<p>Can someone rank the 8 ivies in order from best to worst for their International Relations program? If some don't have IR, then how are their political science programs?</p>
<p>Thanks for your comments!</p>
<p>The best source, although its tangential and “media driven” is the Graduate School rankings by Newsweek Magazine. Its by major and program. That gives you SOME indication of the strength of the undergraduate programs because the grad students teach the undergrads. The tenured Ivy profs SELDOM teach in class and are too busy publishing, giving lectures on circuit and prognosticating to lower themselves to “teaching undergrads”. </p>
<p>IR is highly competitive because it is so popular as a major. Getting into the State Department or Intelligence Community is exceptionally competitive and frustrating. A lot of these majors end up working for a big accounting or big law firm or corporation overseas as “regional specialists and analysts.”</p>
<p>Most high level jobs in IR require a minimum of an M.A., and preferably a PhD. </p>
<p>But then again, I am not one to suggest that your undergraduate major has to translate into a direct and specific career path. College is not a technical school. So its a fun major, but just be forewarned the job market is wicked competitive. Trust me, I know.</p>
<p>[Foreign</a> Policy: Inside the Ivory Tower](<a href=“http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4685&page=1]Foreign”>http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4685&page=1)</p>
<p>FP is a great source as well. I read it often, though its got a decidedly liberal bent to it. But those rankings were sort of a compilation of several programs, some of them economic, some of them governmental, some of them geo-political and so forth. Not a strict IR ranking. I despise rankings anyway as corrupted and manipulated and superficial.</p>
<p>Nope. All they did was survey 1,400 academics and scholars in the field of international relations and ask which schools provided the best preparation for a career in IR. (So it is true that it isn’t really a ranking of IR programs per se.)</p>
<p>I disagree that looking at grad programs is the key in this exercise. Dartmouth is number 8 on the undergrad list and has no grad program.</p>