Good schools for international relations

momrath
Sat, 07 Jul 2012 19:01:38 +0000

I live in a developing country with a large US Embassy, USAID presence and hundreds of governmental agencies and NGOs. I’m in the private sector, but I interact quite a bit with “official Americans” and I can tell you categorically that where you do your undergrad has very little bearing on your success in the field.

(Now graduate school is another story: there you see the same names over and over, mostly Georgetown, Princeton, Harvard, Tufts, JHU.)

The key factor during your undergrad years is to gain exposure through courses – not necessarily IR; economics. history, political science are also good – through internships and summer jobs, through connections with professors and alumni, through travel and language study opportunities. Then spend a couple of years in the NGO/consulting world, take the Foreign Service exam and you’re off!

You have a good list of good schools. If I were to eliminate, I’d focus more geographically so that visits would be possible. I hope you have a safety you’re not mentioning as well.

If you like Carleton, you might look at some of the other academically strong LACs like Macalester, Williams, Amherst, Middlebury, Weselyan. If you are female, Smith, Wellesley. All well represented in the State Department and with excellent alumni networks and career counseling.