I’d appreciate thoughts on these schools. She interested in IR but not set that it’s her true calling. All 3 are within budget. (GWU was her top choice but FA wasn’t enough). Weather isn’t a concern, study abroad and internships are important to her. She’ll visit for accepted student day.
All great schools, but for the focused coursework, internship opportunities and networking with profs who are also working with orgs in their field, I’d have to say that DC beats College Station TX and Waterville, Maine 
If GW was her first choice, AU is pretty similar. Just further up the metro line. FWIW my husband is an alum and works internationally … if it’s her thing, it’s pretty liable to happen if she’s in DC in that environment. AU also has a whole ton of courses that relate to international everything. Not just int’l relations, but development, business, nonprofit work, filmmaking, education, yada yada. It’s not a “school spirit” place or a LAC envt, but very pre-professional and focused. Kids are always walking around in their business suits from their internships LOL
@TexasCollegeMom you have three very different choices there. If IR is her calling than I’d agree with the other poster that American is the place. However, it also depends what type of environment your D wants - small LAC, mid-sized university in a great world-class city, or a large, state school with lots of sports enthusiasm and spirit. I would say your D needs to visit all three (if serious about them) and pick the one where she sees herself spending 4 years. They are all good schools, and I don’t think any would provide her with a disadvantage in the job or grad school world, it’s what she makes of her experience. But she needs to decide which situation is best for her to thrive.
A small comment. There is a lot more to international relations than the often myopic navel gazing taking place around Washington, DC. One should define what he or she expects to learn in a major that is one that is as broad as misunderstood.
I’d agree with xiggi… and add that if someone’s serious about IR, they should also be serious about a good language program. There are way too many American college kids interested in “international” relations who don’t speak a lick of a foreign language beyond what they learned in their pitiful high school classes. Worse, they somehow don’t think that’s a problem.
All too often we’re a laughing stock because of it.
No question. It’s AU.
I’ll just point out, for the benefit of anyone googling who runs into this (because OP surely knows it), that while most schools have Int’l Relations within the Political Science dept, AU has an entire school devoted to it (School of International Service) and a whole other school devoted to US- focused public service (School of Public Affairs). So the topics that would all be part of a single department elsewhere have their own buildings, with various sub-departments within them, etc. Not saying it’s the only school in the country that might have that, but it’s certainly one of the only ones.
On the downside, AU has very poor aid, and for people who don’t want to hear about government, nonprofits, policy making, global issues, study abroad, service, etc throughout their whole school career – and I do mean in the other schools/depts as well – it wouldn’t necessarily be the place.
I really think the school time internships and the separate school available at AU make it worth it if you are pretty sure that’s what you want. But post #6 also delineates some of their weaknesses. My son ended up at Tufts in IR, but he really liked American and one of his best friends from high school went there. (Majored in IR, and is now in officer training I forget which branch of the military.) Tufts is the only IR program I know that requires language fluency or 8 semesters. I think for most Americans serious about IR they should take two years in college and at least one semester in intensive study abroad - preferably in a program with a language pledge.
That said, my son who is applying for internships now had an interesting conversation with some one at one of the well known NYC IR think tanks who said she’s pretty convinced that the translation devices available on phones are very close to being ready to making translators obsolete. While I’m sure fluency will still be useful for many things, it may not be as useful as it once was.
Aid at AU varies. With the AU scholars program it would have been the cheapest place for my S2 to attend.
I know nothing about Colby or Texas A & M - except I have a friend whose son went to Colby and a friend who is a bio prof at A & M. (I think of A & M as a science agriculture stronghold, but feel free to correct me if I am wrong.)
I am not a huge fan of TAMU but the school is more than a haven for NORTC minded football loving future ranchers. For instance, its Latin American studies are well above par. Also, here is a new twist: http://internationalstudies.tamu.edu/html/about.html
Again, there are plenty of reasons why one might prefer attending a school in DC, and plenty that make Foggy Bottom earn its name. The best fit is never universal in nature.
As far as the viewpoint about translators and the future of machine translations, I am afraid that the person who made the comment might not understand much about the value of the correct use of foreign languages. People who are truly multilingual laugh at the notion of a BABEL or Google translate that is more than a toy for travel and entertainment.
Sheldon Cooper’s proficiency in Mandarin is a reflection of how many Americans view fluency. And that includes people who pretend to be fluent after spending a semester abroad.
FYI, this is what you wrote translated in French by Google
Cela dit , mon fils qui demande stages avait maintenant une conversation intéressante avec quelqu’un à l’un des bien connu NYC IR de réflexion qui a dit qu’elle est assez convaincu que les appareils de traduction disponibles sur les téléphones sont très près d’être prêt à faire des traducteurs obsolètes . Même si je suis sûr que la fluidité sera toujours utile pour beaucoup de choses , il peut ne pas être aussi utile que par le passé .
Beyond basic grammar, the text contains six to eight gross errors.
With language fluency usually comes some cultural understanding and nuances which shouldn’t be discounted and cannot be imparted by a computer. Regardless of major requirements, I think an IR major should take more than 2 years of a language unless they start with a quite advanced background before college or are taking other steps to achieve fluency outside of the university setting.
I know nothing about Colby except that it’s in Maine. What makes it attractive for IR?
Ds2 is in DC, and there’s nothing like it. If American is affordable, that gets my vote.
Having said that, his former gf is at A&M and loves it. I would get exhausted hearing about all the things she’s doing. She is a poli sci major and has had all kinds of opportunities. I texted her one day when a picture of her with a candidate came across my FB newsfeed. 
I would imagine the Bush School of Government & Public Service brings in lots of speakers, and I know there’s a semester in DC program, plus study abroad. This is my second-place vote.
Has she visited all the schools?
Good luck! Let us know what she decides.
Machine translators?!? LOL. I speak another language, so I went to my FB page, pulled up a post and “translated” it automatically. Here’s the alleged translation:
“Take a ? country ? ? ? ? that brought the country hours … Child means one!”
Gotta love machine translators. They’re wonderfully entertaining when you speak a minority language. Hours of fun Incidentally, in the above “translation,” precisely two words (“country” and “means”) are correct.
However, with English medium education being so widespread now, the days of a career as a “translator” when you’re not a native speaker of the target language are long gone. Americans who start learning a second language in college will never beat their bilingual neighbor kid or the person who studied in English medium schools and then maybe the US or UK and is truly fluent in their own language plus English. But that’s not the point of a second language. It’s not to become a UN translator – it’s to function comfortably in meetings, talk to folks, and understand what’s going on without having to depend on a mediator for everything. With no language skills, you’re really handicapped and end up living in the expat bubble. So yes, if you want to work overseas, get started on a language. Otherwise, “Take a ? country ? ? ? ? that brought the country hours … Child means one!”
You’ve given us lots of good things to talk about. She’s not bi-lingual but languages come easy to her and all the schools offer Arabic, Russian and/or Mandarin. She still needs to pick which critical language she will study in addition to her French. I need to talk to her more about IR but she describes CIA or Embassy type of work. Looks like going through the exact course offerings would help in both these areas. Hopefully this will remind her why she picked these schools and see how committed she is to do IR.
Colby comes in the least expensive and outranks the other LAC schools she was accepted to. American surprised us with Financial Aid and comes in at in-state. TAMU was her safety but became more attractive as she explored the language offerings and got into honors. She hates big football but liked the school during visits. With AP credit, she may be able to do the joint BA/MBA at Bush School in 4 years. (Tufts would have been the perfect balance between all this but all those darn supplemental essays bumped it off the list ) We’re reminding her that it’s great that she has these options and can thrive at any of them!