IR - Tufts, St Andrews, or NYU

jc2
Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:39:51 +0000

Eugene, congratulations on your acceptances. My D is deciding also on St. Andrews vs. her U.S. college acceptances.

I am a Tufts graduate and was editor of their journal of international affairs, Hemispheres, so I know something of the IR Program there. I loved Tufts and it is a great choice, but if I had to do it again today, I might opt for St. Andrews.

For one, you’ll learn far more about the world at St. Andrews outside the classroom then you ever will inside the classroom at a U.S. school, even Tufts. You’ll also possibly have a leg up in differentiating yourself in the competition for employment and graduate school. Remember that the need to find ways to separate yourself from the pack doesn’t end in high school. Within certain fairly broad bands of schools, employers and graduate schools hire the person, not the degree.

When I graduated from Tufts I was hired into the management training program of JP Morgan. There were approx 50 folks hired my year into that program, half from abroad at schools like St. Andrews. The U.S. candidates came from a wide variety of U.S. colleges; one from Tufts, one from Dartmouth, etc. For example, that year 90 applied from Dartmouth and only that one was hired and he sat next to a top student from Ohio Wesleyan, who beat out all those Ivy grads and became one of the most successful traders on Wall Street.

So don’t worry to hard about fine gradations of prestige, etc. I don’t think you can go wrong with either St. Andrews or Tufts. I would focus your decision now on where you feel you’ll thrive the most - academically, socially, etc. That will drive your success down the road. My daughter is now going around and visiting the schools she was accepted to in order to decide. It’s a hard decision, but also an exciting one!

Best of luck with your decision.