<p>Survey question asked about program quality, not success placement.</p>
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<p>It did not ask about which schools best prepared them for an IR career as Mini asserted. It asked them to name the top five 5 best schools to study IR (I’m assuming they are asking academics who are supposely qualified to answer this question to answer it and answer it correctly) and tallied them up based on the response percentages (program quality; Graduate level Scholars and Professors probably did not know that Georgetown SFS steals tons of ppl from Harvard and other Ivies every year and GTown SFS is arguably the best undergraduate IR school period located in the best possible place for IR period.)</p>
<p>It’s unfortunate that Harvard’s Government major (#1 or 21%) or Political science major with subtrack in IR can full out rival a full blown and mature undergraduate IR department such as the one at Tufts in a ranking assessing quality IR programs.</p>
<p>IMHO, Georgetown SFS (#5 or 12%), Princeton WWS (rightfully so because admission in so strenuous and highly competitive to get into the program) and Tufts (#10 with 3%) (with Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Oldest Graduate of IR in the nation located on the undergraduate campus) should be given more weight.</p>
<p>Even AU and GWU (both located within the mecca of the IR world, Washington D.C. are not even listed within the top 20?) The internship opportunities located within D.C. is possibly endless… It’s a disservice to give more weight to Columbia, Yale, or Stanford just because they are USNews top 5 because only Stanford offers an IR program and they aren’t even located in Washington D.C…like Gtown, AU, GWU, etc…</p>
<p>PS. Honestly, I’m not the only person on this board that believes this ranking is flawed. Research the links that I provided to you that goes back to 2006. Many CC forum members believes that list is highly flawed and is trash… Half the programs on the list do not offer IR programs, Graduate school scholars have no clue what going on at the undergraduate level, It was merely 1 question out of a broader 50 question survey. It asked the top 5 best IR programs (respondents replied back with schools that did not have IR/IS degree conferring programs)</p>
<p>Terrible list for a person interested in IR as a major to find out that UC Berkeley or Columbia doesn’t even have such a major to begin with.</p>