niftydigits

My lifelong anxiety and spells of depression (I do have documentary evidence-- diagnoses and stuff-- of these conditions now) took a serious toll on my undergrad grades. Was sorta in denial and didn't get help till my third (and final; I studied in the UK) and by then it was too late, especially with covid putting me through some of the worst lows of my life. For numerous reasons (shirked academic responsibilities; large chunks of grades were penalized for late submissions) I ended up graduating with a 3.0 GPA (or a 2:2 in the UK grading system). I'm now taking a year off to fully address these issues and generally feel like I am at the start of what seems to be an upward trajectory. Now, post-treatment, I know I can get into an MA program in Europe with these scores-- not a great one, but I know I can get in, esp. considering the other app. components required, and I really hope to get stellar grades this time round. Just to alleviate some of the stress about going on to do a PhD afterwards, I've also had a go at a few legit mock GREs, and I know I can easily get a GRE verbal between 166 and 170 (I got either a 169 or a 170 on every attempt so far). My quant score was much worse, around 155, but I honestly haven't used math in years and have plenty of time to bring that up to the mid-high 160s, too. Also, I've been told unprompted by professors that I could make a very good candidate for a PhD in future, so I feel like I have a decent chance at securing good LORs. But a 3.0 gpa, incl. two failed classes, is still an abysmally low score, and frankly, I don't think it's worth it in polsci to get a PhD outside of the T30 programs for my field, even from a plain job satisfaction pov (for me). As an international student who's interested in the comparative politics of an entirely different area from where I'm from (am Indian; but want to work on LatAm, while literally every Indian student I have ever seen on a dept website has been a comparativist focused on India), and on top of that a person with abysmal undergrad scores, should I even bother keeping my hopes up? Some gradcafe posts make the applicant pool sound so insanely cutthroat that I fear my app would likely just be laughed off. What if I had good internships/worked in a research/teaching capacity for a couple years before I applied? I'd also be down to get a second masters' at a much more well-known university, using good grades on the first as a stepping stone. My parents are willing to pay, so I wouldn't have to do into debt. This would also allow me to flesh out my academic background further, so I don't think it would just be a credential. I realize all of this is very hypothetical and conditional on so many factors at this point and that I have time, but I just need to know whether I'll feasibly be able to follow my passion, or should just steel myself and learn to settle for something less than that in life. Thanks in advance, guys!

Lol yeah now feel slightly stupid even asking this question. Thanks a bunch for the response though. Could I just follow up what you said by asking how likely I am to get published even if I were able to produce a work of reasonably good quality (pandemic + gap year + depressed hermit so not like I'm lacking in free time, at the v least lmao), what with my only having a bachelors to my name and all? Like reading through some profiles of people who did manage to get published as undergrads, it seems like in many/most cases they were working with/under academics at the time? Is it not the case that most journals require genuine academic credentials/a masters degree at the least? I *am* in fact going to be doing a (two-year) MA starting next year but really I'm just weighing up what I ought to invest my time in for now and how much of a payoff that'll have when (slash 'if' but really mostly 'when') I apply to a PhD program down the line, bc I need some seriously solid stuff moving forward to countervail my last three years.

I just finished a three-year undergraduate degree in the UK, which was marred pretty significantly by clinical depression (graduated with a beyond lowly 3.0, if I were to convert my grades to the American GPA system). I'm taking this year off for my mental health, but I still do hope to do an MA and a PhD afterwards. I realize, though, that my application will be severely disadvantaged by my previous grades (although I do at least have documentary evidence to show for my condition). There's a lot I'm going to have to do to make up ground and demonstrate that those grades don't define me. One part of that that I've heard emphasized a lot is publications. Now I've been mulling an idea for a research article in my field of interest (comparative) for some time now. I've done some research on the topic and am fairly confident it's fertile ground and all, plus very timely to boot. But what exactly do people mean when they talk about publications w/r/t their applications? I'm asking because I see my article (by which I mean a paper that would likely be around the same length, at 25-30 pages, as one written by an academic, not like a 3000 word term paper or something) potentially standing a chance in a decent undergraduate/graduate journal of some sort, either something specifically in the field of PolSci (like the LSE Undergraduate Politics Review, for instance, or Columbia's Journal of Politics and Society) or a more interdisciplinary one that covers the social sciences generally, but if what people mean is getting published in a 100% legit, respected academic journal, I think that would be a task of a whole different order.