Nontraditional undergrad looking to grad school

[HeatherC]

I am entering my senior year of undergrad studies and starting to get the ball rolling on the graduate school process. I am 32, single, no children, and living in Grand Junction, Colorado. I have been looking for internships to make myself more marketable and network, but there is little to nothing in the area and I would have to drive 4.5 hours (each way) to Denver to have an internship. My overall GPA is a little low at 3.4 with a major GPA of 3.8 (but I still have 3 semesters to bring this up). I have already picked out my graduate schools but to my dismay there is only five.

 

My biggest problem is time because of my age I don't have a lot of time in the day or with obtaining a federal position. I want to go into intelligence (thus the five schools) but they only offer a master's degree. Or I can go the PH.D. route and go just about anywhere but would have to obtain the degree on political science. I am a little unsure of the best course of action for my age and career goal. Intelligence is my first choice, research second, with criminal justice (corrections, prison reform/policy, etc) as my third option.

 

I really don't have a lot of time to participate in campus activities because of time constraints so is there anything that I can or should be doing to make myself more marketable to graduate schools? The schools that I am looking at are: University of Denver, Mercyhurst University, Endicott College, University of Detroit-Mercy, and New Jersey City University.

 

Any advice anyone can offer would be very much appreciated especially from other nontraditional students or those working in intelligence. I am navigating the process alone and extremely overwhelmed with organizing my timeline.