GradGuy1

Other than international students (who sometimes come in funded by their home gvts) and those with fringe subfield interests won't receive unfunded offers from schools that mostly fund their students (i.e. UCLA, OSU, etc.). Furthermore, you can find programs as low as rank 100+ that "fully fund" their PhD students. Even MA programs sometimes fully fund, particularly at schools where there is no PhD program and MA students are TAs. I assume by "fully fund" you mean tuition remission, some form of health insurance, and 9 month compensation at say $13,000+, which might require TA responsibilities but will likely allow for 20 or so hours per week of outside employment. I'm not calling any of this a great deal, I'm just saying it exists, and it's possible to do a Ph.D. under these conditions in most cities in the U.S. (if you're a modest spender and you have no extra burdens in terms of costs). Certainly $35k/yr+ at top schools, with no teaching or research requirement for 2-3 years of your 5-6 years, is more desirable - and easier, but most students aren't quite that lucky.

170/160 can get you into any political science PhD program in the U.S. That's not WILL but CAN, so I would think the same would go for masters programs.

I wouldn't be so worried. If your algebra foundations are reasonable, you'll probably be fine with a bit of extra work alongside your required quant courses. This probably means working with your cohort on shared problem sets, attending TA office hours, taking advantage of university-provided tutoring (usually free), and maybe attending a math summer school (like ICPSR) one or two summers (for 3 or so weeks), which you should do anyway. Math camps at most schools are designed as a right of passage. They are ridiculous in scale, scope, and duration, and many students have no idea what is going on throughout. Does the rest of your cohort seem to know the stuff? I bet most are 1/2 lost, whether they admit it or not. Also, those who come in having recently (or really ever) taken Calc, Linear Algebra, etc. are naturally going to find math camp easier, but it doesn't necessarily mean they will find stats or game theory, etc., easier. Of course, maybe they will find these easier, but if they do it will mostly be because they are comfortable with symbols and you are not. Work on getting comfortable "reading" math/stats symbols, and it will come together much more quickly for you. It's like learning a new alphabet, for the most part. If you have to learn a new alphabet alongside learning content, you're at a huge disadvantage. Get or make yourself a symbols cheat sheet (and maybe some flash cards) for math and stats, and take 5 minutes each day to try to learn/remember what the symbols mean. Something to note: in my experience, students who come in with a relatively higher level of math often assume they have an advantage when it comes to generating good research questions, and this is simply not the case. In fact, students who come in "well prepared" for quant subjects often seem to have an inappropriately high level of confidence in their abilities in general, and in my experience (as a grad student then professor) they tend to be less receptive to criticism of their research ideas, which is a huge shortcoming when it comes to succeeding in grad school (or at least in a polisci PhD program). If the program let you in, they expect you will be able to succeed. Find a faculty member to confide in, whether it's an assigned advisor or not. And/or, try to find a more advanced grad student who you can talk with about this. Additionally, your dean of students (or graduate student support services ) office can help, if you don't feel comfortable talking about it within your department. That said, you really should find someone internal to the department. The department administrator will have seen many cases like yours. If you are comfortable with him/her, you could also initiate a conversation with this person. Don't try to hide or gloss over your deficiency. You can make up for it, and it won't serve you to put off doing so. In political science, even those with the very highest level of math training usually don't know much math at all, haha, so you'll be able to catch up. I can pretty much promise you that. Don't be intimidated by those arrogant weirdos who flaunt their "Bayesian," "Maximum Likelihood," etc. vocab. That stuff is, in general, not at all sophisticated. An average middle schooler could learn it, given some incentive (like candy, for example). Much harder than learning that is learning good intuition in terms of research questions, and my bet is that your application reflected that you were already on the right track in this area. Good luck!