A late bloomer's chances of the graduate dream?

[starrylanterns]

I'm a long time lurker and first time poster, please be gentle :3

I read the "What are my chances?" post, and I'm hoping this post won't fall into that category... I do hope to get feedback, and I'm also hoping my worries and situation will help other people out there applying to grad school who are in the same boat. I currently am in my final year of university (5th year) at SDSU in San Diego, and want to apply to graduate school.

I did poorly in high school due to family problems, and attended community college and transferred to SDSU in two years. Majored in Studio Art, spent one year at State, took on Asian Studies (Chinese Language) as a second major to study mandarin and spent my 4th year in Singapore taking classes learning mandarin and studying China's modern history/politics/foreign policy at NTU. I'm in my last year now back in the US at SDSU, and literally just solidified what I want to do, which is to study China's political movements and its relation to the US and SEA, hopefully in analytical positions with the government or research in academia.

My biggest worries are my lack of experience working and basically all around low scores. I have a 3.09 GPA overall because I had no real aim or idea of what I wanted to do with my life until this past September, and 159/148 GRE scores. I am planning on retaking the GREs in January, and I'm currently taking 7 classes (and have no lower than a B+ in any of them!). I traveled and studied in Singapore for a year. My mandarin is intermediate, though I was able to travel and survive just fine on my own traveling in HK and Taiwan while studying in Singapore. I'm currently an intern at the International Rescue Committee, and I've applied for the CLS summer 2013 program for Intermediate Chinese. I am definitely passionate about studying China and getting involved in international relations/policy. I am determined to achieve fluency in mandarin, and move on to learning Cantonese Malay, Hokkien etc. I am looking at IRPS's MPIA, regional specialization/international policy tracks, or SDSU's Homeland Security program, though the lack of language at HLS worries me. I apologize in advance for the long post, and hopefully my information has relevancy for other people on the forum and can help them as well.

[starrylanterns]

On a side note, I'm currently a student at SDSU, so if anyone has any questions I can try to answer them.

[juilletmercredi]

This basically is a "what are my chances" type post, but with a slightly different spin. That's okay, though

Generally speaking, it's hard to gauge your competitiveness in the overall pool. We'd have to know the values of the individual programs to which you are applying. But I would say generally speaking, professional programs like the MPIA care less about your GPA (as long as it is above a certain threshold, generally a 3.0-3.2) and more about experiences and skills that you have that can contribute to your success in the job market. Your language skills and your experience living abroad, as well as your ability to articulate your passions and goals, are likely to be more important than your exact grades. And especially since you can show an upward trend of your grades now that you have solidified your ideas, you have a better shot.

[ZacharyObama]

Give it a shot! What's the worst that could happen!

Also, there are a lot of IR people here: http://forum.thegradcafe.com/forum/11-government-affairs/

[Ablukhov]

You should absolutely try, but also don't be discouraged if it doesn't work out the first time around. If it doesn't, just keep doing what you're doing- working hard at your language goals, etc.- and this will go a long way toward demonstrating your dedication when you apply again the next year.

[starrylanterns]

Thanks for the encouragement guys I spoke to a professor today about writing me an LoR, and he said he has written LoRs for less qualified people for the MPIA program who have gotten in, so I'm feeling a bit of a confidence boost. It helps that he mentioned he's worked at UCSD for 12 years previously and that should hopefully grab the IRPS people's attention? Ahhh, worried about applying, but now that the semester's out I'm gonna go full throttle to get this application done and done well for January. Good luck to everybody!!!!