<p>I am very interested in applying to the new Science Po campus in Reims. Has anyone applied, been accepted, or heard of the university?</p>
<p>…one month later.</p>
<p>anyone at all?</p>
<p>No, but I have been to the town and it is lovely.</p>
<p>Science Po is one of France’s “Grandes Ecoles”. The main SP campus is located in Paris, but the school has several “satelite campuses”, each with its own focus, scattered around France. The one in Reims (a lovely town as Kajon has mentioned) is designed to accommodate students from across the pond. </p>
<p>Science Po is one of the best IR programs in the World, on par with the likes of Georgetown and Johns Hopkins. Anybody that wishes to make it in French politics today attends that school. </p>
<p>For example, the last three French presidents (Mitterrand from 1981-1995, Chirac from 1995-2007 and Sarkozy) 2007-present) are all alums. Keep in mind that France only had five elected presidents under the Fifth Republic, and one of them was Charles De Gaulle (1958-1968), who was a General and never went to civilian college. The second president of the Fifth Republic, D’Estaing (1974-1981), was an alum of Polytechnique and ENA, equally impressive “Grandes Ecoles”, bu focused more on Engineering and Business. The remaining French presidents all attended Science Po. In the next elections, Sarko will be competing with either Segolene Royal or Dominique Strauss Kahn, both of which are also alums of Science Po. The latter is said to be unbeatable at this point in time. In other words, regardless who wins, France’s next president will be an alumnus of Science Po.</p>
<p>An even more impressive statistic is the number of French Prime Ministers that graduated from Science Po. Of France’s 14 PMs since the Fifth Republic was founded, a whopping 11 are alums of Science Po.</p>
<p>Finally, virtually all French ambassadors studied at Science Po, including the current amabssadors of France to Canada, China, Germany, India, the EU, the UK, the UN and the US.</p>
<p>^ All good news if you want to be a French president, prime minister, or ambassador, but those careers typically aren’t open to U.S. students. </p>
<p>What about the academics? And what’s in it for, say, an undergrad at a top American LAC majoring in political science and minoring in economics who is fluent in French and is contemplating Science Po as a study abroad option? How would that compare to, say, LSE or Oxbridge purely in academic terms in fields like political science and economics?</p>
<p>Academically, Science Po is comparable to Georgetown’s SFS. It is not intended to educated the masses, nor it is strong in Economics. It is a great place for US students to spend a semester or a year, but it does not make sense for a US student to spend 3-4 years at Science Po.</p>
<p>Does anyone else have anything? :)</p>
<p>Heard about it from reading a NYT article last year. Supposed to be a top school in France…</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins has a program connected with their International Studies major, where one spends three years at the Homewood campus in Baltimore, before spending two years at Sciences Po. The program results in a BA from JHU and an MA (Diplome) from Sciences Po. It’s an excellent opportunity for students interested in International Relations and France.</p>
<p>Sciences Po is far more selective than the US colleges mentioned in this thread. For example, Sciences Po Reims – where the focus is Euro-American studies – only has 20 spaces available for students from all of North America, including French-centric Quebec. Only about 20% of North American applicants are interviewed, and these interviews are challenging Oxford-style panels of three interviewers where you are given a random topic and 30 minutes to prepare a 10 minute dissertation, followed by increasingly difficult questions.</p>
<p>Sceinces Po Reims in the only campus where the classes are taught in English, but by the end of your 3-year BA program you are required to have mastered French. BTW, the last of the three years has to be taken abroad (outside of France).</p>
<p>What is slightly confusing is that up until 10 years ago Sciences Po was only a graduate degree program – the moral equivalent of Harvard Law School or a Masters from Oxford and on that par reputation-wise. 10 years ago they added BAs to the new satellite campuses at places like Reims, LeHavre, Poitiers and Nancy.</p>
<p>I’m having my interview for this same school (the Reims campus specifically) in exactly ten days. Needless to say these last few posts have made me extremely nervous ! Have any of you gone through the interviewing process yourselves ? I’d be interested to know anything more than the information they’ve given us so far “…You’ll be presenting a random document that you’ll need 30 minutes to prepare…” How am I suppose to be preparing for this ? Other than keeping up with current events, of course …</p>
<p>I’ve gone through the entire interview process and, just a warning, no matter how much preparation you do, how knowledgeable you are about global current events, or how well you’re doing in school, you’ll never be completely prepared for the interview. The interviewers work to push you into an intellectual corner so that they can see how quick you are on your feet and how well you do in situations where you’re actually completely ignorant. The questions will get insanely specific, and unless you’ve memorized EVERYTHING, they’ll find a way to get onto a topic that you have absolutely no idea about. Needless to say, after I walked out of my interview, I got into my car with my mom and cried about how I’d just screwed up my entire future. However, I’m currently registered at Sciences Po. as a student, so I couldn’t have done that horribly.
I kept a straight face the entire interview. If I didn’t know something, I let my interviewers know and tried to make comparisons to things I did know (for example: they asked me how countries seeking aid from the IMF would complete the process and I responded by comparing it to my obtaining student loans for school).</p>
<p>Bookme - did you apply through a joint degree with a US school? Is the process the same either way? Columbia has an amazing joint degree program that they’ve been promoting where you spend two years at Sciences Po and two at Columbia, but they only take 30 total students per year (for all three SP campuses they are utilizing).</p>
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<p>Sciences Po or this program?</p>
<p>For that to be true, we ought to have a number of students who were rejected by the French school but admitted by the schools mentioned in this thread and other prestigious and highly selective IR schools in the US. For some reason, I do not think we have heard of many students declining Georgetown or Johns Hopkins (or HYPS for that matter) to attend this 2plus1 year program. </p>
<p>For all its the prestige (as Alexandre eloquently described) it is hard to compare the selectivity of schools in France to the US. The reality is that for some students in France is it virtually impossible to be accepted and for others … it is a walk in the park.</p>
<p>I could be wrong, but this campus and this program seems gimmicky.</p>