<p>**** this im not getting discouraged</p>
<p>Not good. You seem to think Grad schools care about legacy or extracurricular activities when in fact they don’t. Try to do research and get some publications out for poly sci. Alot of my poly sci friends tried to do research in policy thinktanks.</p>
<p>oh and hopefully a very competative gre score</p>
<p>you need a clear plan for what you want to study in grad school, and to convince a committee that it should be of interest to them. This requires a well thought out statement of purpose and strong letters.</p>
<p>GRE scores are also crucial - they are an easy way to weed people out. For example, the top 10 ish department where I teach will often ignore application files with scores under 700.</p>