International Studies / International Relations / Diplomacy

Hi,
Our DS is unsure about what he wants to major in but believes that he may be interested in a career in International Relations or Diplomacy. I am wondering if someone can offer any advice on choice of Majors and Colleges to consider. We are in the Pacific Northwest but open to colleges anywhere in US. He would be open to doing a graduate degree in his chosen area to further his career. Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks

Based on his goals, your son would seem well suited for study in the general fields of government and political science with something along the lines of a world politics track.

For a range of choices, he could look into Georgetown, George Washington, American, Tufts, Dartmouth, Princeton, Brown, Wesleyan, Middlebury, Colby, Hamilton, Claremont McKenna, Pomona, U Richmond, Connecticut College, Dickinson, Denison, U Puget Sound.

Is your son a junior? What are his grades and test scores?
Location wise, DC is excellent for IR, partly because of the internship opportunities - Georgetown, GWU and American all have good IR programs, with differing levels of selectivity for admission. Foreign Policy does a ranking of IR undergrad programs. Like all rankings it has its proponents and detractors, but it’s probably a good place to start. (I’m assuming I’m allowed to post this link - https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/02/20/top-fifty-schools-international-relations-foreign-policy/ )

At Tufts about half the IR students do an economic focus. Be aware that Tufts requires four years of foreign language study or fluency in a foreign language. My younger son majored in IR there and said he thought he would have been better served by just being a history major instead of being forced to take the exact mix required by IR.

My D20 is looking at the same major and her list includes many of the east coast schools listed above. I think a college have an actual school for the program is a plus.

@mathmom, I believe most IR programs of any merit require significant competency in a foreign language, though quite how that is measured may differ by school.

I think it’s a sensible requirement, but it did significantly have rippling impacts in my son’s academic career. He’d studied Latin in high school and scraped out a B in Latin 4. Decided to take Arabic and worried about flunking it freshman year, I think he got a C+ one term and a C the other. He spent junior year in Jordan after which he got A’s in Arabic, but Tufts did not count any of his junior year abroad courses as anything but “Pass” so that he ended up with those C’s having an oversized impact on his GPA which put a bunch of internships out of the question.

Thanks for the feedback and some potential schools to consider. Our son is indeed a Junior and has an unweighted GPA around 3.75. He got an SAT score of 1430. He seemed to do better on practicetests on ACT and has taken that on Dec 8th and awaiting his scores.

He is planning on taking his subject SATs in Spring and Summer in 2019.

I read a lot of commentary elsewhere on CC to do an Undergraduate in Political Science and if still interested to do a Masters in IR. A lot of food for thought.

My son hate the Poli Sci courses and felt they were a waste of time. He has said that typically after an IR degree kids usually work a couple of years then go back for a Masters with a better idea of just what they want to focus on. He took a different route (Navy) after deciding after a year that NGO work was not for him.

Most ACT scores from 12/8 were released over night last night. Not the essay portion though.

@esriniv , IR is interdisciplinary by nature so it is possible for a student to simulate an IR degree through choosing relevant topics out of politics, economics, history, area studies, and languages. Obviously if there are any IR-specific courses available (conflict resolution or security studies for example) those would be great to add in.
Perhaps worth reproducing is the following faq on the NYU site http://as.nyu.edu/politics/ba-international-relations/ir-faq.html
“If I am not admitted to the IR Honors Major, can I pursue an international relations course of study as a different major?
Yes. Since the IR major is interdisciplinary it is made up of courses from the Politics, Economics, Foreign Language and Area Studies Departments. It is possible to pursue the exact same course of study as a major or double major or minor within any of these departments. For instance one could simulate an IR course of study by double majoring in Politics and Economics with a minor in Middle Eastern studies. ”
Quite possibly, it may be better to actually approach it this way in case (to use examples above) he does find politics boring or struggles to meet the full language requirement of an IR course, allowing him some flexibility to choose what he is most interested in than follow a more prescribed course. Each student will enjoy and value different topics.

At the end of the day, a good degree in relevant courses is going to be just as good as “majored in international relations” at most any place he’d want to interview at after graduation. Let him see how much he loves the subject and which particular area of it appeals to him most before he decides on graduate degrees, of which there are a good number of excellent options.

IR means different things. (a) It is a SUBFIELD within political science. (b) It can be an INTERDISCIPLINARY major or minor that includes language and area studies. Or (c) it can be a focus within some other major, such as economics and business. (d) It can include international experience (study abroad). Many many different options.

To the OP, take a look at UDub. It has a strong set of international programs, and also an undergraduate IR major. https://jsis.washington.edu/. I’m not necessarily recommending this (though I know several faculty there); just use it as a starting point to look at the various forms an international focus can take.

But really there are many dozens of colleges where a student can find my listed a-e options above. That would include small liberal arts colleges as well as universities. I strongly recommend that a student interested in international relations or studies plan on developing an advanced level of training in at least one foreign language and plan on spending a semester or year abroad as an undergraduate.

Added: a case in point. I attended a small liberal arts college, studied Russian and German (after studying Spanish in high school). I went into a doctoral program at a university that had several “area studies” programs. I earned my degree in that program, plus a certificate in an area studies program. I’ve had an academic career in one discipline, and most of my research has focused on regional and comparative studies.

Added to previous post: a case in point. I earned my BA at a liberal arts college. I majored in one discipline but studied Russian and German (after studying Spanish in middle and high school). I then enrolled in a PhD program at a major university, majoring in one discipline but taking an international relations focus, which also included my taking graduate courses in several disciplines and earning a certificate in an area studies program. In my academic career, I’ve focused on international research and service.

You might have him look at the Global Studies program at University of Richmond. We know a few recent grads out of that program who have done some great work during and now after college. The school also funds one internship for every student which can be huge for kids with these goals. He’d be a good candidate admission wise and they have great financial aid for those that qualify.

I want to echo @mackinaw’s point. International relations is different things to different people. The field of “international relations” is highly theoretical. A lot of times it gets mixed up with the concept of “international studies” or “area studies”. I never took an IR class until last semester as part of an area studies Master’s degree so I’m no expert but it was a surprising experience. It was completely not what I expected - highly theoretical and, for me, kind of tedious because the literature in the field is so iterative. I would have him clarify if he’s interested in something more like international or area studies or a more theoretical international relations degree. International or area studies is more the history, religion, politics, etc. It’s more concrete.

I did a master’s in international relations. The core compulsory courses included a fair bit of theory. Of course, in any academic discipline, theory is something that some people will find boring and other people will love. We had to do a certain number of electives to meet our credit requirement, and those came from a very wide range of choices rooted in a number of different disciplines. These also ranged from fairly theoretical to quite practical. (There was so much that interested me I audited a number of options in addition to the ones I was assessed on.)

There are also different focuses of graduate degrees. The one I did (not in the US) was intended to enable PhD prep. A number of the grad degrees available in the US focus on policy and practice and are intended for those who want to work outside academia.

This really is a degree that is what you make it but also clearly goes beyond the “name” of the degree, as the discussion above shows. Different universities will call the same thing by slightly different names and vice versa.

My son’s undergrad IR degree focused on security issues. Courses included ones on nuclear disarmament and the Arabic world.

@esriniv, I’ve lived overseas for decades and have interacted with many, many diplomats, foreign service employees and international non-governmental organization workers. My observations are that this is overall a well-educated group. But although the same graduate schools appear in their resumes over and over (e.g., Georgetown, Harvard, Princeton, Tufts, Stanford), their undergraduate schools cover a very wide range. In the Asian country where I live the US Ambassador is always a career diplomat. Over the past 25 years, the ambassadors’ undergraduate education has varied from the Ivy League to State Universities to Liberal Arts Colleges and everything in between.

My conclusion is if your son wants a career in the foreign service or with an international NGO, he should get a solid liberal arts education at the best college that you can afford. He should major in whatever interests him the most: IR, polysci, economics, hIstory, English literature, biology. For undergraduate, his choice of major will matter less than his GPA and how he builds his resume with summer jobs and internships. The relationships he develops with the professors who will help him secure internships and will write grad school recommendations will be critical.

He should become fluent in a language (or two) that is spoken in the part of the world that interests him. Study abroad. Hold summer internships in Washington or overseas. Network with vigor!

The “can afford” part is significant because very likely those summer internships and entry level jobs will be poorly paid or even unpaid. He will also need $$$ for that eventual masters.

In addition to schools already mentioned, some others to consider based on the strength of their International Relations/Studies departments are St. Andrews (Scotland), William & Mary (the two schools also have a joint program but you can find strong IR at each school separately as well), Johns Hopkins, Washington University St Louis, and Macalaster.

I would love to see a breakout of proposed majors on CC: sometimes it seems as if it’s 1/3 CS, 1/3 neuroscience & 1/3 IR!

Some great advice / info in these posts. As a couple of posters mentioned, there is a big difference between the academic specialty of “IR” and (say) a career in diplomacy or foreign relations, and it is not a field where a specific IR major is essential. Things that are essential:

=> A strong second language (doesn’t matter which, but picking one in an area of the world in which he has a natural interest as suggested above is a good one, as is spending serious time living/working in that language).

=> Unpaid internships (during college and after graduation) and badly paid entry level jobs (for which you are typically seriously over qualified). They get away with this b/c there are *so many people interested in the area.

=> Masters: be aware that in the US the good ones require a few years work experience; in the UK you can go straight from undergrad.

*Saw one yesterday that specified ‘masters preferred’ where the job description included “setting up chairs for meetings”