Brandeis vs GW for international relations: which is the better choice for an IR major?

The biggest practical tradeoff is academic environment versus location-driven opportunity. Brandeis gives you a smaller, more intimate campus with strong faculty access and a serious social science culture, while GW places you in Washington, D.C., where internships, policy events, embassies, think tanks, and federal agencies are woven into student life. For international relations specifically, that D.C. access is not just a nice extra, it meaningfully shapes the major.

Brandeis is still a credible option, especially if you want a more close-knit undergraduate experience and strong academics without a preprofessional feel dominating everything. The school has real strengths in politics, history, economics, and global studies, and students often get more direct interaction with professors than they might at a larger IR-focused institution. If you care a lot about seminar-style discussion and a quieter residential setting, that matters.

Outside-the-classroom involvement is where the difference becomes most concrete. At GW, relevant opportunities are immediate and frequent during the school year. At Brandeis, those experiences are more likely to come through research, campus organizations, Boston-area connections, or summer internships rather than being built into daily life the same way.

If your priority is the strongest overall platform for international relations as a major, especially with hands-on access to policy and global affairs work, GW is the more compelling choice. I’d lean Brandeis only if you know you want a smaller, more academic-feeling campus experience and are comfortable being more intentional about finding IR opportunities off campus.