<p>^That was part of a much longer post that somehow got mangled. My basic points were:</p>
<p>It depends on your specific goals/interests. You might be interested in 1) a policy career (e.g., State Department, CIA, etc.) 2) an academic career (i.e., pursue a PhD in IR/Polisci), 3) going on to professional school (e.g., law school) 4) pursuing a career that only tangentially relates to IR (e.g., consulting or investment banking). My recommendations for these cases are:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Policy: Go to Georgetown. It’s the best school hands down to prepare you for a policy career. There’s a huge advantage associated with being in Washington, and all of the opportunities it presents. SFS courses are also policy-oriented and the faculty are policy-driven. You have the celebrity faculty, like Tenet and Albright, but more importantly many of the faculty in the SFS have policy day jobs. Last semester, one of my professors was a Foreign Service officer spending the year teaching at Georgetown (and working part-time at the State Department headquarters), another was a top-level official in the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) who teaches an evening class at Georgetown, and a third spent most of his time as a consultant for the CIA and DoD. Absolutely no other school offers you opportunities like these in the IR world. Furthermore, Georgetown runs what are universally considered the best professional masters degrees in IR, and leads to a lot of opportunities and a lot of respect from government agencies and NGOs for Georgetown students (including undergrads). If, however, you want some other options for a policy career, you should apply to GWU and American (both in DC as well), but frankly those are just SFS wanabees. I’d also consider Princeton and Columbia, but none of the other schools on your list are really a good fit. Tufts is an honorable mention.</p></li>
<li><p>Academic Career: Georgetown’s still a good school, but you can do better. As I said SFS is policy-oriented, and naturally academics are more theoretically-oriented. Thus, your best bet is a school strong in those areas, and one that itself issues a PhD. Your best bets are Chicago, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, and possibly MIT. Honorable mentions go to Georgetown, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Berkeley.</p></li>
<li><p>Law School: If you want to go to law school, I think the choices are less clear. Georgetown has some definite assets for this path. For example, you won’t have to deal with any core requirements in math/science as you would at schools like Chicago (for many people who are law school bound, this is a big plus). You’ll also find yourself surrounded by future lawyers (according to one of my professors, up to 50% of SFS grads go to law school). Finally, Georgetown Law is a T14 program, and there’s a program that allows you to apply early for admission to it without taking the LSAT (and there’s a lot of peace of mind in having been accepted to at least one law school as a junior). The primary downside at Georgetown is that Georgetown Law, while in the T14, consistently ranks at the bottom of that group. Just as Georgetown shows preference to its own undergrads in law admissions, Yale shows preferences to its own (and so do Harvard, Stanford, etc.). Thus, if you are dead-set on Yale Law, you’ll probably be best off at Yale. At the end of the day, however, law school is a numbers game. The right GPA and LSAT scores from any good college will get you in, so any of the schools on your list could work.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>4) Other careers (especially investment banking and consulting): With IB and consulting, school prestige is of great importance. Going to Georgetown while give you a big boost in your applications, but Harvard gives a bigger one. The general advice for these careers is to go to the most prestigious school where you can get in. Thus, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford are without a doubt your best bets.</p>