<p>@Jersey13
Getting a 2360 on the SATs is not impressive for HYP? That’s higher than what most people attending those universities scored (I got accepted to Yale and scored significantly lower than that).</p>
<p>One of the deciding factors for me to attend Yale was the international programs. Not only do they have an international studies major (the only one in the Ivy League) but also they have great resources. There’s the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies ([The</a> Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale](<a href=“The MacMillan Center |”>The MacMillan Center |)) which has a ton of different academic programs, research opportunities, etc. Yale also has a wonderful Center for International Experiences ([Opportunities</a> | Center for International Experience | Yale College](<a href=“Yale College”>Yale College)). They have strong programs in Beijing, London, and basically anywhere you want to go. What is really cool is all the options you have: you can go for a semester, a year, 5 weeks in the summer, spring break and do intensive language study, volunteer work, research, take classes or a mixture. I feel like Yale tries especially hard to give students every possible opportunity to study abroad.</p>
<p>What impressed me the most about the international experiences at Yale was the huge amount of funding available. It’s not even just financial aid. The university also gives out a lot of grants and scholarships. Basically if you want to do something abroad, you’ll be able to find the money. I’ve talked to a bunch of current students and they all told me that they were able to get all the funding they needed just by writing a proposal of what they wanted to do. They literally were written a check and told to spend all of it.</p>
<p>You can study whatever you want at Yale and definitely won’t be forced to take a million humanities classes. The curriculum is not as liberal as Brown, but definitely not as strict as most other colleges. The only requirements outside of your major are to take classes in the fields of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Quantitative Reasoning (aka math) as well as foreign language and writing. There are no core classes, you just pick whatever class carries one of those labels.</p>
<p>I didn’t apply to Princeton, but I did to Georgetown and Penn. Both are great schools for international relations. Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service is wonderful and lets you study every aspect of IR. Penn also has a great IR program and great study abroad (they even have a program in Cuba, which Yale doesn’t!) Penn is much more integrated into the city than Georgetown. At Georgetown you have to cross the Potomac into Virginia to take the metro to get into downtown DC, whereas at Penn you are already in a busy part of the city and can walk 1 block to get to the subway. </p>
<p>You should definitely look at George Washington and UChicago. GWU is at the heart of DC and has the Elliott School of International Affairs ([The</a> Elliott School of International Affairs - The George Washington University](<a href=“http://www.gwu.edu/~elliott/]The”>Elliott School of International Affairs | The George Washington University)) which is really great. UChicago has an International Studies major and great programs in economics (one of the best in the nation) and foreign languages.</p>
<p>You can PM me if you have any questions!</p>