minorthreat

There is, but he's not in the field I plan on going into. That's one of the other complicating factors - I was a political science major as an undergrad, yet want to go to grad school for history. The non-degree courses I'm doing right now are all history related.

I was planning on studying in Korea, yeah, but mostly to improve my language skills as I'd prefer to be fluent or near-fluent when finally entering a PhD program. One thing I neglected to mention that may also offset the bad GPA is that it's from a top university that's notorious for being both extremely difficult and having a brutal core curriculum. (If I mention that it's not in the Northeast, you should be able to guess which one.)

I'm doing my damnedest to get straight A's, and yeah, I should make at least one stellar contact in my field (Korean history) whose recommendation would carry some really heavy weight should I manage to get one from her. I haven't been out of school very long - I finished my BA in 2005 - but I did spend two years in Korea, which is what prompted a switch to Korean history in the first place. That may help, I don't know.

I'm in a similar situation to the one the OP's in - I have a terrible undergraduate GPA (2.6) and I'm currently trying to make up for it by doing a year as a non-degree student at Columbia. The nagging question in my mind, though, is if it will be enough.