American SIS

Graduate School
1

<p>So I have decided I am going to American SIS. My program is in U.S. Foreign Policy. Today I got a letter which said I could even make up my own concentration for U.S. Foreign Policy and do it, and also that I can chose one minor field. That is excellent! I just love that. I am going to make my own concentration as security in the Middle East, and my minor as international politics where I can take a lot of international security courses. I think that will give me a good enough background to analyze not just U.S. national security but other countries' national security.</p>

<p>I have some questions about the SIS program to those of you already in it, I am very excited to go, even though I would have much rather went to Georgetown:</p>

<p>(1) Can you start the summer before your semester begins? I might want to do the Study Abroad in Dubai or Malaysia which sounds really fun, or even just go on campus.</p>

<p>(2) Is there a lot of internships you can find? I want to intern specifically for think tanks (specifically the Nixon Center, and if I could get in WINEP (Washington Institute for Near East Policy), the Middle East Policy Institute, etc.), perhaps I could also intern a summer for a Congressman (not really my forte though), the Congressional Research Service, Foreign Policy Magazine, the Financial Times, etc. I want to do a little bit of everything - a think tank most, but also journalism stuff, a Congressman, a government agency, even a lobbying firm, so that I can really see what I like.</p>

<p>(3) If you create your own field of study, how exactly does this go? Can you actually chose the courses you want to take with your adviser?</p>

<p>(4) Are you allowed to take electives outside of your major field just to beef up your background?</p>

<p>(5) Is it true that American University highly inflates grades? This is what I heard. One person told me that Ph.D. programs don't really trust their grad school grades because they give everyone an A or B on everything while in SAIS if you get a C you fail.</p>

<p>(6) Because the classes are usually in the daytime, are they like 3 hour grad lectures on different days in day time? What time are they usually?</p>

<p>(7) What is there to do on campus?</p>

<p>(8) Is campus safe, generally?</p>

2

<p>1) I haven't heard of anyone doing this, but I guess it never hurts to ask.
2) One of the perks of going to school in the DC area is that there are tons of internships. Applying for them can be really frustrating, particularly in the summer when people from out of town are competing for them, too. It is a city full of political science dorks, so there is competition. Just keep sending out applications and something will eventually turn up. There's a lot out there.<br>
3) I'm not in USFP, but in IP we get to pick the courses for our concentration. As long as they're relevant to your chosen concentration there usually isn't any problem.
4) Here are the requirements for the USFP degree: School</a> of International Service, American University. As you can see, there isn't really any room for electives outside your major concentration and related field.
5) I don't know that SIS inflates grades any more than other grad schools do.
6) Classes aren't usually in the daytime. There are a few offered during the day, but generally they are either between 5:30-8:00 or 8:10-10:40. A lot of grad students work and this is to accommodate that. The classes are 2.5 hours once a week.
7) I don't think most grad students spend a lot of time on campus. There are a few extracurricular sorts of things, like student government, a journal, intramural soccer team, etc. I don't know how active these are. There are some off-campus social events, such as happy hours. Personally, my free time and campus rarely have anything to do with each other, and I don't think this is unusual.
8) Campus and the surrounding neighborhoods are some of the safer neighborhoods in DC. Be careful, of course, but don't worry about it too much.</p>