How much do study abroad grades matter/Chance me!

Graduate School
1

Hey everyone:)

I’m planning on applying to comparative politics PhD programs (Latin American regional focus, democratization) for this next cycle, and I had a few questions!

First, I’ll address what I’m dreading. I’m studying abroad in a law school in my second language, and it really has not been going well. These are pass/fail credits and will NOT impact my GPA whatsoever. However, the grades are going to be quite low. I am not included in email lists being an exchange student and I can not reach out to professors, so it’s just been a challenge.

Here are my application stats, though:

3.8 GPA (I think it’s more like a 3.78, which is low, but I’m trying to increase it). I struggled with a traumatic brain injury and then the death of my father that did hinder my grades in the first two years.

GRE: Not taking. All of my programs do not require it and many don’t accept it.

Research experience: I should have a paper published as a co-author before applications (currently in the review process right now, fingers crossed).

My school has summer opportunities for research projects (which are paid positions) where we team up with a faculty member and an upperclassman mentor. I was participated as a mentee once and the upperclassman mentor twice (chosen by professors).

I’m in another country right now, gaining international experience in the region I am going to study. I’ve been meeting with professors here to strengthen my work; these were independent interviews.

I was a Research Assistant for a professor for four months.

I serve as an editor in my schools’ undergraduate journal. I am also the only Spanish tutor in the school.

I have my 3 LoRs - they all said they would love to write them for me (I didn’t have to ask). I’ve researched with two of them, and the other one and I are close.

My school is NOT a known school whatsoever, in fact we have less than 700 students. We do not have any math or stats classes, but I’m working on that with a current grad student.

Schools of interest for me are:

Reach: Michigan, North Carolina, WashU, Minnesota

Target: Emory, Wisconsin-Madson, UIUC, Colorado Boulder, Vanderbilt, Maryland, Pittsburgh, Virginia (this is my top choice), UMass Amhurst

Less target: Florida State, Brown, Arizona.

I also have a ton of University involvement, in which I won an international award. I’m also black and technically an orphan if that helps boost any chances LOL.

Let me know:)

2

I think that it is hard to know.

We have a daughter currently enrolled in a PhD program. We watched her go through the application cycle a bit more than a year ago. A few things come to mind.

One is that at least some PhD programs are very highly competitive for admissions. Low single digit acceptance rates are not unusual at a top program, and this among a long list of very well qualified applicants.

I consistently heard that grades are not really all that important for PhD admissions. This might have been unfortunate in our daughter’s case, but nonetheless makes sense to me. They are looking for students who can do research, not students who can handle tough exams. It is not quite the same thing.

Having some experience studying overseas in a second language to me sounds like it would be quite valuable given your intended PhD focus.

Having research experience and a published paper seems like a significant plus.

To me this sounds quite important. I do not understand how anyone can study any part of the world without going there. Yes this will imply the possibility of cultural and/or language issues. However, overcoming this seems more important than having a long list of A’s and A+'s on your transcript.

The last thing that comes to mind is that our daughter did quite a bit of homework to understand the research that was being done at every university that she applied to. When she was asked to interview with professors, she had already read their papers, but re-read their papers before each interview and walked into the interview with at least one question to ask each professor about the professor’s research. She know how the research that she wanted to do fit in with the work being done at each university, and the work being done by specific professors. This did result in her having a somewhat shorter list of schools to apply to. This is also a lot of work. I think that it helped her chances quite a bit.

And I think that in most cases the only “safety” when it comes to PhD admissions is to find a job, work for a year, and maybe reapply (possibly to a different list of schools).