Chances for PhD Political Science Application with Middle East Focus

[teaser14]

This is my first time on here, and I honestly don't really know how to read all the information I'm getting, so I'm hoping some of you might be willing to help me out a little bit my chancing me based on your knowledge and experience with these kinds of applications which probably far outstrips my own. I'm really hoping to end up at a PhD Program with a strong MENA Focus

 

So Here's what I got:

 

African-American Student

BA Double Major in Political Science & Middle East Studies from Top 10 Liberal Arts College

 

GPA: 3.2 / 4 (3.55 in Major)

 

GRE: 162 V / 152 Q / 4.5 AW

 

-Proficient in STATA

-Languages: Arabic (Professional Working Capacity) ; Moroccan Colloquial (Limited working proficiency)

-Ralph Bunche Fellow ; Presented research on Morocco at APSA Annual Conference

*4 Internship Experiences, all research based with NGO's, including 2 Abroad in Morocco and Tunisia

*Spent in aggregate over a Year Abroad (A summer each in Tunisia & Morocco, and a Fall & Winter in Morocco)

*40 Page Thesis being written on Post-revolutionary identity in Libya; Considering writing a second 40 page thesis on the Druze 

 

-Incredibly close with my professors and advisors who'd be writing my rec and they are certainly experts in their field, all Ivy-edu-ed and all that stuff. I think my recommendations would be fine. And I while I'm fairly annoyed at the GRE AW score, I've always been good at writing and expressing myself in terms of SOP's etc.

 

-Also, speaking bluntly. I'm not all that great at math, as my Quant score would probably indicate. I also felt awful when I took my GRE and I'm not sure whether or not I should take it again, so any advice on this front would help as well!

 

-And lastly, I'm a Comparativist and an intepretivist in most of my methodology, and those techniques formed the basis for my Research presentations and papers thus far. I suppose I'd be at the cross section of Comparative / IR / and Political Identity or Sociology I suppose in my research interests thus far which have focused on political identity in newly democratized or currently democratizing states ; as well as post-conflict transformation.

 

My Wishlist: (no particular order)

-Harvard

-Columbia

-UCLA

-UPENN

-GWU / Georgetown

-U. Chicago

-Arizona

-University of Texas - Austin

-SOAS in London

-Penn State

Edited November 19, 2013 by teaser14

[cooperstreet]

Here's my thought: your numbers are low. GPA and Quant GRE will hurt you.  One or the other can be compensated for in other fields  (which you do have), but, a 3.2 GPA at a liberal arts school in a liberal arts major? That's may hurt. Maybe have your letter writers explain that if they can.

 

Who would you work with at Penn State? Columbia? Columbia doesn't have a tenured Middle East scholar, and the untenured one, Dan Corstange, does heavy quant stuff.

 

UPENN is a mostly qualitative comparative program, but even a 152 Q score is low for them. Plus their Middle East admissions are very competitive and they usually take one or two people every OTHER year.

 

IMO, no one cares about the AW score.

[teaser14]

That's partially the result of our core requiring multiple maths and sciences, which have never been my strong suit combined with a persistent desire to gain fluency despite not having the greatest facility with non-romance languages.

 

At anyrate, the faculty members I'd consider at Penn State would be: Gretchen Caspar, Vineeta Yadav, Zaryab Iqbal, Jams Piazza, and Robert Packer. I also know for a fact there is a grad student studying exactly what I want to study, except in Somalia. 

 

UPENN --> Robert Vitalis, Anne Norton, Ann Viden, Hocine Fetni. UPENN (not as much as UCLA did) also emphasized the interdisciplinary-nature of the Poli Sci PhD.

[CGMJ]

I agree with cooperstreet, take the GREs again if you have time and focus on the quant section. It will likely make a big difference in your application and it's one of the few things you may still have control over improving.