<p>I have fairly diverse interests and I don’t know exactly what I want to do when I graduate, but my range of interests for grad school include the following:</p>
<p>Is there anyplace where I could combine the study of 1,2, and 3? Because that seems like a fascinating area to study, at least to me…</p>
<p>It goes without saying that everyone wants to go to Oxford or Cambridge. I know it’s practically an impossibility but the master of University College, Oxford visited my school and that kind of piqued my interest. I don’t speak any Near Eastern languages, but I hope to travel in the region when I graduate and possibly pursue a career in the U.S. diplomatic corps. Knowledge of the language and culture would be of immense value in that line of work.</p>
<p>I would especially welcome additional information about the following institutions: any of the ancient Scottish universities (esp. St. Andrews), the graduate PPE program at the University of York, language/area studies at SOAS, and, of course, which college(s) at Oxbridge have the strongest courses in any of areas 1-5. </p>
<p>I apologize if this is too wide-ranging a list. I hope I will be able to significantly narrow my interests within the next year. Thank you for your patience.</p>
<p>I’m guessing then that your particular area of interest in area studies would the Middle and Near East? I’m currently a student at Oxford in the Oriental Studies Institute, where you would presumably be based - my speciality is Chinese and the Far East so I can’t be too specific, but I can give you general information! </p>
<p>Most courses will involve 1,2,3,5, but I’m not sure where law/legal philosophy would fit in, unless you were to write your thesis on it, e.g. “The Development of X Philosophy in the Time of Y” or something like that. </p>
<p>I also applied to Edinburgh and SOAS, so I can answer questions on those. Personally, I’m not a fan of SOAS. It’s fairly disorganised, and professors don’t seem to ever know what’s going on, which I don’t feel is a good environment for research. That said, it does have an incredible library and excellent connections with other research groups. </p>
<p>I adore Edinburgh - it’s a beautiful city and the university is very, very good. I haven’t checked out their Middle/Near East offerings, however. </p>
<p>I have certain, ahem, biases about St Andrews which I won’t go into here. Suffice to say, I believe it’s incredibly overrated, thanks to a certain person called William.</p>
<p>OP - I don’t think you should apply to grad school until you know what you want to do in grad school. You putting the cart before the horse. Once you determine what you want to study (not just areas of study that interest you), you’ll be able to choose a program with more success.</p>
<p>By the way OP, my answer was focused on Masters programmes, not PhDs. You probably already know this, but PhD programmes in the UK contain NO taught content - they are pure research. You are expected to have learned research methods, research languages and theory before beginning the PhD - this is why they are much shorter than US PhD programmes. </p>
<p>DespSeekPhd is right - you need to narrow your list very significantly, because each of the fields you’ve mentioned is huge.</p>
<p>Well, the areas I’ve listed are more or less illustrative of the fact that I haven’t decided if I’m going to law school or some other kind of ‘normal’ grad school yet… But for the non-law school route, I guess the best of all possible worlds for me would be a history degree that deals with the significant political or religious movements and requires some kind of intensive language study.</p>
<p>I can only speak to Oxford, but you may have a problem if you want a course that crosses several periods of history - at Oxford, there are usually fairly strong boundaries between historical periods. For example, the history course in Modern Middle Eastern Studies only runs from about 1700-present. There is an entirely seperate programme for medieval and classical history. </p>
<p>I can speak to international relations and modern history programs offered at St Andrews. The university is generally regarded as the best in Scotland and one of the top in the United Kingdom. The most recent Good University Guide and Guardian rankings place it at 5th and 4th in the UK. The School of International Relations is one of the strongest schools within the university and is one of the best IR programs in Europe. The School of IR has a number of research centers dedicated to the Middle East, including the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, the Middle East and Central Asia Studies Institute, the Centre for Syrian Studies, etc. It also engages in a significant amount of collaboration with the Department of Modern History, which is located within the same building. Last year, the two launched the Centre for Iranian Studies, which was opened by Mohammad Khatami. The School has developed ties with Georgetown, Princeton, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, and others. They offer full language courses, but there is no law school at St Andrews.</p>