Pursuing a stats masters with IR undegrad? Please help

[Mgirl69]

Hello Everyone,

I am in a difficult situation and would appreciate some guidance. Some background below:

So I have an undergrad in International Relations with a minor in Middle-Eastern/South Asian studies from UC Davis. My overall GPA (2.85) is subpar----although my GPA for last year and a half (60 units) of college is above 3.5 (and this time period is where I took all of my hardest upper div classes in IR, Economics, History etc). My GPA is primarily low because of the fact that I entered UC Davis as an engineering student and did extremely bad in my calculus, chem, and engineering classes in my first year. I still have those Fs and Ds on my transcript.

I graduated in early 2017---and for the past two years, I have been working in corporate/business field----primarily in sales, recruiting, and management, etc. Now I want to go back to school to get my Masters. I am interested in pursuing a long-term career in the field of population studies/demographics and therefore I was thinking of pursuing a degree in statistics. I have done research during my undergrad where we utilized a lot of data/statistics in the context of social science research and I have also taken few stat classes. Since my background is not in statistics, what advice would you give? Can I still apply to a stats program at some state school with my IR background? What can I do to improve my chances (take more stat classes, learn programming, etc?)

Would it be possible? I really would like to pursue my education in statistics/data related program.

For my second preference (if it is REALLY impossible to get into a stats program) is to pursue a grad degree and ultimately a career in defense/security policy field since my International Relations pathway was Peace and Security.  

So is it possible for me to change my path towards statistics/data related educated and career path? Or should I just focus and build on my background and go all-in for the second option?