NPRjunkie

A human rights concentration certainly isn't unique to Cornell. Cornell's a good brand name but their public policy program is hardly on anyone's radar. Check out Columbia, Tufts, and Harvard as well. My feeling is Columbia might be your best bet if human rights is your trajectory.

Foreign Service won't care which type of degree you do. If you don't like theory, don't do a theory-based degree. The Foreign Service won't care whether you went to an APSIA school. If you want to do government service at all, getting a master's is necessary at some point for career advancement but it doesn't matter where it's from, but the thing you need to consider is that your career trajectory/priorities might change. By that logic, a professional degree will serve you better. And by that logic (again), just choose the best umbrella brand name you can (i.e. the best university that has a public policy program you can get into). No one will know or care what you studied 5 years down the line; at most, they'll think "Oh, this person went to University of X--I went there as an undergrad!" not "Oh, he did a theory-based IR program instead of a blah bla blah." That doesn't happen.

I put full-time internship work in my experience but I had a couple years of post-college experience anyway. I think what they advertise in terms of work experience is BS anyway. Half the people in my program seemed straight out of undergrad, had a couple internships, and strutted around like they owned the place.

The other evaluation standard is a school's brand name/marketability. Trust me. This matters about a million times more than any ranking system, which are mysterious and laughably incorrect in the case of US News. And if you want to go into federal public service, they don't really care where you went for your master's. It's really a matter of getting the most versatile degree/brand name you can in case you decide to branch off into other things, which about 50% (at least) of all public policy students end up doing. As far as balancing quality of the program against brand name, the Foreign Policy/Ivory Tower rankings are fairly accurate. The US News rankings for Politics and International Affairs are also more accurate. My advice would be to ignore a purely public policy focused programs. The bigger, better branded schools will have better faculty, top practitioners, etc. and they will also tend to have a more global focus.

My two cents: the Ivory Tower rankings are pretty accurate, but it really depends where you want to live and work. For example, I really struggled to find a job in the sector I wanted in the city I wanted with a degree from SAIS. Sad to say but if you want to pursue a non-linear path with a public policy degree outside DC, brand name matters a lot more. Based on that the rankings would obviously be a lot different. Hope that helps!

As a SAISer who tried to break into energy, don't bet the farm on it. SAIS does not have much cache outside DC. Stanford or Columbia would probably serve you better.

The US News rankings aren't worth a penny. They don't factor in international affairs and they differ markedly from actual perceptions of the top programs. Schools like SAIS (where I went) are disadvantaged because they are IR focused and I don't think Tufts Fletcher is even in the rankings. Anyone basing their applications on US News rankings is in for a shock once they hit the job market. The US News Politics and International Affairs rankings are more accurate for international affairs schools.

Not at all important. Conversely, you may find a DC school isn't as marketable outside DC.

I graduated from SAIS a couple years ago. Happy to answer any questions. I'm preparing to apply to PhD programs this year so will be perusing the forums periodically.