Should I apply here?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Maryland - College Park
1

HI everyone, I am a recent A.A. graduate looking to transfer. I am interested in a career in international relations which I understand eventually involves graduate school.

Here is my situation. Because of the field I am interested in I wanted to study in or near Washington D.C. I have been accepted into American University (#9 undergraduate I.R. program) but I can’t afford to attend and I expect the same thing will happen when I hear back from GWU. This means I will likely attend FSU (my home state) in the coming fall.

I don’t want to give up on studying in D.C. because of the networking opportunities and I noticed that the University of Maryland- College Park is still accepting transfer applications. The only problem is that they don’t offer any undergraduate degrees in International Relations/International Affairs/Foreign Affairs. I would likely have to settle for their Government & Politics degree.

Essentially the question at hand is: does UMD-College Park’s proximity to DC and killer internships (State Department, IGO’s, NGO’s, etc) outweigh the fact that I cannot specifically study International Relations there?

Should I even bother applying to UMD- College Park or will FSU’s International Affairs program be better for me?

2

Mind you, I don’t go to UMD yet. But here’s something I heard at one of the admitted student days at UMD (since ,y declared major was GVPT). Within the Government & Politics major, you can have a certain “focus” - one of them being international relations. They even said that some people who do an “international focus” can just focus on just specific regions of the world, if that’s what they want. So you don’t have to give up on international relations at all if you want to go into the GVPT major. That’s just something to consider before you decide to apply or not.

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Thank you @noemii

That’s exactly the type of answer I was looking for and pretty good news as well.

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Glad that I was able to help. Good luck with FSU next year :slight_smile: