<p>Anton1212 and UCLAri: </p>
<p>I am going to have to weigh in:</p>
<p>1) The schema used for academic vs. policy careers by you, UCLAri, is spot on. While I might quibble with some relative rankings within the academic list and certainly would within the policy rankings, I would not quibble at all with the way it was broken out.</p>
<p>2) Anton1212, you know I have argued that Fletcher is a great school and worth attending and have had friends that have had great experiences there, most of the people I know find Fletcher's location to be a significant drawback, so if collective preferences count for anything, I'd say you are exceptional. In terms of being on a larger campus (at Fletcher) vs. a separate campus (at SAIS), for me what you said is not at all an advantage of Fletcher and I think can be argued both ways; it's not definitive, though I think it breaks in favor of SAIS when considered against most persons' preferences. I REALLY liked the fact that at SAIS I didn't have to compete with other graduate students or undergrads. </p>
<p>Economics is a required subject at SAIS, so gripes about its quality may need to be taken with a grain of salt in terms of survey methodology; in my experience, even among people who had chosen SAIS aware of its economics requirements, there was a split about the value or necessity of them. The basic problem with economics in a policy school is that it will never be rigorous enough for the real nerds or light enough for those who are intimidated by numbers of economics. And you can't do much with a Master's in Economics itself except go and get a PhD. (In fact, most pure econ. programs dropped MAs). You know I've written at greater length elsewhere arguing almost the same point you were making Anton, but that doesn't change the fact that a significant number of grads end up with a stronger conversancy in economics overall than at other programs.</p>
<p>A policy school is part academic, part practical. I agree that Fletcher might be more academic in tone, but again for me that's one of the advantages of being at SAIS and in DC: you are in constant contact with people and often professors who work within "policy tanks" and government and so on who actually do the stuff in the books. I went to IR school to get a Master's with a hope that it would be academic-cum-practicality. SAIS had enough spectrum in this regard to satisfy I think all tastes from the more to the less academic. Classmates of mine went to Harvard, Berkeley, and Chicago for Poli Sci, Political Economy, and Economics, etc.</p>
<p>For a Master's student, the SAIS library is 99% of the time sufficient. When it isn't: Georgetown, GW, AU are more than sufficient. This level of resources is I believe overstated, especially for the purposes of a Master's program. And there's always the Library of Congress in DC.</p>
<p>In terms of ranking, I would rank the policy schools as follows:</p>
<p>Top Tier for IR:</p>
<p>SAIS, Fletcher, Columbia</p>
<p>Top Tier for Master's of Public Administration with an IR Focus:</p>
<p>Harvard, Princeton</p>
<p>Top Tier for Asian/LA focused IR:</p>
<p>IRPS</p>
<p>Dropping only is Georgetown, which is 2nd tier in DC on the graduate level, though first-rate on the undergrad level. I know Georgetown has been improving, so maybe I am a bit out of date on this, but I still think it's decidedly below the top tier I named.</p>
<p>I think it's hard to rank Harvard and Princeton against the IR Policy schools 'cause they have such different course foci (though their students do end up in competition often for wonkish jobs).</p>