Answer 1: No, not really. Of course this depends on the program, but programs that say they prefer work experience are talking about work experience - ideally full-time post-college work experience; potentially internships or part-time jobs for really exceptional candidates straight from college. There’s a reason why these programs tend to have a median age in the mid-20s, and it’s because they strongly encourage students to get 2-3 years of work experience after college before attending.
You can put teaching assistantships under professional experience, but not the club. The club may be interesting, but neither of these things is the kind of work experience these programs mean when they ask for it.
Answer 2: INTERNSHIPS, internships, internships. Top tier IR programs really value experience, possibly more than anything else. SIS’s average age is 25 and they specifically say they encourage at least 2 years of experience. Kennedy’s average age for the MPA/ID is 28, with an average of 4 years of work experience. Georgetown SFS’s is 26.7, with an average work experience of 4.3 years. Korbel’s is 25.
Basically, you will be competing with other applicants who have everything you have PLUS 2-6+ years of work experience. These applicants will mostly also come from top schools, and had great ECs, and maybe 1-2 great internships, and know a language or two, but they also have the post-college experience that these places are looking for. So you HAVE to make yourself stand out; if you are really bent on going straight from undergrad*, then you need to make yourself an exceptional candidate.
Internships are the most important way to do that, because they most closely mirror the kinds of experiences IR schools want you to have. The kids I know who got into programs that mostly require/encourage work experience straight from undergrad had exceptional work experiences in college - like one kid who was in the National Guard during college and served two years active duty, or one kid who did great international internships all three summers in college, etc.
If you are class of 2018 that means you are a rising sophomore. So starting in the early fall of this year, you need to start pounding the pavement to find yourself a competitive IR-related summer internship. You also should look for some part-time job or internship that you can do during the school year that lends you some experience in that area. The fancier the better, but if you can do something remotely related (like interning in the international students’ office maybe working with new internationals who come from resource-poor countries or something) that would be helpful to you. You need to do an internship for both of the summers you have left before applying at the very least, I would think.
And yes, you do need to be at least conversational if not proficient in at least one language. If French is your language of choice, go for it. If you are concentrating on French for international development I’m assuming that you want to do some work in Francophone African countries - so if your university offers some lesser-known/critical African languages in the region, it might look good if you could start working on one of those as a second language. There are some critical language fellowships that will pay for you to spend a summer developing language skills on those languages; that could be a good summer internship/experience as well. (If not, then it still might be good to work on a second language through a critical language or Boren fellowship; just make sure the other language makes sense.)
And oh yeah, study abroad. Preferably in a development region. Ideally in a region you’d be interested in working on later.
Research isn’t so useful for professional programs - not that it’s bad, but I would say only do reseach if you want to make a career as a researcher in ID and you’re making that clear in your applications. Replace that instead with a part-time internship in the field and/or volunteering in creative ways that are related to your interests. Even if your university is in the middle of nowhere, you might find ways to contribute - even if you aren’t in a big city where you can volunteer with ID organizations located there. So let’s say that you’re interested in education in resource-poor countries; you might volunteer tutor poor students in or around your college town. You might organize a fundraiser for a country of interest.
*Related to going straight from undergrad: the other question is why? I mean, I guess I kind of know the answer; when I was 20, I was also determined to go to graduate school straightaway because anything else felt like wasting time and 30 seemed SO OLD to me. I’m here on the other side to tell you that neither of those things is true. Getting work experience in the IR field is definitely not a waste; it will help you determine the best course of your career - what you like, what you don’t - and also contribute to your success and experience in the program.
Trust me, it’s weird to be in a program where everyone has real-world, on the ground experience to draw from when doing cases or writing papers and you don’t, particularly when the program is geared towards developing you as a professional. Moreover, no one wants to hire someone higher up in the organization who’d doesn’t have work experience. Remember, when you graduate you will ALSO be competing for jobs with your classmates and others at peer schools. Why should UNESCO or the IMF hire a 24-year-old who did everything in college when they can hire a 28-year-old who did everything AND also has 4 years of experience in the field already? That person has also had more time to develop their language skills, so maybe they’re further along than you.
If you worked for 3 years after college and went to grad school for 2 years, you’d be roughly 27 when you finished. That’s still quite young!