PerennialStudent

I was accepted into Berkeley, Emory, NYU. Thrilled and grateful

Hey everyone, just wanted to say thank you all for taking the time on these in-depth responses. This has been really helpful for me and I hope to pay it forward! Thank you all.

Hi everyone, I hope to go to a top-10 political science PhD program eventually but am not sure whether I should do a masters program first to help get more relevant letters of rec and research. Here are a few of my stats: GRE: V 169, Q 169 GPA: 3.9, BA in statistics at Berkeley, couple years ago. Coursework: No poli sci or related classes, I found my way to poli sci after undergrad. Work experience: I have been working as a data scientist at a large tech company for a couple years now. Research: I did volunteer quant research on the effect of advertising on state elections (with a nonprofit, not in academia) Extracurriculars: volunteered as a data scientist for a political campaign, and have been involved in local advocacy on police policy in my city (researching policy, meeting with the mayor, city manager, etc.) LoR: one from a humanities prof from a marxist theory class, one from the volunteer research manager and one from a data science manager. None of these have a background in poli sci, however. Writing Sample: paper I wrote about governmentality and healthcare. Research interests: using automated text processing/NLP to explore how political issues are framed and how ideology is disseminated around issues like policing and punishment in the US. Interested in doing quant research with a grounding in political theory. My questions: 1) Would a masters help or should I go for the PhD now? 2) If masters, do you think that top-10 US PhD programs would look well upon an international masters, e.g. from UBC, U Toronto, Oxford, Cambridge, London School of Econ, or other programs in Europe/Canada/Australia ranked in the top 50 globally? Thanks everyone!