<p>What exactly is the difference between the two majors (for undergrad)?</p>
<p>For Johns Hopkins, the collegeboard credits it for having international relations for undergrad. However, on the official Johns Hopkins website, it reports only international studies.</p>
<p>So what really separates the two?</p>
<p>bump... please</p>
<p>In my experience, the two names are relatively interchangeable, at least for Hopkins undergrad. I'm currently a sophomore at JHU studying IR and although the official name of the concentration is "International Studies," most people refer to the major as IR. This may be different for different schools though, maybe someone else with another experience can chime in.</p>
<p>What can one with such a degree? What's the difference between IR and Political Science?</p>
<p>Although International Relations is actually a sub-field of Political Science, Political Science is more theoretical, while International Relations is much more practical, as it deals with actually contact between countries etc...</p>
<p>You really have to check out different schools curricula to see what they mean by these terms. Some use international relations to mean a program that concentrates on diplomancy; others use it to mean something like what would be called IS elsewhere. International studies can be anything from a program located completely in a political science department that's heavy on politics and econ to a program that's interdisciplinary and stresses history and culture (what other places call global studies). You just have to check out the schools that interest you.</p>
<p>Dang, so you mean to say there is a distinction between econ and pollitical science, and history and culture? I am much more interested in the later but it seems as though it has less job opportunities of the two, although pollitical science (and even econ) do sound pretty useless by themselves!!!</p>