Profile Evaluation for Political Science PhD
Hi all,
I'm an international student applying for US poli sci PhD programs and would like to gain some feedback on my application.
Below is my background:
- Currently a full-time politics & public policy researcher in a local think tank.
- BA in political science (GPA 3.96/4.3) & MA in public management(GPA 4.15/4.3) from an Asian university( No. 1 university in the country)
- Research article*1 under review at Q1 political science journal.
- ASPA (Public administration, NOT APSA!) conference presentation*1
- RA for 4 yrs, including database management, survey design, statistical analysis, web-scraping, topic modeling, lit review etc.
- TA for methods course*1, political science course*1, public policy course*2, gender studies course*1
- GRE: V160 Q168 A4.0
- TOEFL: 104 (Expire in July😭 Will retake.)
- LORs: Only from the university I studied so not from globally renowned scholars, but pretty sure they'll be strong. 2 from my MA thesis advisors and 1 from a professor I co-authored with.
I'm interested in behavioral studies of populism and gender politics, so I probably will apply to AP or CP (depending on the best faculty fit in the department).
Currently my school list is: Princeton, Yale, Michigan, UC Berkeley, Duke, UW-Madison, Ohio State, Vanderbilt, WashU, UMN, UC Davis, UC Irvine. Also I'm considering Oxford and LSE since I saw some faculty who align with my interest, but am concerned about funding.
I would be thankful on your thoughts on the following:
Is my GRE score strong enough? Should I retake for a higher Verbal score?
Will the committee might flag me for not having a MA in political science instead of public management? This reflects a change in career aspirations - I wanted to do more practical work but later on decided that my passion is in doing political science research.
Is my school list reasonable(a bit worried it's too top-heavy)? Any schools I should add/ avoid? Particularly, any suggestions on applying to UK schools as well?
Thanks for everyone contributing!!