Profile Evaluation: Junior planning to study IR/Comparative

[ovejal]

Interested in studying international determinants of democratization with a regional focus in Africa. Planning to apply a wide variety of places: Wisconsin, Berkeley, UNC, Cornell, Columbia, Harvard, Emory, Chicago, Ohio State, UCSD, Stanford, and probably a few more. Any input/guidance would be greatly appreciated!

Type of Undergrad Institution: large, Big Ten, R1 state school with well-regarded political science department 

Major(s)/Minor(s): International Relations and Economics with minor in African Studies

Undergrad GPA: 4.0/4.0

GRE: 169 V/161 Q/4.5 W

Languages: Swahili. I received the US Dept. of Ed's Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship to study for 6 weeks in Tanzania and also to support my language/Africa-related coursework on campus.

Publications: Expecting to have a working paper published at a well-known dataset publisher. I've presented this paper at a couple regional conferences. I've also published a class paper on E-IR and may get one more published. 

LOR: Two letters from Africanists at my university, both of whom I have worked for and with. Third letter will come from my honors thesis advisor. 

SoP: not yet written 

Unpublished Research Experience: Been a research assistant on a variety of projects relevant to my area of interest. I've received grants from my university to fund this research. I'll also be writing an honors thesis. 

Quant Experience: Econ coursework including basic calc, stats, and econometrics. I've also learned some basic R and Stata. 

Thank you!