George Washington University

Date: Dec 31 1969
Major: Other (This Major's Salary over time)
I went to the Elliot School and had a good time. The Elliot School focuses on preparing you for a job, not doing research that will keep you in academia. I did take a lot of political science classes and those were preparing the students for academia, though.

One of the main reasons I chose the ESIA was because it had a 'group project' for half of a semester instead of a thesis. To me, this was good because I know I would have had trouble coming up with a thesis topic and such! Instead, our professor for the broad topic that was assigned said

We're going to research education in Iraq

which was a great and timely topic. I say great because it was so broad that everyone in the class found a way to contribute to their group (there were 2 groups of 4 people) and the overall project.

Another reason I liked the ESIA was it only required one semester of economics - great for someone who hates the subject (like me)!

I did feel like there was a lot of hype around the ESIA - about how smart the students are, how great the faculty was, etc. But to me, it felt like some of the faculty were chosen only because of their credentials, not because they were good at teaching. This was the main downfall of the school. Yeah, those professors liked the students, but they really couldn't teach. However, these professors were (at most) 15% of the faculty. The rest, although they had 'day jobs', really did like teaching and it was great to get some 'real world perspective' on some issues.

I had one AWESOME professor who made such a sterile topic as Forming National Security Policy fun. He was an ex-Army guy who had ended up on the Hill and made every lecture funny for even the most sleepy student. I looked forward to his classes each day just because I knew it was going to be as good as the best comedy on television.

Although I may say "hey, I got a good name for my resume by going here," overall, I did enjoy the learning. If, like me, you end up missing the straight academic world, the ESIA has more than enough room for taking whatever classes you want (IA - International Security Studies had, I believe, only 7 classes for the major and the rest were electives). I ended up spending half of my time here taking ESIA classes and the other half over at the political science department. I think this really strengthened myself as I got the 'how this works' and the international side at the ESIA, then got the 'how this should work' and the acadmic/US government side at the political science department.