Worried about low GPA?

Graduate School
1

<p>Hi, all.</p>

<p>I'm currently a senior at the George Washington University, double-majoring in Int'l Affairs and German.</p>

<p>I've hit the crossroads of where I need to decide what I'm doing ASAP, whether applying to grad schools right away, or taking a semester off. My ultimate goal is to get a PhD in my area of study (Int'l Affairs).</p>

<p>I've had fairly decent grades, A's and B's, in most of my subjects. However, in my required courses like math and sciences, which are not my strong areas, I did very poorly (C's), which dragged down my GPA. I also suffered through clinical depression which has been going on the past two years or so, and that's dragged down my performance a lot. Specific to my IA courses, I have something like a 3.5 GPA and, specific to my German-major courses, I have a 4.0</p>

<p>I'm wondering what chance, if at all, I stand at grad schools with a 3.0 overall GPA. I expect to get all A's/A-'s this and next semester. I haven't taken the GRE yet, but I expect a poor score in math and high scores in writing/elsewhere. </p>

<p>My extracurriculars/experience/misc. items:
Summer 2012: Study abroad in Moscow, Russia
Year 2012-2013: Study abroad in Berlin, Germany.
Worked for a major airline for 2 years--present
Conversational in Serbian, Russian, German.</p>

<p>I can get some pretty good written recommendations, too, but is it worth taking a chance and applying to grad schools now, or should I take 1 semester - a year off and try to gain some experience in research/my field? My only issue with the latter is that I'm afraid I'll 'lose my course' and my depression will come back stronger because I feel that I am not advancing down my school path.</p>

<p>Thoughts/advice? Thank you all so much.</p>

2

<p>A PhD in… Political Science? (Most schools don’t have a separate IA department at the graduate level - Int’l Affairs is more a program of study than an individual discipline. Presumably you’d be going for IR or CP then?)</p>

<p>Another thing you could do in the meantime is get a Master’s Degree, and then apply for a PhD. Working for a major airline would definitely make for a very unique profile. A friend of mine had a TA a few years ago who got into an excellent PhD program with a fairly low GPA because she’d been a flight attendant while in school, and was constantly in and out of the city while attempting to finish her undergrad, so there’s that.</p>

3

<p>If you have no research experience, then you should take at least 2 years off to get some research experience (1 year to get the experience and the second year to apply to programs, at least). I would think international affairs programs maybe are less stringent on research requirements, but PhD programs are inherently research programs and will likely expect some research experience. Since IA/IR programs are also applied, they may also expect some work experience. My secondary field is similar in that regard and most students admitted to the PhD program have</p>

<p>1) research experience (100%)
2) work experience (in my cohort, 6 out of 7 - the 7th was me), and/or
3) a master’s degree in the field or a related one (in my cohort it was 4 out of 7)</p>

<p>Everyone in my cohort except for me had either #2 or #3. I’m a sixth-year and I’m still trying to figure out how I ended up here, lol. Anyway, I would expect that IR/IA PhD applicants have similar profiles.</p>

<p>1 semester will not be enough time, and the best programs do not admit students to begin in the spring.</p>