<p>I have been enrolled at the Engineering School, but I was thinking that I should make the best of the situation and take IR instead.....especially since I am quite informed on world affairs. But I'm concerned about the foreign language requirement. I've never had a foreign language. Is it then plausible to take up IR with say chinese as the language, especially since the grades have to be good..........I mean, do they start from the alphabets or do I have to know something already ?</p>
<p>You absolutely don’t need to already know a language. There are introductory classes that will start from the alphabet, in all of the languages that Tufts offers.</p>
<p>And pardon my asking, but is English your first language? I was under the impression that you were Indian.</p>
<p>Well, my dad speaks only english ( his dad studied at cambridge )…while my mom speaks bengali…
In my school I have english as a first language and bengali as my second…( I barely passed in bengali in my board exams and flunked my school ones )…but does Tufts have say hindi or bengali…???
And how do I change from engineering to IR ??? I already got the advising option questionaire for engineering…</p>
<p>Ah, OK. I was asking because there are [exemptions[/url</a>] for native speakers of non-English languages. As it doesn’t sound like you’re a native speaker, you probably wouldn’t be able to test out of the requirement, but it might be worth trying, anyway. Tufts does not offer Hindi or Bengali, no, but there are a [url=<a href=“http://ase.tufts.edu/ir/aboutReqLanguageNotOffered.htm]variety”>Homepage | International Relations Program]variety</a> of ways](<a href=“Homepage | International Relations Program”>Homepage | International Relations Program) you could continue to study those languages and count them towards the requirement. A likely path would be testing into an intermediate level, followed by some combination of taking courses offered at other areas colleges, taking coursework in India during the summers if you go home, or studying abroad at an institution that offers such coursework.</p>
<p>Your first step in becoming an IR major is to switch schools, from the School of Engineering to the School of Arts & Sciences. Don’t stress, you have plenty of time to do it. Once you’re in the School of Arts & Sciences, you have until the end of your sophomore year to declare a major, and actually you aren’t expected (or even allowed, I believe) to declare a major until the beginning of your sophomore year.
To get the ball rolling, you can contact your dean about this, who should be Kim Knox, yes? Everyone loves her. Don’t be at all surprised if she convinces you to stay an engineer, at least for your first semester. Why is it exactly that you want to switch, anyway?</p>
<p>I think one should play to ones strengths…since Tufts is decidedly better in IR than engineering, it would be better to take IR…especially since I do not have any clear goal right now…</p>
<p>Well it’s a lot easier to leave the engineering school than to rejoin it. What if you stayed in the engineering school for one year, taking the basic foundational courses as well as your Freshman Writing Requirement as well as one language class per semester, and then re-evaluate your position at the beginning of your sophomore year? That way, if you decide to switch then you still would have made positive progress in your freshman year: you’d be on track with your language requirement, through engineering courses you would have finished both your natural science and math distribution requirements, and you’d be finished with the writing requirement.<br>
You could then easily finish an IR major in three years, as required core courses for IR would satisfy your social science credit, and many arts and humanities courses which would satisfy distribution requirements can be counted towards a thematic concentration of IR.</p>
<p>Well, I’m completely unfamilier with the credit system…and most of what you said went over my head…but I understood and appreciate the gist of it.
So I’ll ask my engineering advisors to fix a course for me which might facilitate an entry to IR in my second year…could I also fit in an economics minor in my third or fourth year…???
On second thought…I’ve always appreciated being decisive in what I do…and this plan seems a little shaky to me…I think I’ll write to kim knox to shift me to the Arts and Science school…</p>
<p>Being decisive is only a good quality if the decisions you make are sound. If you love IR, by all means become an IR major. But the comparative renown of a program is really not a sound reason for switching your major. Do what interests you, not what’s prestigious. If you know right now without a doubt that IR interests you more than engineering, then just ignore me. But if you’re not sure which you like better, I’m urging you to take your time, experience both, and make an informed decision, instead of just a fast decision. It takes longer, significantly longer, to finish an engineering major than an IR major. So, if you do engineering for a year, or even just a semester, you have plenty of time to decide it’s not for you and switch over. If you start out as an IR major, you really wouldn’t be able to switch back to engineering without spending another full year in school. Furthermore, a year spent as an engineer would not be time wasted for an IR major, as the classes you would take would satisfy core requirements for a liberal arts major. The reverse is not true, as engineers have far fewer core requirements.
I don’t know if this matters to you or not, but it also bears pointing out that career prospects for Tufts engineers are much better than career prospects for Tufts IR majors, both in terms of the availability and the lucrativeness of potential jobs.</p>
<p>Regarding the credit system:
Every class at Tufts is worth one credit. Liberal Arts students need 34 credits to graduate, usually around 10 credits for a major, and a number of distribution requirements.
Distribution requirements compel students to take courses in a wide range of areas. Liberal Arts students need at least two courses in each of the following fields: Fine Arts, Social Science, Humanities, World Civilization, Mathematics, and Natural Sciences. There is also a six credit language requirement, but most students test out of at least some of these.
Engineers, on the other hand, have no language requirement, and no natural science, mathematics, or world civ requirement. Instead, they have to get ONE credit each in the humanities and social sciences, take one credit of a writing course unless they test out of it, and then fulfill three requirements that can be in the fine arts, humanities, or social sciences.
However, the engineering program is highly regimented. Missing foundational intro courses in your freshman year will set you back considerably if you try to re-enter the engineering school at a later date.</p>
<p>So here’s my argument. Assuming that you’re unsure of whether you want to major in engineering or IR, you can best keep your options open and get things accomplished by staying in the engineering school.
For your first year, if you start out in the liberal arts school you will miss the foundational, introductory courses that engineering builds on, and you will find yourself likely unable to reenter the program without committing to an additional year of college. Through IR courses, you would have finished your distribution requirements for the engineering program, but you would still be behind.
If you start out in the engineering school, taking only the required foundational courses and using the rest of your time to take IR-oriented classes, you would be making positive steps in both directions. If you decide to continue in engineering, you will have completed or nearly completed your humanities/social sciences distribution requirements as well as taking the intro courses you needed to stay on track. If you decide to switch to liberal arts, your engineering classes will have fulfilled your math/science distribution requirements, you would have taken some introductory IR courses, and you will still have plenty of time to finish the IR major.
What allows for this difference is that IR courses do not build on each other as much as engineering courses do. Typically, IR majors only have two big courses that will act as prerequisites, keeping you out of other courses if you haven’t already done them: Economics 5 and Political Science 61. Once you’ve taken these two courses, you can take virtually anything you want, and (importantly) take multiple courses in a single subject area in a given semester. There are only really two tiers here.
Engineers have it differently. Each semester enables courses for the next semester, making it much more difficult to play “catch-up” by taking multiple courses in a single area simultaneously. Thus, even though you might have enough open course slots to theoretically take all your credits for engineering, if you get a late start in completing the chain of requirements, you may not be able to finish in four years.</p>
<p>Did that make any sense? It’s late here. . .</p>
<p>Thanks a million Snarf…I was actually worried about the job availability after graduation…I’ll take your word for it that Tufts Engineers have it better…I shot off my third letter of the week to Kim Knox…I just hope she doesn’t get irritated with my constant indecision…!!!</p>
<p>I’m not an engineer, so I’ve never met her, but I live with engineers and they unanimously think she’s a wonderful person.
Once you get on campus, she can help you plan out a course of study that’s right for you and balances your interests. Since she’s in the engineering school, she might not know about IR requirements, though, so you could also sit down and talk to someone in the IR department. I’ll PM you my e-mail address, so that once you get here if you need some clarity about what you’re on track for, I can point you in the direction of a faculty member you could talk to.</p>
<p>Since you raised the issue, Snarf, what is the job placement like for IR majors?</p>
<p>Thanks Snarf…but if I’ll stick to mechanical engineering if the job prospects are better there…gotta bring home the bacon…
But what would you say would be a better course if I was looking at a management degree later…quant economics or engineering management ?
Also…which one in Tufts is better…Mechanical Engineering or Electrical and Computer Engineering? I’d prefer mechanical…</p>
<p>I second the question about job placement for IR majors, if you don’t mind answering.</p>
<p>A lot depends on your specific concentration and interests in IR. The International Economics concentration would tend to produce proportionately more people interested in international business, MBAs, financial regulation, and global companies. Many end up going to law school for international law. Government attracts a large number of graduates, often after some graduate study. NGOs and think-tanks take a large share as well. International relations also prepares students for really any career that would require knowledge about international affairs, like journalism, translating, the tourism industry, and consulting.
Of course, this is considering only the people who pursued their field. The fact of the matter is that most adults have jobs completely unrelated to their undergraduate major.</p>
<p>MBA programs take applicants from all areas. Both programs would develop strong quantitative skills that would serve you well on the GMAT. The other major factor for getting into b-school is your undergrad record, so choose the program you think you would be more engaged with. Now engineering is typically considered more difficult than econ, so your GPA will likely be lower as an engineer than as a liberal arts major, but grad schools take this into account, and engineers need much lower GPAs than liberal arts majors to qualify for academic honors.
The other non-quantitative aspects of getting into and succeeding at b-school, including fostering productive relationships with your professors, will be most strengthened by (again) following a program with which you will me more interested and engaged.</p>
<p>If you prefer mechanical engineering, then do mechanical engineering. I don’t know that either is considered “better”, but I wouldn’t know.</p>