Looking for some guidance on Phd Poli Sci Admissions

[tribesdude]

Hello guys. I am currently in my first year of my MPP and am strongly considering doing a Phd in Political Science (also considering one in Economics but frankly don't have the math preparation). I was wondering if you guys could provide some insight on this topic (I am planning on applying in Dec 2015). 

 

Here are my stats, they are not too impressive so would like to know what I could improve and how.

 

Undergrad Degree+GPA: Bachelor of Commerce (top 3 school in Canada) with a GPA of 3.5 (however my last semester marks where quite underwhelming, completely my fault since had I gotten where I wanted and got quite lazy)

 

Graduate Degree+GPA: Master of Public Policy (Georgetown), sitting at a 3.7 right now, hoping I can maintain/increase this.

 

GRE: Q160/V160/AW5, will retake to try and get the score up to 167. 

 

Research Experience: One year of research, however it was business related research (I was the RA gathering data). Will start working on a Thesis soon. 

 

Teaching Experience: Was a TA for 3 semesters (same course), did a bit of teaching but most of it entailed meeting with students and grading assignment/exams. 

 

Publications: None to speak of 

 

Languages: Dont know if this is too important, but fluent in 3 languages.

 

Research Interest: I would like to focus my research and studies in the ex-USSR countries.

 

Courses: Intro+Intermediate Macro/Micro, Public Finance, Differential Calculus, Integral, Quantitative Methods 1 and 2 (3 by the time I apply), Int'l Trade, Economics course on China and USSR (and the transition of the economy), and a ton of Business (mainly Finance) courses.   

 

LOR: Have some good ones from undergrad and am working on creating relations with other professors. 

 

Funding Needed?: Not for the first year and a half. 

 

Anyway, until graduate school I had not taken any Poli Sci courses, but now that I am doing my MPP I am finding them quite interesting and refreshing (a far cry from the boredom of business courses). I feel like this could hurt me quite a lot during the admissions process. Furthermore, my relatively low (compared to the applicants to the top schools) UGPA could also hurt me, but cant really do anything about that other than excelling in my current program to try and mitigate them. I am doing the best I can to try and get a 3.7/3.8 GPA in graduate school, but not sure if that woud adequately mitigate it since graduate school GPA's are quite inflated. 

 

Schools I am looking at (hard to find exact fit with my interest): UBC, UofT, Queens University, Georgetown, Harvard, Stanford, Northwestern, UPenn.

 

Could any please provide me with some insight in terms of what I could do to improve my chances? Are my chances really low as of now considering the lower UGPA and a lack of published papers (and well research experience overall?). 

 

Thank you!

[victorydance]

I'll never understand why people think they need perfect GPAs to get into Ph.D. programs in political science. A 3.5 is not bad at all and a lot of people get into programs with GPAs similar to this. In fact, your grad GPA is weaker (considering grad GPAs are inflated comparatively), try to get this as high as possible.

 

I think your biggest weakness is you are not very exposed to actual political science coursework and/or research. I took a look at the courses for the MPP at Georgetown and these aren't really traditional political science classes. They are policy oriented and much of political science isn't at all.

 

You can play certain things to your advantage, particularly your methods and quant background.

 

That being said, there are lots of cases of people coming from different educational backgrounds and getting accepted into Ph.D. political science programs. But you need to show that you know the literature and understand what political science is about.

 

You say that you are interested in post-soviet politics and countries, ie. comparative politics. Do you actually know what sub-field you are interested in? Do you know the literature of comparative politics in this region? You need to show this in your SOP. These types of things are actually more important than your GPA.

[cooperstreet]

Yeah uh, most people don't have publications. Your UGPA is fine, but your graduate GPA is a little low. Try and get it up as much as possible. Stop worrying about your numbers and start worring about your research interests.

 

You say:

 

"Research Interest: I would like to focus my research and studies in the ex-USSR countries."

 

What type of research? what type of questions will you be asking?

 

You mention UPenn. Who do you intend to work with there?

 

These are more important thant 3.xxxx or Q/V/AW

[tribesdude]

Thank you for your advice! As you can see I genuinely have no idea how to navigate the Phd admissions, which is weird considering I knew a lot about undergrad and MPP admissions but for me Phd ones are so different. I only recently started thinking about this so obviously don't know too much about it. Will be talking with some of my professors who did Poli Sci and trying to see what advice they can offer up. It is good though that this is not as numbers based. And yeah will do the best I can to raise the GGPA, although I personally dont see it going above a 3.8 (average in my program as far as I am aware is 3.3/3.4, which gotta say is much higher than the average GPA of 3.0 at my undergrad). 

 

One question, would signaling (I assume there is an area where you can identify this on the application) that you don't need funding help with admissions at all? Also, how would being fluent in two other languages help (if at all, one of them is Russian)?

 

Anyway will start trying to figure out what area I want to focus in by getting some advice from professors, but thank you so much for your comments!

[cooperstreet]

One question, would signaling (I assume there is an area where you can identify this on the application) that you don't need funding help with admissions at all?

 

yes

[MeowMeowMeow]

For Russian political stuff, I'd look at: Harvard, Columbia, UofT, Wayne State, UMichigan, Georgetown, Stanford (vaguely ranked from more theoretical to a greater focus on policy analysis).

 

There are others that are super, of course, but these are some of my personal favorites. I would look closely at the MA program available at these schools and the resources in that MA program because you'd, usually, have the option of working pretty closely with folks from the terminal MA department (typically some version of CREES or CERES or REES). 

Edited April 10, 2014 by MeowMeowMeow

[victorydance]

^ Would add Cornell to that list. Bunce is an absolute juggernaut in post-communist states.