<p>I really hate these versus threads but I'm stuck in a rut</p>
<p>Anyways, my interest is in international relations and my ultimate career interest is a foreign service officer. I look through all similar post, looked through the rankings, the websites and I cannot come to a conclusion. </p>
<p>Obviously, Georgetown provides certain opportunities because it's in DC but I feel that Stanford, because of it's big name, can do the same. </p>
<p>I heard Stanford has a semester in Washington program (is that undergrad?) and a quarter abroad, which is very intriguing, for IR majors.</p>
<p>Also, college is college. I want to be able to have a great undergrad experience while I'm there</p>
<p>Any advice/criticism/hate/love/gossip would be appreciated!</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>please see my post at the Georgetown page.</p>
<p>Would you consider Tufts for IR? The Fletcher School is renowned… and if a great undergrad experience is what you want, I believe Tufts can top Stanford, given its more personal LAC feel.</p>
<p>Don’t dwell on this too much until you are accepted. Then dwell on it.</p>
<p>Merovingian makes an excellent point. Both of these schools are reaches for almost all applicants, so you should first worry about being admitted. </p>
<p>“I heard Stanford has a semester in Washington program (is that undergrad?) and a quarter abroad, which is very intriguing, for IR majors.”</p>
<p>Stanford does have a program for undergraduates called Stanford in Washington. Essentially, you spend a quarter studying and working in DC. More here:</p>
<p>[Home</a> | Stanford in Washington](<a href=“http://siw.stanford.edu%5DHome”>http://siw.stanford.edu)</p>
<p>As a Stanford student, you can spend a quarter abroad at Stanford’s 12 international campuses:</p>
<p><a href=“https://undergrad.stanford.edu/programs/bosp[/url]”>https://undergrad.stanford.edu/programs/bosp</a></p>
<p>I have offered my opinion on this topic many, many times before. Guess one more time won’t hurt.</p>
<p>Do you remember the StarKist brand tuna fish commercial? “Charlie, StarKist doesn’t want tunas with good taste. StarKist wants tunas that taste good.”</p>
<p>[Charlie</a> the Tuna - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_the_Tuna]Charlie”>Charlie the Tuna - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>It’s the same thing with the foreign service.
The government doesn’t want FSOs with “good taste” (in colleges). It wants people who can become good foreign service officers.</p>
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</p>
<p>And the ability to spell, I should add, is an important part of being a good FSO. ;)</p>
<p>ugh
I just want to know which one to apply EA to. That’s all</p>
<p>Ideally, you should apply EA (or REA, in Stanford’s case) to the one that is your first choice. If it were April, would you rather have an admission offer from G’town or Stanford? That’s the one to which you should apply early. </p>
<p>The nice thing about G’town EA is that (unlike Stanford) it’s not restrictive. This means that you can still apply to other schools with nonrestrictive EA (i.e., UChicago) if you apply EA to G’town. If you apply REA to Stanford, that will be your only early application.</p>
<p>I don’t know if I can shed a bit of light on the subject but I was once in your place. Though I always had the goal of law school, I applied to a boatload of schools, all of which were fairly well regarded for their IR and polysci programs. When applying, G-town was my first choice, as it was easier to get into than most of the schools I was applying to. I considered the following in making it my first choice: First and most importantly (IMO) the strength of the faculty and the program’s reputation with regard to undergraduate education. Georgetown is basically a political school. Secondly, the geographic location of the school. It’s Washington D.C. (I don’t really need to explain this). Third, the ability to interact with and recieve lectures from basically any official with a bit of free time and an appetite for good company and alcohol. Lastly, the programs that are available, since it is in DC, vary widely and are much less prohibitively expensive than other schools.
That being said, I was thrown a wild curve after getting my acceptances as somehow the cosmos realigned, and I was accepted into Stanford but not Georgetown.
After the surprise of a lifetime, pleasant though shocking, I used admit weekend and the Internet to do a ton of research on Stanford’s IR and programs. I’ll share the basics with you. Stanford in Government is basically amazingly cool. But note that you have to compete for the spots in the program. You basically intern full time for whatever official you apply for and are interested in and then take classes/seminars taught by people who have held positions in government and who have relevant policy experience in the field.
We too have a whole host of important people serenading our students with lectures. I am from Wisconsin so the fact that Russ Feingold lectures at our law school is awesome to me. We get basically anyone we want, probably due to the reputation. But we don’t have as many officials pass through like Georgetown.
The IR department is pretty awesome too. I mean we have Condoleeza Rice teach a class on the decision making that led to the Invasion of Iraq in which she runs a simulation and gives the class a chance to decide whether or not to approve military action. Whatever your political beliefs, being taught by people who have actually experienced events and have first-hand knowledge of what your major is about is incredible. That being said, Georgetown has much of the same. I would say that our political climate is more liberal and regional than Georgetown’s. A good amount of our political campaigning is local and we have less opportunity to interact with the national politics, mainly due to location.
In the end, the decision is yours.
And don’t be surprised if you don’t get into both or even either of the two. It’s Stanford and Georgetown for crissakes.</p>
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<p>What I’m saying is that you’re asking the wrong questions.
So, either. Or neither. It doesn’t apply. (Sorry, no pun intended.)</p>
<p>And you certainly have every right not to follow my advice.
Your prerogative.</p>
<p>It’s sort of like asking, I want to be a carpenter. Which college is closer to the forest?</p>