Jump to content

futureamericanphd

Members
  • Posts

    1
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

futureamericanphd's Achievements

Decaf

Decaf (2/10)

3

Reputation

  1. Hi everyone, I finally decided to stop lurking and give some input on the application process. I will start off by telling you all what schools I've been admitted into, and what I believe has made me a very successful applicant, as well as my additional thoughts. I will start off by telling you all that so far this admissions cycle I've been admitted into Emory, Purdue, UCLA, Duke, and UMich (Public Policy and Poli sci joint) all with full funding. I'm still waiting to hear from a few others. So, that said, I've been admitted into two programs in the Top 5 - 10 (Duke and UMich) and the other schools also have good reputations. I'm interested in American Politics. I think that would helped me tremendously in this process was the extensive amount of research experience I have. I am currently a senior in college at a Top 20 public university. I started doing research my sophomore year with a prof in the poli sci department. This led to an independent study, which eventually led to the opportunity for me to present on a panel at my first professional POLS conference as a sophomore (this is quite rare). Following this semester, I did a summer research program at a Big 10 school which resulted in my first empirical research paper. I later presented again at another major POLS conference (MPSA)- this was on another panel. Following that, I participated in another summer research program- this was at a Top 10 university in the U.S. which has a very well respected poli sci department and landed me two letters of rec from full professors at this school who are very well known in the field. Following this program, I presented my research again- this time it was APSA (again very rare for an undergraduate student to attend and present at). I am also in the midst of doing an honors thesis but I don't think this was entirely important in the process (I would have to think that admin committees would care more about the extensive work I had done previously). Okay, so to wrap this all up, what I personally believe was helpful in this process were these factors :1) the fact that I presented at 3 major conferences of the field, 2) the fact that I did 2 residential summer research programs, 4) 3-4 letters of rec from very respectable profs in the field- 3 of which are full professors, 4) a very strong SOP which I worked on for months and gave to various people to edit (including some faculty at schools I applied to), 5) my writing sample which because I did two summer research programs allowed me to submit a writing sample that was empirical based(I think admin committees were impressed by this). I also did a few internships- one was for the U.S. House of Reps in D.C. for a semester and due to the fact that I want to study American politics, this may have also helped. All in all, what I can tell you all is that what was probably most important in my admissions process was that I had extensive research experience, particularly as an undergrad and I had a number of faculty who could speak to this. Now, here comes the big shocker that you all will be VERY surprised by. My GRE quant score was a 149, my verbal score was a 152, and AW was 4.5(these scores are all very low and do not meet any minimum qualifications at any of the schools I applied to). I did have a high GPA- 3.8 in the honors program at my school (But I really don't think a high GPA offsets low GREs that much). BUT, I'm sure overlooked admin committees overlooked this because they saw that I had research experience directly tied to my research interests and that I basically demonstrated I had an idea of what I was getting myself into. That being said, I would advise that admin committees care most about if you have research experience, whether you can express your interests well in your SOP, and how well you can demonstrate you know or at least think you know what your getting yourself into. That being said, how well you can calculate the y=mx+b formula on the GRE is basically irrelevant when the rest of your application is solid (this is my opinion).
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. See our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use