Political Science PhD admission

Graduate School
1

I’m still a year away from applying to graduate school but I want to pursue a PhD in political science more specifically, American politics and/or political methodology. I’m wondering what my chances look like right now of getting into top 10 schools? I know at this early it cant be hard to tell but I’m just looking for general advice/assessment of my potential competitiveness. Here’s my background

Attending top 12 political science university, Political Science and Economics major, currently 3.65 GPA (I’m worried my GPA could hurt me and I’m trying to pull it up)
I’m also taking an extra semester because I transferred (originally entered college with the plan to become a vet when that changed, I changed schools) and a lot of my credits did not transfer over - I’m worried this might hurt me as well
Strong quantitative skills - numbers are my strong suite. I’m a ULA for a quantitative political science class and have performed well in numerous quantitative classes.
I’m in the honors program so I’m currently writing an honors thesis
I haven’t taken the GRE yet but I’ve looked at practice exams and they seem to play to my strong suites so I have reason to believe I can perform well on the GRE with some preparation
I have a close relationship with a few professors so I feel confident I can get three strong letters of recommendation

I know it’s hard to get the full picture from just this synopsis but what do you think my chances are of getting into a strong political science graduate program?

2

Your GPA is fine. I wouldn’t worry about that.

Taking an extra semester is also fine. No need to worry about that.

Strong quantitative skills is a really good thing for a political science doctoral student to have, so that’s a good thing! It’s a quantitative field.

The real question is that outside of your honors thesis, what research experience do you have? And by research experience, I mean time that you’ve spent assisting a political science professor with their research and/or performing independent research under the supervision of a professor of political science. This is key to getting into doctoral programs, and usually an honors thesis is a great feather in the cap but not enough by itself (unless you are doing a fairly extensive thesis that you’ve been working on for 2 years or more).

In the social sciences, it’s common for competitive applicants to have 2-3 years of this kind of experience before entering the PhD program (so, starting in their sophomore or junior year of college).