<p>Okay, here is my situation. I graduated in 2009 from a fairly good liberal arts college in the midwest (about 40% acceptance rate, got 80% scholarship) with a 3.0 GPA and 3 majors - International Relations, Political Science and History. My IR major was for the most part pol. science and history classes, so I just took a few more of those and got the 2 additional majors, which I believe is possibly the most impressive thing on my resume. Which says something about the rest of my resume - 3.0 GPA is right at the bare minimum for grad school and I'm sure that will be the toughest obstacle to overcome. It did progressively improve over the course of 4 years and reached 3.4 my senior year. Still very unimpressive, but it's maybe a small plus.</p>
<p>For the last two years I have not done anything professionally that can help me get into an MPP program and I made the critical mistake of not doing any internships in college. Talk about having failed my life so far, which is the reason I wanna get into an MPP, network, do internships and then get a job that I actually want to do. I have not taken the GRE yet, but I am studying hard for it and will be taking the new version in a few months. Not sure yet how the score conversion will work, but I think I can get at least 160 verbal and math. I believe a high GRE score can also demonstrate to admissions that I am serious about not repeating my mistakes from college and studying hard for my MPP.</p>
<p>So which schools do you think I have a chance of getting admitted to? I would really like to move to the DC area, so I was thinking about applying to GU, GW and AU there. I realize my chances of getting into GU are almost nonexistent and I read on GW's MPP admissions page that students typically need 2 out of the following 3 things to get admitted - 3.5 GPA, good post-undergrad career in public policy and 80%+ GRE score. Well, I may be able to deliver on one, but not the other two, so that got me a bit depressed. I was planning on applying to maybe 11-12 schools, including 2-3 really good ones such as GU, Northwestern, UCB just so I know I have tried there, but after realizing I don't even have a chance of getting into GW, I don't know anymore what schools I realistically have a chance for.</p>
<p>A few others I was planning on applying to are NYU, UVA, Syracuse and on the lower tier side AU, UC Davis and Northeastern in Boston.</p>
<p>What do you think? Any advise is appreciated guys.</p>