<p>I recently applied to graduate school for my MPP and am nervous about getting in to the schools I applied to. I am wondering if I should apply to additional safety schools to ensure an acceptance letter, but don't have very much money to spend on additional applications. Below is my criteria and the schools I currently applied for.</p>
<p>60% on GRE (both subjects), 4.5 Writing
3.08 GPA, Political Science/Economics</p>
<p>My GPA was brought down by one bad year (sophomore), but other than that my GPA was in the 3.3-3.6 range and steadily improved as I got older.</p>
<p>I wrote a fairly good recommendation letter, that I have had a family friend who is a professional writer look over and approve for me.</p>
<p>My recommendations are coming from a professor, the state chair of a political party, and the president of my college whom I did research for one summer.</p>
<p>My work experience includes 3 years of an internship as a staff assistant for my state's Democratic Party, a fundraising internship on my local congressman's campaign, a summer doing institutional research for my college, and a year of being a Field Organizer for the Obama campaign.</p>
<p>Here are the schools I am applying to:</p>
<p>American University
University of Texas - Austin
University of Southern California
George Washington University
University of Colorado - Denver
University of Illinois - Chicago
University of Oregon
Ohio State University</p>
<p>My main questions are:</p>
<p>Is my profile satisfactory to get into these programs? I can't quite judge because of GPA is low but did gradually get better, I have a year of work experience, etc. And what some of these schools look for - for example, USC is ranked 6 or 7 for MPP, but their median GPA is a 3.35...</p>