Profile evaluation for UMichigan Survey Methodology Master's program

[sociopolitic]

I'm doing this on behalf of a friend. Here's her profile.

 

BA in Sociology from a top 20 private school; minors in poverty studies and public policy

GPA: 3.636

Research: Senior thesis where she collected interview data

3 years of research experience from 4 different RAships; two of these involved coding newspaper archives, one involved transcribing interviews, and one involved database management

Coursework in Statistics (for research, where she became familiar with Stata), sociological methods (where she gained familiarity with Qualtrics)

Work:

Internship with an education nonprofit

GRE: Not taken yet -- what scores should she be shooting for?

LORs: Not sure what she would choose. Her senior thesis adviser would write her a stellar rec and is a prominent figure in his field, though because her thesis was qualitative he can't speak to her quantitative skills. She also has a policy professor that would write her a fantastic rec, though he can't really speak to her quantitative ability either. She has a few professors she's RA'd with and taken multiple classes with that would write her great recs, though again they can't speak to her quantitative experience. Her statistics instructor would write a strong letter as well but he was a graduate student when she took his class, so I'm not sure if that's okay (he is a professor now, at another institution). All her recommenders would speak very highly of her but almost none of them can speak to quantitative skills.

Concerns:

Lack of quantitative research experience. This seems like a potentially large weakness. How can she leverage her qualitative experience to convince admissions committees to admit (and ideally fund) her? Does she need to achieve a stellar quantitative GRE score in order to offset this potential weakness?

 

I should note that she's not going to apply for a couple of years. She's looking for a job in the Ann Arbor area at the moment. It's likely that she'll end up in a research position of some sort. Based on the applications she's submitted recently, it's likely that what job she lands will require mixed methods or more strictly qualitative methods. Any advice for leveraging her resume into a work experience that better prepares her to apply to the Survey Methodology program?

 

Sidenote: We're especially curious whether she might be eligible for any sort of funding. Also, is she competitive for the MPP program at Michigan?