Reply to Yale, Princeton & Columbia for Master's? Good Idea???

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Yale, Princeton & Columbia for Master's? Good Idea???"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]Yes, they're prestigious for graduate schools, and yes their student bodies are composed of people with a wide variety of undergrad degrees. So you don't need a T25 undergrad or anything like it to get into SIPA or SPIA or JFK or SAIS etc.

However as someone with IR graduate degrees who works in this field, I would strongly advise working for a few years before going to one of these programs.It's a million times more useful for her career if she's been out in the workforce before investing a lot of time and money in an MA. And work experience will help with financial aid or fellowships. I'm a full pay parent for my undergrad but I wouldn't pay full freight for one of these degrees. She should apply widely and shop around and think strategically about how the degree is going to get her to the next level.

Also for IR I would look carefully at some of the UK schools - Cambridge, Kings, etc - which have 1yr programs. No she won't learn as much in a 1yr program vs. a 2yr US program, but it's a cheaper, faster way to get the credential, which for most jobs is really all an IR MA provides. And the UK schools have some cachet (even if the academics amongst us recognize it's not as rigorous for an MA.)

Final point: your kid doesn't have anything to "make up for" by not going to Yale. Sure there are some advantages to an elite undergrad degree, but they are quickly and vastly outweighed by a billion other factors that will shape her life and her career. I'll acknowledge that there are a lot of Ivy degrees at the tippy top of the foreign policy establishment today, but at every level of every USG/industry/academic establishment related to IR, you'll find every variety of educational background.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics