<p>how suitable is swarthmore if i want to major in international relations?</p>
<p>Quite suitable. However, I believe what you are talking about is a Political Science major at Swarthmore. They do a wonderful job teaching international politics, and Foreign Policy magazine recently (4/07) put out rankings for both undergraduate and graduate programs in international relations. Swarthmore ranked 14th for undergraduate institutions, the highest ranking of any Liberal Arts College.</p>
<p>awesome! thanks</p>
<p>i always saw swarthmore as more of an english/writing type of school but this is good news :)</p>
<p>avantgardener,
My S graduated from Swat in 07 and is currently at a top 5 Ph.D program in Political Science, with a focus on International relations and security issues. He was well prepared at Swat.</p>
<p>thats great to hear!</p>
<p>would it be safe to assume that most schools that have very strong political science departments are also strong specifically in international relations?</p>
<p>Not necessarily. I think you've got to look at the courses offered at each school to see what the range is in the various subsets of poli. sci. This is the full list of the top 20 IR schools (undergrad) from the March/April 2007 issue of Foreign Policy Magazine. Maybe this will help with your search.
1) Harvard
2) Princeton
3) Stanford
4) Georgetown
5) Columbia
6) Yale
7) Chicago
8) Berkeley
9) Dartmouth
10) George Washington
11) American U.
12) U. Michigan
13) Tufts
14) Swarthmore
15) UCSD
16) Cornell
17) Brown
18) Williams
19) Duke
20) Johns Hopkins U.</p>
<p>
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i always saw swarthmore as more of an english/writing type of school
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</p>
<p>Actually, Swarthmore has always been especially well known for social sciences, specifically political science and economics. It produces more future PhDs in poli sci, in econ, and in social sciences than any other college or university in the United States.</p>
<p>The new head of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, is a Swattie. There are currently political Swatties in the Senate (Carl Levin, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee) and House (Chris Van Hollen, head of the DCCC election committee).</p>
<p>Swarthmore is really good about covering all regions of the world with professors in a number of departments so you can get exposure to many cultures from a variety of perspectives by mixing and matching courses...poli sci, religion, history, sociology, languages, etc.</p>
<p>oh that list is very informative! im applying to like half of them haha thanks momof3sons</p>
<p>and interesteddad, thats interesting to hear because being from the west coast i never know much about east coast colleges and their strengths. you could ask a random person on the street here to name all the ivies, and they might be able to list 2!! haha</p>
<p>avant:</p>
<p>Swarthmore gets a lot of students from and sends a lot of graduates to Washington, D.C. </p>
<p>Politics, think tanks, international relations, public policy, NGOs.</p>