Chances of Admission to Professional IR Programs Without Internships

[b3raymond]

Hey,

I'm currently a History PhD at Ohio State focusing on Russia and Eastern Europe, and am having a recent change of heart about teaching and academia. I'm considering switching to a professional program in IR--I'm thinking Georgetown MSFS, SAIS, or maybe Elliot. My dream job is foreign policy/security analysis, and Georgetown in particular is attractive b/c of its program outlines, and its internship/career connections.

I have a few concerns about applying to an IR program, mainly b/c I don't have an economic background (I focus more on ethnic identity and relations), and a lot of the current students (especially at MSFS) seem to have extensive internship experience. I was out of school for 2 years before I started my PhD working in healthcare-related project management, but being in History, I haven't had any internships, especially not with places like the DoD, State Department, or think tanks. In addition, I don't have awesome Quantitative GRE scores; my verbal and writing are 95%, but math only shook out to about 60%. To be fair, I was again focused on history, so I didn't invest a lot in the quantitative portion, but it still doesn't look good.

What are your thoughts on my chances?

Thanks!

[beaverish]

do you speak a foreign language? why not just take the foreign service exam or something?

to me - total noob - it looks weird going from a PhD to a master's... if it were me i'd try to just get some sort of job in the field, or get a crummy internship and leverage it into a salaried position (surely with a PhD it shouldn't be too difficult...)

Edited September 28, 2010 by beaverish