Undergrad in IR...

fa-la-la-lena
Sun, 27 Mar 2011 21:14:07 +0000

You can absolutely get a job with a bachelor’s degree in IR. They are harder to get, you probably won’t make a lot of money, and most positions will eventually require a masters degree to move up, but almost all entry level programs (particularly for the federal government) allow bachelors candidates (especially if you are a strong applicant, either with top-notch grades or with extensive internship experience or both). If you can get into one of the entry level programs (or participate in something like peace corps or americorps) you can potentially get them to pay for your grad school.

Secondly, in no way do you need a degree from the well-known IR institutions for undergrad. First of all, these IR institutions are a lot better known for their grad program than undergrad. Second of all, fed. gov. agencies don’t care which school you go to, they care about what you do when you actually go to that school. Case in point - I recently went to the DC area for 2 summer internship interviews with the fed. gov. I got to talk to many of the other candidates…only 3 out of the ~20 students I talked to went to Harvard or tufts. The rest went to schools like Penn State, University of Florida, Arizona State, Arkansas, podunk liberal arts pennsylvania school, etc. I would highly recommend to just go where you want to go to for undergrad, and look to these more prestigious schools for grad school.