<p>I'm trying to decide between majoring in Political Science Or International Affairs at UGA or majoring in International Affairs or Public Policy at Tech and, since this is the forum for the latter, I would like some info on Tech. </p>
<p>How good are Tech's International Affairs and Public Policy majors. I have looked, but I haven't been able to find a ranking of either of these schools. I would also like to know the opinion of the students of these majors. (Any current students in these majors here?) What do or don't you like about them? What types of internships do students of these majors get?</p>
<p>I also was wondering about the difficulty of these majors. I know Tech has a reputation for arduous courses, but does this also apply to these majors too? I ask this because I'm trying to get into a top law school, and my chances will be affected negatively if I graduate with a lower GPA here than, say, UGA with a higher GPA.</p>
<p>Finally, I want to know how Tech's law school placement is. In particular, what law schools do most grads go on to attend? </p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>I know five PUBP majors who have gone to law school: Vandy, Stanford, Emory, UF, and Georgetown. The Emory one was on scholarship. The Stanford person had interned at the US Supreme Court. Georgetown did Peace Corps. They’ve done pretty well.</p>
<p>Tech’s Public Policy program is outstanding… for technology related policy. It’s #4 in the country for Information Technology Policy, but UGA is much better at the administrative aspects of Public Policy.</p>
<p>In terms of law school admissions, Tech places extremely well. Just this semester, I’ve seen students accepted to Harvard Law, Stanford Law (multiple), Penn Law, Chicago, Emory (one with full scholarship, several others), Michigan, and UGA. I’m not sure about UGA’s placement.</p>
<p>What about non-technology related policy?</p>
<p>Do you know what the GPAs of these students are? </p>
<p>Do you know anything about International Affairs students going to top law schools, their GPAs, and what internships they get?</p>
<p>It varies, and you don’t really know a person’s GPA unless you write a reference. That said, I’ve written some references for the above schools, and the GPA’s tend to be in the 3.6 - 4.0 ranges. The students with 3.8+ tend to get accepted to multiple of the above schools (with 168+ LSAT scores). </p>
<p>I have written references students that ultimately went to UGA and Georgia State, and those tend to be in the lower ranges (3.2 - 3.6 range). Tech’s pre-law students come from all over - engineering (especially for patent law), science, management, and INTA. </p>
<p>I’m not really sure about internships.</p>
<p>I’m a graduate student at GT, i’m doing a dual Masters one in the Ivan Allen College and one in the Colleges of sciences… I will just give my general impression of the Ivan Allen College program. I did my undergrad at one of the better Big10 schools up North, and in comparison, the Ivan Allen school isn’t as good.</p>
<p>This isn’t an issue because ranking dosn’t matter because specific-department ranking dosn’t matter much for undergrads, since these dept. rankings are research-productivity indices computed for grad-school decision making. </p>
<p>In any event, I have taken courses in Public Policy and the School of Economics in Ivan Allen. The School of Economics in GT is not very well administered and I’d say half of the professors in that dept are sub-par. The Public Policy program, in general has good professors (again this is grad-level) but they all do research in more specialized subjects (research & development, social networks etc.) This is good, because these will become the “established” subjects probably in the 21st century, but for now they are not as established in a wide-range of contemporary subfields. Further, if you are not intersted in that sort of thing, it may be hard to find a prof to pair up for research. </p>
<p>In my opinion, if you are going to do public policy and want to stay in Georgia, you will probably want to select either Georgia State University or UGA. Like I said, the department/school specific rankings dosn’t really much matter for undergrads, but as an aside, UGA is ranked in the top 5 for public policy/international affiars and GSU’s Andrew Young policy school is highly regarded, it probably houses the “best ranked” Economics department in the state (although no department in Georgia has a top 50 program) and a much more well-ranked program in public finance and it’s allied subjects. Further, Andrew Young has been targeted by GSU as their major funding priority in attempt to build something elite for their university (along with buisness school which this year surpassed both Emory and GT in MBA ranking -although this could be a result of some kind of new methodology in rank-calculation as opposed to real gains… not sure)</p>
<p>But, like I said for Undergrad it’s more about gaining the foundations and getting internships/research. I don’t know if your going to do pre-law, but i would imagine for something like that Emory University would be better, because they are more connected to other elite private southern and northern schools and they may be feeders to the top law programs, which usually are housed in elite private universities.</p>
<p>G.P. Burdell,</p>
<p>Do you know how well GaTech’s international affairs is? How are internships for the department.</p>
<p>Burdell: Do you know which law schools are most attended by Tech students? (Maybe a list of statistics?) About how many Tech grads go to law school each year? By the way, is the Nunn School highly respected all over the country? Do you know how difficult the major is? (Again, maybe a ranking list of most difficult and most easy majors at tech?)</p>
<p>Casella10: Thanks for the info. Have you taken any International Affairs courses? (I’m trying to get opinions about this major…)</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies!</p>