<p>Sorry if this is the wrong forum...it seemed like the best one for this question though.</p>
<p>Do you guys know some good shools for international relations majors?</p>
<p>Georgetown School of Foreign Service is a good one.</p>
<p>Yes, wrong forum. The best is College search. You are searching for a school with good IR, then it should be pretty simple to find that maybe ur looking for college search.</p>
<p>Georgetown is good, as well as tufts, i think mostly for Europe though.
If you want Asia, try UCs, or JHU or somethin.</p>
<p>At graduate level, JHU,Columbia, and UCSD are the best for Asia. Georgetown, Harvard, and tufts are some of the best for europe.</p>
<p>Also, be aware that supposedly job prospect isnt all that great with undergrad degrees. Im pretty sure it is advised that if u want to do IR stuff, then get a grad degree in IR. I personally would think it is better to go from a language major (besides english) to IR grad school, than from IR major to IR grad school, or at least take a lot of one language or so, because it is likely going to be REALLY hard to get a good job if you only speak english.</p>
<p>I'm trying to get into federal law enforcement/intelligence so I figured maybe IR would be a good major (at least I was told that by people working in the field). </p>
<p>I was planning on focusing on Asia, but I'd like to stay on the east coast for my undergrad. Is it possible to focus on Asia at Gerogetown? As for the language, I was going to take a lot of mandarin and spend a year in Beijing hopefully.</p>
<p>Hands down, the best place to study IR in undergrad is DC (with second place going to NYC). Georgetown is obviously tops, but George Washington and American both have strong IR programs. Being in DC will give you access to internships and special opportunities that are hard to come by elsewhere. Also, all the intelligence agencies recruit out of those schools. </p>
<p>If you are serious about intelligence, the best thing you can do for yourself is learn a non-western language. That is one of the main things they look for. Besides that, you should be taking Econ, History, and PoliSci classes. Don't get too hung up on the name of your major. There are only like 15 schools that offer a true IR major, but you can make the functional equivilant almost anywhere by studying languages and polisci/econ.</p>
<p>I appreciate the help so far guys:)</p>
<p>I'm definantely focusing on a Chinese dialect and planning on spending some time there. China is building up like crazy in both its military and economic sectors so I figure mandarin will be good to know for our counter-intelligence operations in the future. FBI, Diplomatic Security Service, CIA, NSA, even DEA and ATF all want mandarin speakers.</p>
<p>I just want to make sure I can get an Asia focus at Georgetown, or at least some Asia focus. Bigtwix mentioned they focus on Europe a lot. Do they have any emphasis on Asia?</p>
<p>Every decent IR program, including Georgetown, will have an Asian regional concentration as an option. A lot of times though, those regional concentrations are somewhat 'fluffy.' A better option might be to concentrate in something like 'security studies' and take extra language classes on the side. For a language like Mandarin, the 2-4 semesters of language that IR programs require won't be sufficient to get you conversational, so a double major in IR and Chinese language might work best.</p>
<p>Georgetown and Tufts are top. JHU is also great. American and GWU are less competitive but have very strong intl studies programs.</p>
<p>Brown's IR program is pretty good too</p>
<p>Im not actually sure if JHU and Columbia have undergrad IR (im pretty sure columbia doesnt).</p>
<p>Im sure georgetown would still have really good (although i would make sure they have good asian languages(assuming you are going to take some))</p>
<p>As for American, it totally sucks if you want anything to do with asia. It is almost completely focused on Europe IR, (which i think G-town is too for the most part).</p>
<p>IR for asia is really a new thing, and i think the problem with DC schools is that they mostly (almost completely) focus on European IR, since really up until the last 15-25 years or so, Europe (outside of America) has had a majority of the worlds wealth, and power, whereas nowadays, China is becoming huge in both Business and politics, and Japan and South Korea are both very big in business (more specifically, technology).</p>
<p>I mean DC is great and all as a political city, but it kind of lacks when it comes to some big time trade or negotiation with Asia.</p>
<p>For the east coast, im pretty sure if you are really into Asian/international jobs, New York is probably the best place to look, whereas on the west coast, San Francisco, San Diego, and Seattle seem to be where its at.</p>
<p>Also, do most schools offer mandarin courses?</p>
<p>^</p>
<p>I should think so. They'd be pretty behind the times if they didn't.</p>
<p>Yes, Georgetown does have a concentration in regional studies of Asia, I have friends majoring in it. They also have a really strong foreign language program, and offer Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean for Asian languages. </p>
<p>BIGTWIX, I don't know where you are getting the idea that Georgetown only has a strong program for Europe, because that is definitely not the case. In fact, I don't really know anyone focusing on European IR. We have great programs in Latin American Studies and Asian Studies, and especially Middle East studies. We have one of the top Arabic programs in the country, as well as a satellite campus in Doha, Qatar.</p>