My plan was always to complete undergrad and then go to law school; however, after thinking it over, I decided to change courses. Instead, I plan on getting a master’s and Ph.D. in political science. I am in the NY area and want to stay somewhat close to home, ideally no further than 300 miles from NYC, the closer to home, the better.
My credentials are-
I attend a well respected but not elite private university, graduating from their honors college in December 2021
I am a political science and rhetoric & public advocacy double major.
My GPA is 3.83.
I have not taken the GREs yet since I am still a junior. However, I have scored well on verbal practice questions and will score decently on the quantitative portion after additional studying.
On-campus, I am involved in the Democrat club, the political science honors society, and the voting activity club.
Work experience in marketing research.
I will have a remote internship over this summer doing research.
Next year I will be doing a departmental honors thesis.
My research interests are political philosophy, American presidencies, environmental politics, and Asian politics.
Finally, next summer, I most likely have another internship in the political field.
Thank you in advance to anyone who answers! It is greatly appreciated!!
@snappi2006 - Welcome to the CollegeConfidential Forums. You probably won’t get much advice about specific schools here because it is so dependent on the discipline. Your best resource is your research/academic mentors. They know you well and they know the field and can tell you which schools might be your best options given your desire to stay near NYC.
The advice I can give is not to exclude schools that are further away. It might be that there is one that is just right for you but on the West Coast. Think about it this way, once you have a Ph.D., what do you want to do? If it is to have an academic career, then you have to face the fact that you will have to move to where the job is. If you want to move back to NYC and take a non-academic job then the time you have spent in a different location is just temporary.
Why do you want to get a PhD in political science?
I agree with xraymancs; you don’t want to limit yourself to a very specific geographic region. The best programs for your interests may be distant from you, and if you want to be a professor, it matters where you go to graduate school.
Most competitive applicants in social sciences fields have about two years of part-time research experience as an undergrad - as in they started doing research in the fall of their junior year. It is great that you are doing a departmental honors thesis; make sure to pick something challenging that will give you a taste of what conducting research in your field means.
The clubs you’re involved in won’t matter very much for PhD programs. Your work experience in market research may matter…a little…or may not matter at all. Market research is quite different from academic research (I’ve done both).
Your research interests are very broad. Most doctoral students have narrowed down their area of interest a bit more when targeting graduate school, because fields this broad won’t really help you target graduate programs and discover your fit. Spend the next year diving deeply into your field and identifying an area of research interest. And if you are serious about getting into a PhD program, your internship next summer should also be a research internship, preferably with PhD-holding professors at a four-year university or some other respected, academic or academic-like research institution (like a think tank or a policy research organization).
I want to venture into academia with the Ph.D.
Yeah, I definitely have to narrow my research interests down, I just decided a week ago this may be something I want to pursue over my JD. Thankfully I still have over a year before I apply to narrow down my research interests. Thanks for the input and pointers, it is greatly appreciated!