Cornell07

We don't have a tremendous number of clubs here at Yale other than the student social organization, IASSA, and our journal, Yale Journal of International Affairs. The real resume building activities are being teaching and research assistants for our big name faculty and visiting practitioners. Plus, the pay is very competitive. Between 5-10k per semester depending on the position. As for the website, it is very much a work in progress as we only transitioned this year to being the Jackson Institute. Hope to see you at the admit day next week.

Quick note from a second year IR at Yale: the decisions will be going out in the next week or two, and the admitted students day will be Monday March 28. I have no further info. Good luck!

Yale Jackson IR What is your admission rate? In the past few years, we have received approximately 300 applications and have admitted about 50 - 60 students for an incoming class of 20-25.

*bump*

*bump* to help this year's batch of applicants.

*bump* to help this year's batch of applicants.

http://www.yale.edu/graduateschool/financial/costs.html

It's a shame that already enrolled grad students such as myself can't apply for Pickering Fellowships; I sure wouldn't mind having an FSO position aleady lined up plus gobs of funding for my second year.

I don't know the student's details, but a senior from Columbia U whom I met at Yale's visiting day on Monday said that she was already accepted as a Pickering Fellow.

After you have been accepted, finding external sources of funding is nary impossible, from what I have seen. FLAS is the exception and you can get ~18k (I think) towards a year of graduate study. Technically, FLAS is managed by individual schools who receive X number of FLAS fellowships from the federal government to dole out, so it is only pseudo-external.

Off the top of my head, some of the popular ones for next year are the Pickering (for future FSOs), FLAS (foreign language studies), and DHS (for national security). And, of course, WWS offers a full ride & stipend to everyone offered admission (sometimes, I think, waitlist people don't get this offer, though).

I concur. Some debt should not scare you away from a job that will pay huge dividends professionally and monetarily versus staying with only a bachelor's or force you into a program that is is a poor fit for you. Off the top of my head, I know some people here at Yale who passed up better offers from say Georgetown, SAIS, and SIPA to come here with the difference being a full ride and perhaps a stipend there versus half to full tuition here without a stipend. Though those school are all great, they did not offer my classmates the types of experiences that they hoped to get out of grad school and, therefore, those aspects were deemed to be worth the extra 20k-40k.

As for the amount of theory, it really depends on what you consider instruction in theory. The intro class on international relations that everyone must take their first semester touches on a number of the major theoretical debates, among other things, and you are also required to take a political science theory class of your choosing. Other than that, nothing else you are required to take explicitly teaches IR theory - e.g. realist, liberal, & constructivist theories. BTW, as someone who hadn't touched IR theory since high school debate, I did poo-poo the whole concept of theory. After taking an intro theory course, however, I have a great deal more respect for it; theory allows me to understand the underpinnings of my perspective on problems, as well as the virtues and failings of the schema of others.

It all depends on what you want to do. Though I want to be a foreign service officer, it is not required to have a graduate degree (perhaps not even a college degree, I think). A large portion of getting the job is taking the written foreign service exam and then passing oral+group exams. So, in short, yes.