My son graduated from the IA program at JMU a couple of years ago. If you are interested in the program, I highly recommend contacting the head of the program and requesting a meeting. Not only did the dean have a sit down meeting with my son, he arranged for him to accompany a senior student around the building. I did not attend that part.
BTW, I am just a parent, so I could be a bit off of my perceptions. After reading the course descriptions and the meeting, my thought was that the program was geared toward people who wanted to be those behind the scenes people in the Jack Ryan/Jason Bourne movies. Not in the field getting shot at, but the ones on the computers feeing them intel. And while that probably isn’t completely off-base for some gradutates… at graduation, the professors had a reception for parents/graduates that talked more about the program. There, it was presented to be more like an LAC education. They learn to take information from all kinds of sources in various academic areas, analyze it, and be able to present it (in written and oral format) to the targeted audience. They learned how to think and work well in groups.
The minor is so you can be more specialized in what you want to do. I know there are languages, data analytics, business, and geography. I’m sure there are others. But this is so you can get jobs in any field, not just the FBI/CIA, etc. At our meeting, he said that all his seniors at jobs by November. With my son’s class, I’m not sure that held true, but I believe everyone he knew had jobs by graduation. Of course, now it is not the best time to try for a Federal job, but again.. the minors can help make you marketable elsewhere.
Re: Honors. My son chose not to go the honors route. At JMU, you have to take a bunch of classes that did not interest him at all. If you’re looking for a small cohort, I believe you will find that in the IA program. Unless they expanded in the last couple of years, it is capped at 55 students, due to class/lab space. This is why there is that secondary admission after your freshman year. However, in our meeting, the dean said most of the students dropped out themselves, as the program wasn’t what they thought it would be. They thought it was more like CSI on TV. But again, this could be different now.
FWIW, my son absolutely loved the program. The professors are highly regarded in the DC area. My son from time to time gets “oh you had X as your professor? Wow!”