Are you thinking about going to graduate school to study international affairs? If so, this column is for you. I’m going to try to summarize my best advice on 1) how to think about this decision, and 2) how to maximize your chances of getting into the school(s) that you think you’d like to attend.
But first, a few disclaimers. This is just one person’s opinion, and you may get different (and possibly even more useful) advice from others, including faculty or employers with whom you’ve worked directly. What follows applies primarily to graduate study in the United States or Canada, because those are the academic environments I know best. As a result, some of my advice may not be germane to graduate programs in other countries. Moreover, my expertise is limited to political science and public policy, and my comments won’t help you much if you’re interested in law school, biochemistry, computer science, or whatever. You should also bear in mind that academic institutions and the associated job markets are changing rapidly, and whatever wisdom I’ve acquired over the years may be of declining value. Caveat emptor.
That said, if you showed up in my office and asked for my advice, here’s what I’d say.
Should You Go to Grad School at All?
The most important question is whether going to graduate school is a good idea in the first place, and relatedly, what sort of degree you want to get. If you’re interested in international affairs and don’t want to go to law school or business school, then the choice boils down to either a master’s degree in public policy and/or international relations, or a Ph.D. Which one might be right for you?
If you have no interest in an academic career, then a master’s degree is probably the way to go. It will take about two years (which in turn means fewer student loans and less time away from the workforce), and it will add to your analytical and professional skills and subject-matter expertise. M.A. programs are also excellent networking opportunities, and many of them encourage or facilitate internships that can provide entry points into the next phase of your career. For a few students, completing an M.A. whets the appetite for doing in-depth research and convinces them that a Ph.D. is what they really want after all.
Pursuing a Ph.D. is another matter entirely. It’s pretty much a necessity if you want to have a serious academic career, and a doctorate will also enhance your knowledge, credentials, and job possibilities if you decide to work at a think tank, in government, or even the private sector. But getting a doctorate is a long slog and likely to take a minimum of five years. Even worse, the academic job market is fickle, and there’s no guarantee that a good job will be waiting for you when you’re done. If you’re not pretty sure that this is What You Really Want to Do, I’d advise you to wait until your doubts are gone. Unless you start down this path with a lot of clarity and resolve, it can be hard to get through the ups and downs and moments of self-doubt that are part of almost every doctoral student’s experience.
Above all, don’t start a Ph.D. program just because you’ve been an excellent student since kindergarten, are comfortable being in school, and couldn’t figure out anything else to do when you finished your B.A. It might look like the path of least resistance, but trust me: It isn’t. Getting a doctorate is different than most of what happens as an undergraduate: It means becoming a creator of new knowledge and not just a consumer of it, and few of us really know if we are any good at this until we try.
Please note: I am not trying to discourage you from pursuing a Ph.D., especially if you love serious intellectual exploration, relish the prospect of teaching, and can’t quite imagine doing anything else. But don’t do it unless you’re pretty darn sure.
What Are Grad Schools Looking For?
Evaluating applicants for admission has become increasingly difficult in recent years. First, grade inflation has made it harder to distinguish truly outstanding undergraduates from those who are really good but not great. Second, AI programs such as ChatGPT and Claude are making it more difficult to assess an applicant’s writing ability, either when trying to assess personal statements or attempting to judge the writing samples that applicants are sometimes asked to submit. It’s not even clear how to interpret a senior thesis or a research paper done for an employer, because there’s no way to know how much an applicant relied on AI to complete the project.
For these and other reasons, grad schools are going to pay a lot of attention to your test scores (e.g., the GRE), plus the kinds of courses that you took and the letters of recommendation that you obtain. And because most M.A. programs and nearly all Ph.D. programs require quantitative training of various sorts, admissions committees will want to see clear evidence of good math skills. This doesn’t mean you have to be a math genius with an 800 on the quantitative portion of the GRE, but it will be an uphill fight if you haven’t taken a math course since high school and don’t have a strong GRE score to allay concerns about whether you can do the work.
As for letters of recommendation, the more that they convey that the letter writer really knows you and your abilities, the better. It may be tempting to solicit letters from famous people or highly prominent academics, but a detailed and obviously personal letter from someone who knows you and your work intimately will carry more weight than two or three paragraphs of uninformative boilerplate from a VIP. Obviously, if you worked directly for someone prominent and they are willing to provide an enthusiastic letter, go for it. But make sure that some of your writers can give the people who will read your file cogent and specific reasons to admit you.
The criteria of judgment will vary depending on what kind of program you’re applying to. For M.A. programs in public policy, for example, the committee will want to see tangible evidence that you are genuinely interested in public service or public policy more broadly and didn’t just latch on to this idea on a whim. Evidence of leadership abilities and a capacity to work with others is helpful, too. You don’t have to have majored in a related field like political science or economics, started your own nongovernmental organization (NGO), or done relief work in a disaster area, but it helps if you were actively involved in student political groups, did an internship for a politician or a think tank, or worked for a few years in a relevant policy domain. Someone with a B.S. in chemistry who worked for an NGO focused on environmental policy can be just as appealing a candidate as a poli-sci major who worked for their local representative—the point is simply to show that one is genuinely interested in policy issues and some aspect of foreign policy. In addition, most M.A. programs prefer applicants with a few years’ experience in the real world, both because older applicants usually have a clearer sense of what they want to do and because it is easier to be confident that they really do care about public affairs.
And contrary to what you might think, your political views are largely irrelevant. Your chances for admission will be slim if you were convicted of setting fire to a data center or led a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, but your party affiliation or broader political outlook won’t matter much, if at all. Indeed, my strong sense is that schools with a more liberal reputation are increasingly interested in attracting more conservative students, while programs with a more conservative bent are trying to do the opposite.
As for Ph.D. programs, admissions committees want to see evidence of intellectual curiosity, creativity, and research ability. Did an applicant write a senior thesis? Did it win a prize, and did their advisor write a letter of recommendation explaining what was so good about it? If they’ve been working at an NGO or think tank, did their job involve research work and maybe even some co-authorship? Did this produce any publications? The more evidence you can provide that you are someone who loves thinking hard about difficult problems and are good at it, the better your chances will be.
Dos and Don’ts
First, do your homework. Although there are many similarities between both M.A. and Ph.D. programs at different universities, they also have their own individual requirements, and you should look at them carefully before you apply. What courses do they offer and/or require? What sorts of jobs are recent graduates getting? If it’s a Ph.D. program, what kind of work do the faculty and their students do, and is that the kind of work you want to do as well? A serious Ph.D. program is going to mold you in powerful ways, and if you don’t like the finished product that a particular department tends to produce, look elsewhere.
Second, pick a program with faculty who are interested in the topics that you think you’d like to focus on. It may be tempting to go to a school that you think has the greatest prestige or academic reputation (and there is a case for that), but that’s not a good idea if it will be hard to study the things you care about if you go there. If you’re interested in a specific subfield (e.g., international security, environmental politics, human rights, etc.), you want to apply to schools where that subject is well represented among the faculty. Making sure your interests are aligned with a particular program’s foci also makes it more likely you’ll be accepted, because admissions committees are understandably wary of admitting students whose interests aren’t compatible with the department’s personnel. But as discussed below, don’t misrepresent your interests to improve your chances; if you succeeded, you’d just be gaining admission to a program that isn’t right for you.
A couple of caveats should be noted at this point. If you have your heart set on studying with a particular professor because you’ve long admired their work, be aware that they might decide to retire or move to another university after you arrive. Plus, even if you’ve admired someone’s scholarship from afar, that doesn’t mean you’ll connect with them intellectually or that they will be the best mentor. If in doubt, pick the best program, not just a particular individual. Also, you will probably be asked what topics you intend to focus on during your graduate studies, but you may change your mind as you do your coursework and end up working on something entirely different. In my own case, I told the schools to which I applied that I intended to focus on nationalism (and I meant it), but I took only one course on the subject (which was excellent, by the way) and ended up writing my thesis on an entirely different topic. By giving students lots of new things to think about and new ways to understand them, a good Ph.D. program will inevitably foster this sort of intellectual shift.
Third, you’ll need to apply to several schools, especially if you’re shooting for a Ph.D. Grad schools are becoming more selective as resources shrink, and that means even the best applicants can’t be confident they’ll get in lots of places. I applied to six Ph.D. programs, for example, and was admitted to four of them. (Ironically, I ended up teaching at both of the universities that rejected me. Go figure.) That was a long time ago, however: Today, I’d probably apply to eight or 10.
Fourth, once you’ve been admitted, you should try to visit the schools you are still considering seriously. When you’re there, talk to as many graduate students as you can about their experiences, because their testimony will be more revealing than anything you might hear from the faculty. In my own case, I decided not to go to two of the schools where I was admitted because my conversations with grad students at each program raised real doubts, and I eventually picked Berkeley in good part because the grad students I met when I visited were genuinely jazzed about the program and seemed to be on the road to becoming the kind of scholar I wanted to be.
Fifth, as noted above, don’t try to fool the admissions committee by pretending to be someone you’re not. For example, if you aren’t interested in a specific subfield or topic but you know that it is one of a school’s specialties, don’t feign interest in it just to curry favor with the faculty who are making the decision. Don’t pretend to be deeply interested in archival work or case studies if that’s not your thing, or try to fake an interest in game theory and advanced econometrics if you have no intention of ever using those tools. Your goal should be to find a program that will help you prepare for the career you want, and putting on a false front when you apply just makes it more likely you’ll end up miserable in a department for which you aren’t suited.
Finally, be aware that reaching out to individual faculty is unlikely to improve your chances and may even reduce them. Every year I get dozens of emails from students from all around the world saying that they want to come to Harvard and study under my supervision. They sometimes attach CVs and even writing samples. Such inquiries are flattering, but individual faculty do not make admissions decisions and are unlikely to go to bat for an applicant they’ve never met. When I get this kind of inquiry (and assuming it’s not spam or being generated by a bot), it tells me that the student doesn’t understand how the application process works and may not have bothered to look at the Kennedy School’s website to find out what the application process is.
The situation is different in those rare cases where a faculty member may have previously met a potential applicant and gotten to know them and might therefore be willing to send the admissions committee a note of support. But even here, the final decision will be up to the committee, not the individual faculty member. The bottom line: Reaching out to individual faculty is mostly a waste of your time (and theirs), unless you have already been admitted and are trying to decide where to go.
I hope this advice is helpful to those of you who are considering graduate school. Application deadlines are still a few months away, but if you want to be part of this year’s cycle, my last piece of advice is get started soon. GREs take time to schedule, and you’ll get better letters of recommendation if you ask for them well in advance. The world needs lots of smart and well-trained people, so I hope those of you who are interested in graduate study get the opportunities you want and deserve. Good luck!
