics Q GRE of entering student around 160 I'm not trying to advocate in favor of aiming for a 160/160 and then quitting. By all means, everyone should put in a decent amount of effort to get the best score they can get. But if someone has given it their all and is hitting a wall at something like 163/163 or 161/166 or whatever, trying to get over that wall is going to be a waste of time. No one gets admitted on GRE scores alone -- from what I've seen, it's mostly used as a competency threshold. Talking about the GREs this much probably makes it seem like a much bigger part of the application process than it really plays. I'm a firm believer in the idea that the best applicants tend to have high GRE scores, instead of the idea that high GRE scores are what make an applicant good. GRE scores will never get you into a program, they'll only disqualify you, and the bar for disqualification based on GRE scores is lower than we probably think. The most make-or-break factor is going to be the letters or the statement of purpose. Also the Stanford website never calls those numbers averages (nor does it call it any name denoting central tendency) and I don't believe it would be wise to treat them as such. The way they phrase it on the website makes it almost sound like those are minimums, which they absolutely are not, because literally all three of the people who reported accepted results on the gradcafe results page this year had at least one GRE aspect lower than what Stanford published. Anyways, in 2004-2006 the NRC collected GRE Q score data on political science programs. Here's the results: Institution Name Average GRE Scores, 2004-2006 Corresponding New GRE STANFORD UNIVERSITY 774.884 162 HARVARD UNIVERSITY 758.5 160 NEW YORK UNIVERSITY 757.576 160 YALE UNIVERSITY 753.208 159 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 739.4 158 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-SAN DIEGO 738.71 158 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY 729.333 157 DUKE UNIVERSITY 728.936 157 MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 725.806 157 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-LOS ANGELES 721.429 156 UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER 719.524 156 WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS 719.5 156 UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN-ANN ARBOR 718.302 156 OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY MAIN CAMPUS 718.116 156 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK 717.019 156 STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT STONY BROOK 713.462 155 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 711.029 155 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON 710.213 155 GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY 708.864 155 RICE UNIVERSITY 707.895 155 BOSTON COLLEGE 705.333 155 Have things shifted in the last 15 years? Of course. Everything is more quant-driven now. A lot of programs have made their cohorts smaller. Admissions might be a little more competitive. But at the heart of it, even if every school increased its average Q GRE by three points (like Duke did), a low 160s would make you pretty much average anywhere that's not Stanford.