Grad School

Susan and I returned a few hours ago from the grad school fair at DLI. The FAO office here at DLI invites grad schools to recruit FAOs, since we have to begin our applications for school very soon. Now that I've had a little time to digest what was there, I thought I'd share a little. Entering the fair, I was very worried that I'd be overwhelmed by international relations and very politically heavy programs that are trying to solve the world's conflicts. What I came away with was a very pleasant realization that many of the Middle East and Arab Studies programs are actually very language heavy. Since that's my main interest in the FAO program, that was a very positive feeling. My current #1 choice, Georgetown, seemed like a good fit for me, since it's a good language program. I was also surprised at Harvard's willingness to recruit and work with FAOs - especially given Harvard's history with the military. Without doing any more research, those two are at the top of my list.

Princeton, on the other hand, was not very impressive, and their school colors are really ugly.

Last thought - there was a huge and obvious difference between the high cost and low cost schools. Both Georgetown and Harvard had well established and interesting programs, ones where I could also further my Arabic skills. Texas A&M, by contrast, just seemed lost and they really didn't offer any Arabic language training that would benefit me.