<p>Tufts has a separate Economics Department, but also has Economics under International Relations. What are the exact differences?</p>
<p>I compared the course offerings, but it seems like whatever Economic materials that are taught in IR are also taught in Economics department.</p>
<p>There’s no difference. The IR program has no classes of its own; its just a curriculum of courses pulled from other departments, primarily history, political science, and economics. The econ courses required by the IR program are literally just Econ courses, taught by a professor from the econ department.</p>
<p>So if I wanted to concentrate on International Economics, specifically Environmental or Development, is it better to do it as an IR major or an Econ major? Would it be easy to double major in both (although I was considering majoring in a language too, which complicates things)?</p>
<p>Whether it would be better to major in IR or Econ would depend on your career path. If you wanted to work for the World Bank, IMF, or something similar, then Econ would be preferable. If you wanted to work for a State Department or an NGO, IR would probably be the better choice. Professors, classes, alumni, and internships can help you make this decision, and since the two programs have so much overlap, it’s not a decision you’ll really have to make until the end of your sophomore year, so no sense worrying unduly about it now. You also might end up just preferring one to the other after you’ve taken some classes.</p>
<p>I don’t want to say it’s “easy” to double major in IR and economics, but it’s definitely achievable and is actually an extremely popular double major. Over half of IR majors double major, and the two most popular second majors for IR students are Econ and a language. </p>
<p>You would have to petition to triple major, but this, too, is achievable given that
A) there’s so much overlap between IR/Econ and IR/language and
B) it’s quite easy to fulfill most of your distribution requirements through your majors. IR and Econ will easily eliminate your social science, mathematics, and world civ requirements, majoring in a language will take care of your culture requirement, and it won’t take too much creativity to have the IR or language major satisfy the humanities requirement - really just leaves natural science, which might be achievable through environmental studies relating to environmental economics. </p>
<p>You won’t be able to slack off too much, but it’s very realistic to think you could triple major in all three if you planned your classes well and in advance. I would find a competent advisor as soon as possible, preferably someone in the Econ department who does considerable IR work.</p>
<p>I think the main difference is that if you major in IR there’s a serious foreign language requirement, not so for econ. (But if you are thinking of also majoring in a foreign language, that’s probably not an issue for you.)</p>