International Relations (BA)

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Program Description

International Relations (IR), offered through the Wilf Family Department of Politics, seeks to provide students with an understanding of the global system’s past, the tools to function effectively in the present, and the ability to respond to future developments. The program recognizes the changing nature of the contemporary political and economic environment and seeks to lay an interdisciplinary basis for understanding these changes. It provides students with an opportunity to study the complex web of transnational politics in an in-depth, interdisciplinary fashion. The breadth of courses is designed to match the breadth of knowledge and skills that the field requires. The program combines a foundation of core courses in politics, economics, and statistics with a suite of classes on international relations and political economy, elective courses focused on a particular region, advanced study in a foreign language, and a required semester of study abroad. An honors program is offered for qualified students, who take an additional two-semester seminar sequence in their senior year in which they write a thesis under close supervision of faculty members.

Honors Program

The honors track of the major requires fourteen 4-credit courses (56 credits), including all requirements for the non-honors International Relations major. For admission to and completion of the department’s honors program, students must have a GPA of 3.65 both overall and in the IR major. The deadline for applying to the honors program is March 1 in spring of junior year. To be eligible for application, students must have completed or be currently enrolled in POL-UA 850 Introduction to Research Methods for Politics,  ECON-UA 1 Introduction to Macroeconomics, and ECON-UA 2 Introduction to Microeconomics (AP credit in economics is not accepted for students on the honors track). Students must also have completed POL-UA 700 International Politics and at least two courses qualifying as IR environment. Admitted students register for INTRL-UA 990 IR Senior Seminar (fall semester) to prepare a research proposal for their thesis, which they write in the spring while taking INTRL-UA 991 IR Senior Honors. The thesis and its oral defense must be approved by both the instructor teaching INTRL-UA 991 IR Senior Honors and the second reader of the thesis. The thesis will be presented at the politics department's Honors Research Conference, held in April of the student's senior year.

Admissions

New York University's Office of Undergraduate Admissions supports the application process for all undergraduate programs at NYU. For additional information about undergraduate admissions, including application requirements, see How to Apply.