Trinity International Programs & Studies

I. What's graduate school for?

¹ Of course there are International Studies professionals without graduate degrees, for example, in the Foreign Service and intelligence. We are using "professional" in the context of specialized expertise, as in the case of a "professional" economist. Professional economists normally have Ph.D.s. The World Bank, for example, would normally hire only Ph.D. economists.

Graduate school is where people get their advanced training to become "professionals."¹ Certain professions have obvious graduate schools, like medical school for doctors or law school for lawyers. For International Studies graduates, the opportunities are numerous but not quite as obvious. In general, to become a "professional" in international Studies, one does advanced studies in the following kinds of areas, earning at least an M.A. and often a Ph.D.

• International Relations
• Peace and Conflict Issues, and Diplomacy
• International Economics
• World Trade
• and International Business
• Area Studies, studying a part of the world in an interdisciplinary way
• Population, Demographics, Migration, Refugees, and Ethnic studies

²A "national university" is one that draws students and faculty from across the country and around the world. It is an arbitrary category that is defined, more or less, in US News and World Report's annual ranking issue, the one that defines Trinity as a a top regional comprehensive institution (but not a "national university").

Certain national universities² that offer programs in these fields are listed on our website. Others can be found through resources such as Peterson's Guide, also on our website. You can also explore these resources in the reading room at Trinity's Counseling and Career Planning Office in Coates University Center.

II. How do I find a graduate program that's right for me?

First, think about whether you want to specialize in a discipline, like economics, political science, or history, OR whether you want to study all about a country or area. The latter is called "area studies" and emphasizes language and literature, history and civilization, and can include courses on art, music, and religion as well as studies of politics and economics.

Your choice of disciplinary versus area studies will determine much, including what kind of graduate program you enter, what kind of work you do, how readily you'll be funded, how long it will take and how much it will cost, and what kind of work you'll be trained to do when you emerge. It's a serious life decision that requires much thought.

Here are some tips and key questions:

1. Talk to your advisor and other faculty members about which way to go and what schools they recommend. You can learn which Trinity professors went to which graduate schools by looking up the faculty listing in the back of the Trinity Courses of Study bulletin. Ask professors who went to your target schools to tell you about their experiences there.
2. Think about where you'd like to end up: academic career? professional in business or journalism? the diplomatic service? non-profit organizations/humanitarian service?Think about people you know who are doing things you'd like to do. Then settle on a handful of things you'd prefer.

3. Look up target schools on our website and in Peterson's Guide. Compare program components, faculty and courses, admissions requirements, reputation, number of students in the program, library holdings and other research resources, and alumni. Use your instincts to tell whether they look good to you or not.

4. Think about your own interests and your own record in light of their admission requirements. Make realistic adjustments in your list of target schools but don't sell yourself short. Remember that they are trying to recruit good college seniors like you in a process that is something like (but also unlike) college admissions.

III. How do I get in?

1. Take the GRE. Virtually all graduate programs require a standardized test. For International Studies it would be the Graduate Record Exam (GRE). This is an advanced version of tests you've already taken, with verbal and quantitative reasoning components. Learn all about it at the GRE website.

   If you have to take a specialized test in addition to the basic GRE, the university's admissions materials will tell you. However you should take it in the fall, by mid-October, so the scores will be readily available as part of your application.

2. Gather materials on likely programs. Surf the sites on our web page or call their toll-free numbers or write them, but be sure to send for the application materials early in the fall. You should be ready to start filling them out in EARLY NOVEMBER.
3. Get firmly in mind the deadlines. Note that you will be applying for two things: admission and financial support. The deadlines for these two things might be different. Many applicants have discovered the hard way that the support deadline is earlier than the admission deadline, and that both dates usually are earlier than undergraduate admissions deadlines. If you're smart enough to go to graduate school you should not make this dumb mistake.
4. Collect and make an inventory of all application materials. Note how the schools want your transcripts handled and arrange for the handling in plenty of time.
5. For each target school, determine whether they want you to send in the entire application and all supporting materials as a single package or whether they want the transcript and recommendation letters sent directly.
6. When you ask your professors for recommendations:
   • Don't be shy; it's their job.
   • Be clear about the deadline and give them plenty of time to write the letter for you.
   • Tell them what they should do with the letter--whether to return it to you to send it in directly. If they are supposed to send them in directly, put astamp on the envelope that's provided with the application, if there is one.
   • Help them write you a great letter by giving them ammunition in the form of aresume, a copy of your statement of purpose in applying to the graduateschool and if possible a copy of a good paper you wrote for them (or, someone else at Trinity). Of course you should ask them to return all these materials when they're through (or throw them away if you don't want them back).
7. Make sure everything is neatly typed and letter perfect. Beat the deadline by afew, days if you can. Then sit back and wait. You did your best!

IV. How do I pay for it?

1. Financing graduate school is different from financing college. Each graduate school helps students finance their studies differently, but the main ways are fellowships, assistantships, need-based-grants, and loans. You have to look up their financial aid provisions and policies one by one and apply accordingly.
2. Graduate schools keep their own lists of financial aid resources. However, there are also "outside" fellowships that you might investigate. For example, if your mother is a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, there are fellowships. And so forth. You can find these special fellowships listed in directories in the library and the Counseling and Career Planning Office.
3. Assistantships are jobs teaching, counseling, and grading work of undergraduates. Many assistantships carry tuition waivers or honorary in-state tuition rates that can be worth many thousands of dollars over and above the pay rate, which is usually OK but not great. It's common for graduate students to support themselves (barely) on assistantships if they don't have any tuition expenses and can keep steadily employed from term to term. At best, however, fellowships that pay tuition and stipends are better than assistantships because there is no work requirement. On the other hand, assistantships is were academics first learn their teaching skills.
4. Special opportunities for funding in International Studies include: Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships for hard [non-European] languages; National Security Education Program (NSEP) fellowships for language study and study abroad; "traveling fellowships" from the institutions themselves that fund overseas field work for doctoral candidates; Fulbright pre-doctoral fellowships for study abroad and dissertation research (field work); and special area fellowships funded from abroad, such as the Japan Foundation, the Korea Foundation, and the German Marshall Fund.
   

V. What do people actually do in graduate school?

1. What kind of a degree? One thing is to decide whether you are going to stop at the M.A. level or go on to the "terminal degree," which is as far as you can go in studies of a particular discipline. The terminal degree in most disciplines is the Doctorate, but in some, like Art and Library Science, it's a Master's.
2. How long will it take? In general, a Master's program takes between one and three years. Doctorates in the Humanities and Social Sciences (International Studies is in-between) take longer, usually five to seven years (including the M.A., which is acquired along the way) and if languages and field work overseas are involved, Ph.D.s, especially in "area studies" can take ten years. The best way to approach these time spans is to regard them as part of professional life instead of only preparation for it. In terms of contacts and experience, it's very much the former.
3. What do I study? The foundation for graduate studies is in "field courses" that expose you to the basic literature of the discipline. These are reading courses with long lists of books that you are supposed to read/skim and with whose contents and authors you are supposed to become familiar. You might be asked to read the basic literature in a field called "The Cold War," or "Development Economics," or "American Political Thought," etc. These courses sometimes have exams but might also be seminars with papers to write after due reflection on issues raised by the literature.

   Field Courses" are what your professors at Trinity have been drawing on for their knowledge in the various courses they taught you. Part of their job has been to keep updating their knowledge by reading new things that have come out since they were in grad school.
   A typical graduate program involves three "fields" for the M.A. and five or six for the Doctorate.

4. What else do I study? In addition to field courses, you take advanced courses in the discipline that builds on your base in the literature of the discipline. You also take seminars in the "field," where you do your own research and learn how to present and defend your own views on issues in the discipline.

   You also take courses in related disciplines. These might be surveys, and they might even include undergraduates. This is particularly the case when you start or improve your command of a language. A Doctoral program in International Studies normally requires research competence in at least one language, and reading knowledge (no writing or speaking) of another.

5. What about the exams? Part way through the Doctoral program (2 or 3 years), you take a battery of written and/or oral examinations variously called "Comprehensive" ("comps"), "Preliminary" ("prelims"), or "General" examinations. These are over the fields you have chosen and cover the literature you studied in the field courses as well as further studies and any writing you have done. They are your chance to demonstrate "mastery" of the "field". These exams are the make-or-break point where you are either advanced to Doctoral candidacy or politely told to accept an M.A. and leave.

6. How does the dissertation work? The rest of your time in graduate school consists of producing a "dissertation," essentially a book manuscript that makes an original contribution to your own particular primary "field" based on "primary" research (not reading a bunch of books written by others) that you process in your own way using your own hard-won expertise. By this time you and your primary mentor (your dissertation advisor) are in deep discussion about the topic. It may require your applying for a fellowship to spend a year or more abroad studying in the culture of your topic, using particular research resources and making useful professional contacts for later in life.

7. At the dissertation drafting/writing stage, you write the dissertation in chapters and submit it to your dissertation advisor and one or two other faculty members (including "outside readers" from other institutions as appropriate), using their feedback to improve your writing. This does not have to take a long time but usually does, because by this point you are working part time (many academics get teaching jobs before they finish their dissertations, which creates a serious overload for them), possibly married with children, or otherwise distracted by the unavoidable onset of your late twenties or early thirties. (Don't think about this when you're a college senior. Put one foot in front of the other and take it one step at a time.)

   Dissertations frequently get published as the first book of an academic's career and an essential pre-requisite to getting tenure on a university faculty.

VI. How do I find a job when I'm done?

³Useful examples in this context are the American Political Science Association, the International Studies Association, the American Anthropological Association, the American Historical Association, the Association for Asian Studies, the Middle East Studies Association, the American Sociological Association, the Organization of American Historians, and so forth. See the Trinity International Studies home page for links to some of these, to see what they do and how they advertise jobs.

Since your graduate school is in the business of producing highly-trained professionals, it is much more interested in putting you into a position than, say, your undergraduate college is after a B.A. The reputation of the graduate school depends in part on how well its graduates do in the world beyond school. Since the faculty themselves are professionals, they are in constant professional contact with people in the field who are in a position to hire, whether in academe or government, or think tanks, or research institutes of other kinds. Accordingly, one part of the graduate experience is learning the lay of the land in the profession and developing professional contacts, sometimes through one's mentors' introductions. These contacts are a primary source of leads for employment.

Secondly, professional associations³ hold annual conventions where members of the field share their work and discuss developments in the field at panel presentations. These meetings always have job postings and an employment bureau. Prior to the meetings the association in question publishes job openings, and candidates apply by writing and furnishing references, hoping to arrange interviews at the meetings. Many professionals are hired by this route, which is probably the most common way for professors to become professors.