Thoughts on Going to Grad School for Political Science

[jusdel1]

Hello Everyone!

I am a complete newbie to this website. So I apologize if I'm posting in the wrong forum.

Let me start off by introducing my background. I hail from a Big Ten University (not Nebraska nor Northwestern) going into my senior year in the fall. I'm a double major in Political Science (4.00) and Spanish (3.92) with a current university GPA of 3.94 and a combined GPA (literally only includes a couple summer school classes from a community college + my university GPA) of 3.84. 2 teachers gave me Bs which I'm pretty mad about because they were UNFAIR graders. Believe me, they were. I've always planned on going to law school in the future, but I decided to not go directly after undergrad because I will be 20 by the time I graduate with my Bachelors.

I recently began to take grad school seriously just last month when my professor sent me an email from a public university (with a Compass direction in their name) about their M.A program in Political Science. Apparently, they don't even need the GRE if your GPA is over 3.0 and they give many Research Assistanships that waive tuition and provide a living stipend. I emailed the director of the program and he told me a lot of students that are accepted don't have an honors thesis completed from undergrad.

I'm graduating with honors May 2013, but with a thesis for my Spanish major. I TRULY do LOVE/ENJOY BOTH my majors. However, I don't have a super specific field that I'm interested in Political Science except that I know I enjoy Comparative Politics and American Government.

My questions:

1) Should I apply to Grad school programs for Political Science despite not graduating with honors/no thesis in my Poli Sci major? Although Poli Sci is not law, I do feel as if there's some overlap. Also, one day I want to work for the federal government.

2) Should I also look into applying for other schools for Poli Sci?

3) How hard is it it receive T.A/R.A positions, generally? I do not want to wrack up debt from grad school

4) How important is the GRE in terms of admission?

5) Should I look into other M.A programs instead?

I should also add that I feel very confident that my Letters of Recommendation will be strong, and my GPA won't dip too low.

Thanks if any of you can reply back! And sorry for not mentioning any specific names. I kinda of want to stay as anonymous as possible.

[kaykaykay]

"Although Poli Sci is not law, I do feel as if there's some overlap."

I honestly try but I can't follow you. If you want to go to law school go to law school. There is no need wasting your time in grad school doing poli sci.

you will be happy later that you are still young.

alternatively take a year off and get one of those fly around the world airplane tickets.

[jeffster]

I don't believe there's a lot of call in non-academic fields for pure poli sci graduate degrees. If you're not interested in teaching and research in the poli sci field (in which case why not just apply for a PhD program), you should really probably look at law school like you mentioned instead. It would be much more practical for the goal you stated of working outside of academia.

[Zahar Berkut]

Yup, if you want to work for the federal government but do not want a law degree, look into a professional master's in public policy or international affairs. Advanced political science degrees are geared strictly toward academia.

[shavasana]

I am going to second (or third) what has been said, but it's worth hearing. A Poli Sci advanced degree (assuming you mean a PhD) is really not going to help if you want to be a lawyer. That being said, there ARE combined PhD/JD degrees (I know Stanford has one.)

But you should also keep in mind that you might not LIKE doing academic Poli Sci if you didn't even write a thesis in it. (Poli Sci at the grad and undergrad level are very very different, especially when it comes to the amount of math you'll be doing.)

Another thing to consider is the rank of the program you're looking to get in to. For a high level program, the GRE is actually pretty important (more important than it should be, in my opinion, but I'm not an adcomm).

For other advice, just peruse this forum for how to put together a strong PhD app!

Good luck!