I’m a freshman in Princeton and I’m planning on majoring in Woodrow Wilson School.The thing is, I’ve heard a lot about the school’s reputation not only in US but the world as well. And I know that Woodrow Wilson has been the top major in Princeton until recently. Also, I’m kinda interested in social sciences like Politics and Economics and WWS seems like a good match for me. However, I’ve never actually taken a closer look at the nature of the program. So, since the moment I got here, I’ve been hearing the same thing from many people, including grad students and even academic advisers: “Woodrow Wilson is a little bit shallow”. My view of college education is that you have to go really deep in a particular field and eventually be able to call yourself a specialist in that field. “Depth” is what I consider the most important thing. I was surprised by what I’ve heard about WWS but now that I think of it, it kinda makes sense: it’s not a Politics or Economics or History department, but rather a hodgepodge of multiple fields. It seems to incorporate a lot of stuff but because of that it seems that WWS is broad but not deep. Also, I’m concerned about the ability to find a stable job after college, and I’ve heard that seemingly fancy degrees like Political Science are a little bit more than useless. Many of you can say: “do what you really want to do”, but that’s the point: I’m not too passionate about anything, and I’m not really interested in Public Policy. I’m planning to find my true academic passion in college but I doubt that passion will be called “Woodrow Wilson” because if you think about it, it’s really vague. So I wanted to ask you, especially current Woodrow Wilson students or Princeton professors, how good WWS really is?
Putting aside the fact that there is no major called Woodrow Wilson, it is true that some universities do not offer an undergraduate public policy degree because they believe students should obtain training in a discipline (like economics, political science, etc.). But some top college do offer the undergrad degree, including Duke. Since you do not have passion about anything and you are not interested in public policy, perhaps you should find out what you are interested in.
“Putting aside the fact that there is no major called Woodrow Wilson”
False, please do your research. Same question as OP.
If you’re not particularly interested in policy, then I wouldn’t do WWS. Take history, politics, and Econ courses and figure out what kind of topics/modes of analysis you find most compelling (and are good at), and go from there. It may help to ask yourself what kind of senior thesis you want to do.
You don’t need to declare until the spring of your sophomore year so you have lots of time:
http://wws.princeton.edu/undergraduate-academics/majoring-wws/declaring-wws-major
Since you are right on campus, why not arrange to meet with a few people in that department and utilize their first hand knowledge?