<p>Tiers work differently in graduate/professional school. I think it largely depends on the type of law you want to do (there's a huge difference between, say, immigration law and international corporate law, obviously). As a general rule, I'd recommend going to the best school you can realistically get into/afford/see yourself at (i.e., not everyone wants to do a MAID at Harvard).</p>
<p>positiveg,</p>
<p>As kigali said, "international law" is really broad. That said, I don't think there's a clear argument one way or the other as to how much a school's reputation matters. GWU has a strong ranking both in IR and law (they're #20 in the USNews law rankings); however, American is around #50 in law with UF and FSU. I've always found obsessing over school rankings to be pretty stupid; however, regionalism IS important in law school selection since most jobs are considered to come from "who you know" sources (i.e. if you wanted to get a job in Atlanta out of law school your best bet would be to go to either a top 10 law school or a school in Georgia...even the latter would probably do you better than from a school in the 25-30 range). Point is, I'd say your bet bet is to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of each. American and GWU will get you great connections in DC, but the entire 3-year tuition at a Florida law school will actually be a bit less than one year at American or GWU. On the flip side, going to school in Florida may or may not leave you at a disadvantage in the connections game, so you'd have to accept the possibility that you might just have to be an attorney in Florida for a couple of years until you can build a nice resume to get a job with the feds. Personally, I'd go the UF/FSU route (I'm a native Floridian doing a master's in IR at Denver, and also considering the law route a few years down the road. If I do, I'm definitely going back to Florida to get in on that cheap tuition!) if you want to do law. Hope this helps.</p>
<p>Your Post was very helpful UCLAri....how is George Washington's Trachtenberg School? (I know its not International Relations) but I want to do Public Admin with an International Affairs specialization...THANKS!</p>
<p>Does anyone know anything about IBEI in Barcelona? I'm well aware that people who wish to get into NGOs and academia are best served by doing advanced study in the US, but I am looking to be an international journalist and would strongly consider a program like this, given my career goals, the bilingual program, and a European perspective. Any thoughts?</p>
<p>UCLAri and/or kigali,</p>
<p>Any idea how strict, difficult, and long the security clearance process is for the State Dept exactly? Im thinking of going into the Foreign Service eventually, but most of my family lives outside the US and Ive traveled to a lot of different countries .</p>
<p>shadowcat, I've gone through the FS Clearance process, both for a Secret and Top Secret Clearance (the first was for an internship, you need TS to actually become and FSO). Like you, I have a lot of family abroad and have traveled a lot as well (including to some "sketchy" countries). They say the clearances take 60-90 days on average, and the first time around, I got mine back in that time frame. However, the TS ended up taking 9 months. I was going crazy because all of my friends already had their clearances and I was really worried I would never get mine. However, they did eventually get back to me and everything was OK. They just like to be really thorough. I can tell you though they have a very low tolerance for alcohol abuse, drug use of any kind, psychological issues (i.e. if you are on any medications, have ever been to counseling) or money problems. I've known people who lost their clearances for all of these issues, even though their problems didn't seem like that big of a deal to me. For them, its easier to reject anyone who is even slightly, rather than take on the liability. Also, be prepared to answer a lot of really personal questions and be made to feel very uncomfortable. </p>
<p>i hope i haven't scared you too much! just telling it like it is!</p>
<p>traveler22, thanks for your input. wow, they're that thorough, huh? mind my asking you if you're currently an FSO? if so, do you think going through the clearance process was worth it in the end? do they actually sit you down for an interview and ask you a lot of personal questions for however long it takes? and as for psychological issues, i went to a couple of counseling sessions while in undergrad (to put it very mildly, let's just say the environment was pretty cut-throat and elitist and i just didn't fit in w/ a lot of the ppl there, so transitioning was difficult)--do you think that might seriously hurt me in the clearance process? i've never heard of anyone not passing the clearance process, but apparently that does happen, i guess. i'd hate to do everything in preparation to become an FSO only to be told later on that i can't become one b/c i failed the clearance process...</p>
<p>shadowcat, I have been accepted into the FS, but they are letting me go to grad school before I start, so I haven't officially begun the job yet, although I've interned with state 3 times, so I do have a good idea of what the job is like. the question of whether or not it is worth it is highly personal and will depend on your desire to live a diplomatic lifestyle, which is unlike almost any other career. You are required to move to a new place about every two years, and in the early part of your career you may have little to no input into where you will be going. For many people who aren't concerned with stability this is like a dream come true. They get paid (decently well, esp considering they pay for housing and travel, etc) to see the world and be involved in major international issues. </p>
<p>however, this is not without its costs. i've had the impression from the young FSOs I've met abroad that it can be sort of a lonely life. romantically speaking, it's hard to find someone who will follow you anywhere in the world and give up being around their family and friends and most likely give up on their own career ambitions as well. plus when you move every two years and the people who work with you are constantly coming and going, its hard to form very lasting connections. lastly, you won't get to see your own family and friends very often. i'm not saying that some people, don't make it work, it's just a challenge that you won't experience with almost any other career. </p>
<p>maybe none of these things are really a concern for you or you think the benefits will outweigh the costs, in which case, its totally worth it to go through the clearance process. as for your specific questions about the process, they do sit you down and interview you face to face, perhaps multiple times. they also will ask for a long list of your friends and acquaintances and they will speak to all of these people and ask questions about you. with respect to the counseling you mentioned, i wouldn't worry about it too much. the key is to be honest, because they will find out a lot about you and its much worse to lie or sort of avoid the truth, because then you will appear untrustworthy, which is the last quality they want in a diplomat.</p>
<p>traveler22, thanks for the advice, and congrats on being accepted to the FS!! yes, the diplomatic lifestyle--having to move about every 2 or 3 years--is probably the biggest drawback and plus at the same time for me. getting paid to travel the world and work w/ people from many different countries sounds cool to me, but i'm sure i'd want some stability later on in my life. this might sound like a weird question, but do people ever join the FS and then quit after working for about several years and switch to a career that doesn't require as much travel? is that even possible, and if so, would that look really bad?</p>
<p>one more question, i know you said that FSO's often don't have much of a say in choosing their posts during the early part of their career, but i was wondering to what extent that's true? i mean, does the State Dept at least ask for your list of preferred countries and try to accommodate your wishes as much as possible? if i were to request a country that's relatively safe and prosperous (but not at the top of most FSO's lists, i imagine), and if i speak the native language and have personal ties to the country, would i have a high chance of being posted in that country? or would there still be a good chance that i might be sent to, say, iraq (even though i don't speak any arabic or kurdish)?</p>
<p>you may be required to make a minimum service commitment. i agreed to work at least 4.5 years. besides, you would want to work at least that much for it to have a meaningful impact on your career. job placement is based on the positions which open up at that time. so it is likely that a majority of the positions will be in Iraq, Afghanistan and the other posts which are being given priority at this point. you will be able to order the available jobs in terms of your preference, but the decision will really be up to the State Dept. its called "directed assignment". in terms of going to a country where you have personal connections, it is first unlikely that a job will happen to be open there when you make your "bids" for a post. second, even if it were, they dont like to place people in countries where they have personal ties, because it may be considered a conflict of interest. i was born abroad and have been told i cannot be posted in my birth country even though i speak the language, etc. so you really cannot expect to have much influence in where you will end up.</p>
<p>thanks again for the advice. well, i was born in the US and have lived here most of my life, but based on what you said, i guess that if most of my family lives in a particular foreign country, it might create a "conflict of interest" and my chances of being posted there would be virtually nil, right? geez, and i thought being able to speak the language, being familiar w/ the people and the culture, even looking like the native population would be considered a plus for a post since that might make foreign officials feel more at ease and more willing to negotiate...but I can see the State Dept's line of reasoning. thanks again for all your input!</p>
<p>Posters/Moderators,</p>
<p>First of all, I've found this web forum to be by far the most informative and accessible resource on grad schools, at least aside from the schools' websites themselves. Getting the word straight from the horse's mouth has been awesome and I appreciate it. If there are other sites out there equivalent to this, could you post them as a reference in this forum?</p>
<p>Second, I've got a few questions about the MA-in-IR school experience that don't directly relate to admissions and which school is ranked over which. I think the common-sense answer there is that published rankings are generally inaccurate; this leads me to ask what are accurate evaluations of each school, and how do we measure them? Or more generally, what are the major differences between each of the schools relative to one another? If we can't come to a consensus on which school is #2 and which #3, I'm hoping we can at least figure out that school A has better research resources than school B, but that school B has a better alumni network than school A. With that, I'd be interested to hear the relative strengths and weaknesses of the top-tier schools (G-town, SAIS, SIPA, KSG, SIPA, UCSD, et al) in the following areas:</p>
<p>-Student/Teacher interaction (classroom only? Professional mentor? Concerned and helpful advisors?)
-Professor quality (classroom engagement as well as academic strength)
-Academic/Research resources (any significant drawbacks/advantages at any one school?)
-Alumni Network (quality, strength, location, helpfulness)
-School-to-Work assistance (internships, job fairs, career center, etc)
-Financial Aid
-Physical Location or any other unique quality that one school might have that none of the others do.</p>
<p>I don't think any one person has the answers to all of these - though UCLAri has been a great resource - but hopefully through further discussion we can start to generate some good information.</p>
<p>Broseph - I like your idea, but I think the categories you've outlined are a little too broad to produce any kind of "School A has better research resources than School B"-type statements. For instance, Georgetown, GW and American are part of the DC-wide Consortium, which means you can take up to six credits at any other school in the Consortium and can use their libraries (or order books from a Consortium library online to be delivered to your library). Students from all DC-area schools participate in/attend all the DC-area events, which can be a great research resource, too. </p>
<p>I can only comment on American (SIS), and this is obviously my personal experience, so YMMV, but thus far, I've been very pleased with my program, the professors and the professional links I've established with their help and guidance. They've been very helpful and approachable both in and outside the classroom, and they've offered me opportunities to help out with their research and encouraged me to pursue my own. There's a good mix of strong academics and experienced practitioners, so you're exposed to a lot of different areas. The alumni network is fairly strong, the school has a really good reputation downtown (where a lot of alums are, unsurprisingly), and the career center has been trying really hard to offset the negative effects of the current job market situation. A lot of SIS students get PMFs with the career center's help, so that's a big plus for people looking to work in the government. Merit-based aid is very limited, unfortunately, so that's a drawback. </p>
<p>For prospective applicants looking for the right school(s) and for accepted applicants looking to make the right decision, I'd recommend doing two things:</p>
<p>1) Come up with a list of places where you'd like to work in 1, 2 and 5 years, go over their websites and look at where their current associates went to school. This should give you a good idea of what kind of job placement opportunities are out there and which organizations have "relationships" with certain schools.
2) Carefully go over each program's course requirements (core classes, major field classes, related field classes), read the course descriptions, check out who's teaching them and see if that's what you're looking for in terms of both strong and intellectually stimulating coursework. Go over the class schedules for your school/program on the registrar's page and see what kind of other classes are on offer. If you hate your classes and/or find you have nothing interesting to take, you'll be miserable.</p>
<p>Any comments on Syracuse's Maxwell School of International Relations or the University of Denver's Josef Korbel School of International Affairs?</p>
<p>I'd rather be in Denver than upstate NY and they're both equivelent but excellent schools. It really depends on your focus - is it HR, Security, ID?</p>
<p>Hey everyone, really informative posts. I was accepted to the MA program at the Whitehead School at Seton Hall. Any thoughts/impressions of this program?</p>
<p>Well the Whitehead School is an afiliated member of the ASPIA, so that speaks highly of the program. While the program may not get high marks from some people, only because it's not mentioned in the top 15 IR schools, I still feel it has a good program, just lacks the prestige as many of the other programs that have been mentioned. I applied there.</p>
<p>yeah i am still waiting to hear from a few schools, so I don't know yet if i will end up there. I must say that I have gotten a pretty good impression of it just from speaking to professors and students. Strange that it doesn't receive more recognition. It is the only program of its kinda in the new york area other than SIPA.</p>
<p>Hi
I do not hear anything about Virginia Tech MPIA program? Any thoughts?</p>