<p>If one has a BA with a double major in 2 different social sciences (neither polisci, but related) and a 3.2 GPA/35 in majors, a JD with honors (from an average, not spectacular, tier 1 school) and 640 math GRE, 710 verbal. Legal work experience but not in anything that would be especially fascinating to political scientists, though I've worked on one major international case that made the news, so I could probably emphasize that.</p>
<p>From a purely numbers perspective, could someone name representative easy/average/reach schools in the northeast, namely NY and MA? I'm worried the math GRE is a little low, the few schools I've found average GREs for have it pretty high.</p>
<p>What kind of poli sci do you want to study? And are you interested (I assume so) in PhD programs?</p>
<p>If you give people a bit more information, we'll be able to make some suggestions.</p>
<p>The reaches are easy: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, maybe NYU depending on your interests. There are LOTS of other schools with good programs (particularly in certain areas) in the northeast, many of which would be reasonable choices with your scores/record. But to name some would require a bit more information.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply. I'm interested in mostly qualitative research, focusing on American legal institutions, elections, and the politics of globalization (both here and abroad). Kind of disparate subjects but I'm very interested in both... </p>
<p>And yes, I'm interested in PhD programs.</p>
<p>(Actually my choices might be more limited than I thought, I am having an insanely hard time finding a third professor to write a letter of recommendation, and deadlines are approaching...)</p>
<p>I want a well-respected school with a strong program, but it doesn't have to be an ivy or at the top of the rankings, I'm more concerned with finding a place to really learn the subject rather than a place that will give me a pedigree.</p>
<p>This information helps. Your areas of interest are pretty far from mine, so I don't really know the options that well, but I would look at MIT, SUNY-Albany, Rutgers, and Penn given those areas of interest. You'll have a decent shot, I would think, at all of these (MIT might be a bit more of a reach) given your file. Hopefully other people will have some better suggestions for you.</p>
<p>I appreciate the tips, I'll definitely look into them! If I can find that third recommendation I'd probably make MIT my reach school, but we'll see.</p>
<p>Besides the recommendation issue the quantitative GRE is kind of worrying me. I've read up on those programs that release their GRE score averages, and it seems like 700+ quantitative is normal, which I don't understand, I mean I realize it can be a quantitative field to some extent but that seems abnormally high. And that 640 I mentioned is actually an old score (older than 5 years), and I'm taking it again soon, and as the last math class I took was maybe 15 years ago that score might go down (though verbal should hopefully get up).</p>
<p>I was also hoping the JD might make me stand out in the pack, but who knows...</p>
<p>Took the GREs again today, managed to get my verbal up to 770, but my math dropped to 630. I was really hoping to get the math up but completely bombed on it, spent 7 minutes on the first question alone before finally just guessing.</p>
<p>630 is not bombing the math GRE (and congratulations on the great verbal score by the way). It may make a few top programs a bit more of a reach, but should not hurt you at all for most programs. And the JD will help, especially if you have letters related to legal research you've done.</p>
<p>Hopefully someone else here will chime in with some names of specific programs that fit your interests.</p>
<p>Thanks, I was happy with it. A little frustrating, since I think that means I only got one or two wrong (would have been sweet to get 800), but on the other hand on the practice tests I was hitting 740-780 so glad I got near the top of that range.</p>
<p>Analytical should be good, especially considering that I got the same argument essay this time as I got last time (took it a few months ago but canceled my score), so that one was especially easy.</p>
<p>the argument about quant scores is they correlate pretty well with grad school success. i don't know how legit that point actually is, but that's partly why a lot of programs do actually care somewhat about your quant scores. poli sci as a field went through a huge quant movement over the past several decades (though its sort of eased up), so that is also partly why they like quant scores. but if you're a great candidate and you happen to have quant scores < 700 (which is what most top programs want - mid to upper 700s), i don't think they'd not accept you just because of that.</p>