I always wanted to go into international relations as, at least, my graduate study, in order to get jobs that correlate with it (ambassadorship, diplomacy, foreign work, etc)
As of recent, I’ve been pretty set on pursuing Polisci/Econ double major, as IR in itself is part of Polisci, and it seems too binding for my future career, so early on. Nevertheless, once I toured American, I saw that SIS seems to be getting a lot of attention financially and from the faculty that praises it for being new and highly ranked. If my final goal of education, as it seems right now, is to pursue IR, would it make sense to double major in IR/Econ, or should I ignore the rankings and still do Polisci/Econ for broader graduate school opportunities?
IR is probably worth more if you focus on a specific area and theme. Like Northeast Asia and security policy or something like that. Poli sci is super general, and granted so is IR, but its less likely to give you specific and worthwhile knowledge. You can trawl through old results posts on grad forums if you want. I do sometimes and it seems like most of the people going to high end IR schools already have a degree in IR.
Something to keep in mind is that in SIS you do have to pick a specific region and three themes to study. You do get some overall IR classes, but most will follow the specific areas you choose to study. So if you’re not sure what area of IR I would recommend doing polisci at SPA. Plus the SIS course load is pretty large so double majoring within SPA would be easier then SIS and Economics.
As a Political Science major in SPA, you can take a fair number of SIS courses to apply to the requirements of the PS degree (“Major-related Social Science- 12 credits”). May be the best of both worlds.