which colleges/universities offer the best program in the international relations major
Have you considered Jacobs University in Germany? They got the best rankings for Political Science (International Relations) in the German-speaking countries. They offer a great program with the opportunity to go on many excursions to the German Parliament and places like that. Also, the program is way cheaper than most American universities at 26,000 euros.
Florida International University has a very good program for International Relations
William and Mary and Holy Cross are two great choices. WM is expensive and competitive for OOS. Robert Gates, James Comey, and Jen Psaki are all alums, Jon Stewart too. Holy Cross claims to meet full financial need. It’s academics are good as anywhere, and IR is an area of strength. Macalester, an LAC in Minneapolis, is also a great choice, with many terrific international students. Good luck!
Not sure what the presence of international students really says about the strength of the IR program of a school?
IR is a sub-discipline of political science, and is steeped in theory. Tufts is known for its IR program; Chicago and Dartmouth are also very good.
@International95, to answer your question–it varies. If a school had lots of international students in science and engineering programs, it would not make a difference for the OP at that school. But if a school–especially an LAC–has a good number of international students in IR/Econ/Government programs it can inform class discussions and other student learning and make a difference.
We heard from an international econ professor at a school with a similar profile that having a number of similar international/UWC students in the classroom really informed the discussion and brought in different, relevant points of view. So I think that it would be a plus at Macalester, but not everywhere.
Tufts is a good suggestion too. Chicago and Dartmouth, too. Chicago, I think, is just ridiculously competitive in RD–probably 1-2% acceptance–right now.
Tufts, Georgetown, UChicago. All top tier for IR.
Tufts, Georgetown, George Washington, American
Foreign Policy magazine periodically ranks graduate and undergraduate IR programs. Here’s a Wikipedia summary of their rankings over several years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_the_Ivory_Tower
You may not want to overlook smaller schools strong across the government/public policy/IR spectrum such as Middlebury, Hamilton, Mount Holyoke, Pitzer, Claremont Mckenna and
Dickinson.
Middlebury is awesome (great language schools). Of course there are the obvious schools and I feel as though people often overlook GW and AU because of GU. They’re all awesome schools. Georgetown’s SFS is pretty amazing. GW’s Elliot school is also pretty awesome from what I hear. AU is great too!
U Chicago, Georgetown, Boston College, George Washington, American
U Chicago, Georgetown, Boston College, George Washington, American
Great Schools for Political Science/Government Majors
Amherst
American U
Bates
Bard
Bowdoin
Bryn Mawr
BYU
Carleton
Claremont Mckenna
Clark U
Holy Cross
Columbia
Connecticut College
Davidson
Dickinson
Drew
Franklin and Marshall
George Mason
Georgetown
George Washington
Gettysburg
Gonzaga
Grinnell
Harvard
Kenyon
Macalester
McGill
Princeton
Scripps
Stanford
Swarthmore
Syracuse
UC Berkeley
UCLA
U Washington
Vassar
Wake Forest
Yale
Source: Princeton Review
I would add Johns Hopkins to your list of undergrad programs. Their masters program (SAIS in DC) is currently 2nd in the country and they offer a unique 3/2 masters program for students who can handle the rigor. Daughter has been having an amazing experience in the undergrad program.
@brownie777, important to understand that the Princeton Review DOES NOT rank majors; they do rank many other characteristics of schools https://www.princetonreview.com/college-rankings/ranking-methodology
The Princeton Review’s College Ranking Methodology
Our 62 annual college rankings lists are entirely based on what students attending the schools in our Best Colleges book tell us about their colleges and their experiences at them via our student survey for this project. Each ranking list reports the top 20 colleges (of the 382 in the book) in a specific category.
We tallied the rankings lists in the current edition, The Best 382 Colleges (published August 2018), based on the data from our surveys of 137,000 students at the 382 schools in the book. Our student survey has 80 questions in four sections. We ask students about: 1) their school’s academics/administration, 2) life at their college, 3) their fellow students and 4) themselves. Students answer by selecting one of five answer choices that range across a grid or scale. The answer choice headers might range from “Strongly Agree” to “Strongly Disagree” or “Excellent” to “Poor”: some are percentages with ranges from “0–20%” to “81–100%.” This answer choice five-point scale—which is called a Likert scale—is the most commonly used measurement for this type of survey research: a consensus-based assessment.
We give each college a score for its students’ answers to each survey question. Similar to a GPA, it is a metric that provides us with a numerical base to compare student opinions from college to college—apples to apples, as it were. Using these scores (which we compute out to several percentage points), we are able to tally our ranked lists. Schools that make it onto any of our 62 top 20 lists are those at which the surveyed students (as a group) indicated a very high consensus of opinion about that topic.
Most of our ranking lists are based on students’ answers to one survey question, such as “How do you rate your campus food?” Some, such as our “Best Classroom Experience” list, are based on students’ answers to more than one question.
Note: The Princeton Review does not rank the schools in the book overall, 1 to 382, hierarchically or in a single list category. The Princeton Review reports the top 20 schools (of the 382 in the book) for each of its 62 different ranking list categories—but does not report ranks beyond the top 20 in any category (i.e., schools ranked 21 to 382).
Note: No ranking list reflects The Princeton Review’s opinion of (or rating of) the colleges. A college’s appearance on a ranking list in the book is entirely the result of what its own students surveyed by The Princeton Review reported about their campus experiences as well as how they rated various aspects of their college life.
Note: The Princeton Review college rankings are different from The Princeton Review college ratings. Our college ratings are numerical scores on a scale of 60–99 that we give to all colleges in the book. We report those rating scores in eight categories, including Admissions Selectivity, Financial Aid, Fire Safety and Green. Unlike our 62 ranking lists, which are based entirely on our student surveys, our eight rating scores are based primarily on our surveys of administrators at the schools who annually provide us with institutional data we request about their colleges. (A few of our rating scores factor in some of our student survey data—e.g., our “Professors Accessible Rating” score is based on students’ answers to our survey question that asks students to rate the accessibility of their professors on our five-point scale). Our college ratings scores appear in our school profiles in The Best 382 Colleges (as well as in our school profiles in our books Colleges That Pay You Back and The Complete Book of Colleges) and on our site. Learn more about our ratings here.
The Princeton Review’s 62 college ranking lists cover nine general areas: Academics/Administration, Quality of Life, Politics, Campus Life, Town Life, Social Life, Extracurriculars, Social Scene and Schools by Type. Here is a breakdown on each of those eight general areas, the titles of the ranking lists we report in each area, and information about each ranking list basis: the student survey question(s) we use to report the list.
Here’s the link to the Princeton Review page which lists the 330 schools which they have determined have an International Relations program https://www.princetonreview.com/college-search/?majors=45.0901. As has been noted on other threads, the list doesn’t include the University of Michigan which has a well known program so it is not comprehensive https://lsa.umich.edu/polisci/research/international-relations-and-world-politics.html
@Brownie777, College Niche has a list that does have a stated ranking methodology - like all its a subjective basket of criteria with 30% of the score coming form the Niche survey data.