<p>@45 Percenter: actually you can generalize. You have to look at the types of professors a school has, as well as the type of people the school attracts. For example, UChicago’s lack of an engineering school even though it is a highly wealthy and accomplished university represents a departure from practical knowledge. NYU’s IR department, headed by one of the foremost advocates of quantitative politics, teaches a mathematically-based IR program that can be directly applied to real life situations. However, JHU focuses on theoretical IR, as is demosntrated by their focus on history and greek philosophy at the undergraduate level of IR. THose things can’t be directly applied and so it is less practical.</p>