Not sure how relevant this anecdote is, but I have a young adult relative who has her bachelors in IR and went to Trinity College Dublin for her masters in Econ. She has struggled with a getting higher paying job, let alone one in the field. (She took on debt for grad school.) She has been working as a paralegal since she graduated with her master’s.
(Her experience is one of the reasons my Dd opted not to pursue IR/IS and pursue IB(usiness) with multiple foreign language minors instead. ((She entered with fluency in one and at a B 1 level in the other, so her goal is to improve language skills vs earning a degree in the languages.)
The Trinity Econ Masters is not a marquee name, but it is a strong program. The negative for it (and many European programs) is that they do not have as strong career-type support as the US often does and you are left much more to your own devices (advantage US).
Either way, IR type jobs are just thin on the ground, and often are in NGOs, which typically don’t pay terribly well. I know somebody who did the Trinity Econ Masters and found an international econ job in an agriculture development agency in a mid-sized African country, which was not what he originally envisioned (ag not being high on a lot of young adult’s radars!). He is very happy, but @Mom2aphysicsgeek’s cautionary tale is worth paying attention to.
Others already gave great advice & answers but to add:
As other said, program choice should be primarily based on reputation in your field and funding. However, depending on the type of program, there may be other factors at play, too.
For example, normally location shouldn’t matter THAT much especially for a master’s program, which is short. But for an MA in foreign affairs, a student might want to look in cities where they can get foreign affairs internships, because that field especially is about what you know. New York and DC are obvious choices, but there are other cities in the U.S. where there are lots of NGOs or other agencies that do IR/IA stuff). Many students in professional programs also end up getting their first job in the city (or at least region) that they did their grad program in, just because making connections and networking in that city is so easy because of proximity. So that’s a consideration as well.
You also would want to investigate the career services office and placement record of the program. Where do graduates work after they finish up, and what % of them have jobs within 6 months of graduation?
Yes, I would say most apply without visiting, and many (probably most) attend without visiting first, too. Some places - especially professional programs - do have tours or preview days for grad students applying in that department. You can also arrange this yourself by emailing the departmental secretary and/or admissions office (if your program is a large professional program, like foreign affairs, it likely has its own admissions office) if you're going to be in the area.
Depends on the field. In my field, psychology, people applying to PhD programs apply to somewhere between 5 and 12, generally speaking, depending on their interests and how competitive they are. I would say that grad school on average is a smaller and more focused process - because the applications themselves are a bit more work. Most likely she will apply to less than 10 programs.
In professional MA programs this is quite common, working outside jobs. If you go full-time especially in a city with lots of opportunities for part-time work for college-educated folks, it's definitely possible to snag a part-time (10-20 hours a week) internship or part-time job that's in your field or at least somewhat related. Hence the reason that location may be a factor when choosing programs if you can help it, since attending in a larger city may open up those kinds of opportunities.
It totally depends on the field and the student. In foreign affairs most students take a couple years first. Your kid should do whatever is right for them.
Also depends - on the city and its cost of living, on the availability of on-campus housing at that particular university, on the program even. At my university, the arts & sciences students were more likely to live in university-owned apartments nearby the main campus, because they were cheaper than anything in the same neighborhood and they liked to be walking distance to their labs and departments. However, many of the health sciences students lived in regular apartments on the market, because the university-owned ones nearby the medical center were the same price or more for worse conditions. It even differed within health sciences - the ones who were in allied health fields and had hospital rotations (med students, nursing students, etc.) were more likely to live close to campus and thus the hospital, whereas the ones in other professional fields (public health, nutrition, etc.) were spread all over the city.
I would not say that’s true. First of all, I wouldn’t always say that a master’s degree is better than a bachelor’s degree for jobs that don’t require a master’s degree. The Harvard degree may have used those two years of time to work instead, and in many jobs the hiring manager will take someone with more experience over someone with more education. It depends. I also wouldn’t say that a low-tier master’s degree would always beat out a more prestigious bachelor’s degree. It’s all situational.
That said, though, in some fields the prestige of your program really does matter. I think foreign affairs is one of those, because jobs are so competitive in that field.