How do you gauge the quality of an IR program?

[Ingo93]

Aside from of course rankings, I'm wondering how best to assess the quality of IR programs. The quality of the incoming class with regards to scores, age, experience, etc. is one metric but at the same time I feel that it can be easily overrated by a school's name recognition rather than the overall quality of the program itself. I also looked at employment numbers, but all I saw were numbers indicating that graduates were working full-time, which doesn't say much since I'm sure a grad working full-time at McDonald's would qualify.

Are there any metrics in particular I should look at to assess the quality of a program?

[nebula]

7 hours ago, Ingo93 said:

I also looked at employment numbers, but all I saw were numbers indicating that graduates were working full-time

I'm not sure which programs you are regarding, but most of the top schools list salary and positions as well. To me, that is the ultimate metric. 

[Ingo93]

14 hours ago, nebula said:

I'm not sure which programs you are regarding, but most of the top schools list salary and positions as well. To me, that is the ultimate metric. 

I was looking at Penn State SIA, which was pretty vague about job placement after graduation. I guess that doesn't bode well.

[went_away]

International Affairs/Relations is a very weak course of study, only vaguely more useful than history or liberal arts. Unless you have special veteran hiring preference, you're going to want to skip all but the very top programs to have a chance at a decent career. 

Decent programs include Yale/Fletcher/SIPA/SAIS/Georgetown MSFS, Georgetown Security Studies (all of these are usually insanely overpriced so buyer be aware)

Borderline programs include Syracuse, NYU, GW, Korbel, Georgetown regional programs

There's a reason places like Penn State are so vague about career outcomes.  

 

Edited September 16, 2016 by went_away