Seton Hall School of Diplomacy and International Relations

[tairos]

It seems like it's been awhile since there's been a thread dedicated to this, and there's still not too much third party information out there on it.  Does anyone who's gone there or who otherwise has inside information care to share anything?  

From what I've gathered, the quality of the instruction is near-universally lauded.  But I'm concerned that won't necessarily translate into positive economic outcomes for graduates.  Their (apparently) unique partnership with the United Nations is interesting, but getting hired by the U.N. as an American is well known to be a nearly impossible feat, so I'm not sure how useful that actually is.  And their curriculum strikes me as skewing much more towards the traditional and theoretical side of IR than the practical technical and methodological stuff that many schools now emphasize and that employers apparently want.

[went_away]

You'll likely struggle a bit to be taken as seriously as Fletcher/SAIS/SIPA grads throughout your career and you'll probably have to scrounge more for that initial internship and job offer, but honestly it doesn't really matter all that much. What's most important is your writing ability and selling skills if you can get in the interview seat. After that, your work history will take off and be by far the most important factor. I've met a couple grads from there and they were in management at a top international affairs school, so not a bad gig, if not the most competitive. Mostly I would counsel you to not pay full-price tuition there if it's anywhere near as high as Hopkins/Columbia/Tufts.

[beefmaster]

14 hours ago, went_away said:

You'll likely struggle a bit to be taken as seriously as Fletcher/SAIS/SIPA grads throughout your career 

I don't usually weigh in on threads (long time lurker!) But I have to say that I do not agree with this statement at all and I am struggling to understand what your factual basis is. In fact this is certainly not my experience at all. Could you please clarify?

[ExponentialDecay]

7 hours ago, beefmaster said:

I don't usually weigh in on threads (long time lurker!) But I have to say that I do not agree with this statement at all and I am struggling to understand what your factual basis is. In fact this is certainly not my experience at all. Could you please clarify?

107 posts is a lot for a lurker.

Anyway, I don't weigh in on this forum either (but I am entertained by the constant rivalries and shitposting that goes on!), but you're both right. The weight of school brand depends on what job you want to get. If OP needs a piece of paper to move forward in the federal government, then Seton Hall-Schmeton Hall, who cares. If they're looking to change careers or get into some competitive slice of this industry (though, again, depends) a brand - but moreso location and connections - can help. 

[tairos]

2 hours ago, ExponentialDecay said:

107 posts is a lot for a lurker.

Anyway, I don't weigh in on this forum either (but I am entertained by the constant rivalries and shitposting that goes on!), but you're both right. The weight of school brand depends on what job you want to get. If OP needs a piece of paper to move forward in the federal government, then Seton Hall-Schmeton Hall, who cares. If they're looking to change careers or get into some competitive slice of this industry (though, again, depends) a brand - but moreso location and connections - can help. 

My primary interest is security, which I understand is one of the more difficult and brand-conscious fields to break into.  However I'm also a current reservist, so I expect/hope that my military experience will eventually supersede the pedigree of my degree.  Having that background as an equalizer is honestly main reason I'm even considering attempting this path without elite credentials though, so the calculus may be different for others.

[went_away]

14 hours ago, beefmaster said:

I don't usually weigh in on threads (long time lurker!) But I have to say that I do not agree with this statement at all and I am struggling to understand what your factual basis is. In fact this is certainly not my experience at all. Could you please clarify?

What's your beef with it? (sorry, couldn't resist).

Going to a significantly more elite school generally gives one a bit more of a credibility boost through their career. So for example, those who go to University of Chicago's business school (Booth) will get a few more appreciative 'oohs' and 'ahhs' than those who go to Foster at the University of Washington. Same in International Affairs; a significantly more elite school will give you a few more browny points and - all else equal - few more second looks at your resume and more built-in credibility. This credibility, or 'being taken seriously' gap certainly would apply to Seton Hall vs. the more elite schools like SAIS/SIPA/Fletcher.

Same goes for federal jobs - it matters A LOT where you go to school for the more elite agencies. FBI, State (especially), Treasury, Energy, and the White House (NSC, etc) all recruit heavily from the most elite schools, but these days being a veteran matters far more than anything else because of the preference system. 

But do keep in mind - school 'eliteness' is not a huge factor and one I downplayed quite a lot in my post. You just copy and pasted one sentence out of context, which significantly altered my overall point. Simply reading my entire post probably would have cleared up any confusion you might have had. 

[tairos]

On October 5, 2016 at 0:36 PM, went_away said:

You'll likely struggle a bit to be taken as seriously as Fletcher/SAIS/SIPA grads throughout your career and you'll probably have to scrounge more for that initial internship and job offer, but honestly it doesn't really matter all that much. What's most important is your writing ability and selling skills if you can get in the interview seat. After that, your work history will take off and be by far the most important factor. I've met a couple grads from there and they were in management at a top international affairs school, so not a bad gig, if not the most competitive. Mostly I would counsel you to not pay full-price tuition there if it's anywhere near as high as Hopkins/Columbia/Tufts.

I take it that you'd classify SHU as a "borderline school" (per the other thread).  Other programs at that level at least are widely known and are featured in that (no doubt somewhat dubious) FP magazine ranking table.  SHU's program makes me more nervous than the rest because it's not ranked there (or anywhere), while the university as a whole is sort of a nonentity.  Clearly, the Diplomacy school is by far their most elite program, similar to SIS at American but without an institutional peer like SIS has in SPA.  But how many employers know that?  The vast majority of my information about the program comes from this website, after all.

But I'm mostly thinking out loud.  Your opinion seems measured and sensible to me.  

[went_away]

1 hour ago, tairos said:

I take it that you'd classify SHU as a "borderline school" (per the other thread).  Other programs at that level at least are widely known and are featured in that (no doubt somewhat dubious) FP magazine ranking table.  SHU's program makes me more nervous than the rest because it's not ranked there (or anywhere), while the university as a whole is sort of a nonentity.  Clearly, the Diplomacy school is by far their most elite program, similar to SIS at American but without an institutional peer like SIS has in SPA.  But how many employers know that?  The vast majority of my information about the program comes from this website, after all.

But I'm mostly thinking out loud.  Your opinion seems measured and sensible to me.  

Yep, I would classify Seton Hall as borderline. The broader context here is that international affairs is a 'soft' field so to speak, and its grads don't have a lot of leverage or earning power as compared to other professional post-graduate degree programs; it follows that school eliteness is that much more important to be successful post-graduation. 

FP's ranking system is a good jumping-off point, but is ultimately of limited utility. The methodology is based purely on a survey of profs, so it is mostly measuring name recognition and perceived eliteness from professors across the United States. I agree with it in terms of broad strokes (Korbel and American are rightly ranked lower than Kennedy and SAIS), but it needs to be taken with a very large grain of salt. Chicago's Harris school for example, scores quite low, but is widely considered to be the best program out there in terms of academic rigor, and its grads do just fine in policy-oriented careers. 

I think you are on the right rack in seeing Seton Hall as a peer competitor with American School's SIS, though I would likely rank SIS a bit higher, at least for those interested in jobs in DC. I've run into quite a lot of SIS grads working at interesting NGO-type positions, but on the whole they seem to make significantly less money and work in marginally less prestigious orgs than Fletcher and SAIS grads. Of course, YMMV and it all depends on the individual's career history, luck, and connections.

If you're interested in schools that are a little easier to get into, I would counsel you to take a look at Syracuse and NYU's grad programs in international affairs; both are quite good. 

 

Edited October 7, 2016 by went_away

[ExponentialDecay]

Dude, OP, this school is in New Jersey. How many international relations jobs are there in New Jersey, for crissake? The main reason that American and UMD do okay job-wise is that they're located in DC, which allows people to intern while they're in school (another dirty secret is that at least some of the students already have work history and connections in the field and are literally just getting the piece of paper, sometimes while continuing to work full-time in the field). You don't say what you're interested in, but in many government careers, unless you are a protected class, your trajectory is determined almost exclusively by your connections. Your best bet in building them is through work, not school.

[tairos]

1 hour ago, ExponentialDecay said:

Dude, OP, this school is in New Jersey. How many international relations jobs are there in New Jersey, for crissake? The main reason that American and UMD do okay job-wise is that they're located in DC, which allows people to intern while they're in school (another dirty secret is that at least some of the students already have work history and connections in the field and are literally just getting the piece of paper, sometimes while continuing to work full-time in the field). You don't say what you're interested in, but in many government careers, unless you are a protected class, your trajectory is determined almost exclusively by your connections. Your best bet in building them is through work, not school.

The school is in the greater NYC area (much as College Park is in the greater DC area without actually being in DC), so it's not exactly geographically isolated.  I did apply to a couple of DC schools for this reason however, even though having been in and out of that place for years I'm sort of partial to a change in locale.

I didn't really start the thread to talk specifically about myself, but my primary interest is in security, particularly the non-profit and private sector sides of it (federal hiring seems too slow to focus on right now).  I am a current military reservist moving (hopefully soon) into a career field with a high profile and ops tempo, so I expect to gain experience and connections in that sector over time.  It also means that I will perhaps one day be counted as a protected minority of sorts, though I don't know that actual combat veteran status will ever be in the cards for various reasons.  Because of the glacial speed of the military bureaucracy, I have a good deal of time to kill before heading to training, so I figured that this would be a good time to get most of my masters done.

International affairs is a tough field even in relatively propitious times, so the prospects are never really per se good unless you make it to the 'god-tier' programs (and rumor has it, not even necessarily then).  All you can hope for is a fighting chance, and a reasonable fallback plan.  That's why an NYC school could be good -- (non contracting) private sector ties.

 

 

Edited October 11, 2016 by tairos