Advice Needed: KCL vs SOAS

I've received offers to go to Kings and study a Masters in Intelligence and International Security as well as SOAS to do Diplomacy and International ' Studies and in all honesty I'm flummoxed as to which one to choose right now. I essentially want to end up working for the government in some international capacity and was hoping someone could give me some advice as to the pluses and minuses of both Universities and courses.

Any help will be much obliged.

Reply 1

interpol2012

that sounds great! congrats! what do you want to do specifically though? international security would be for working somewhere like interpol, europol, crime related stuff. very interesting. the diplomacy one sounds like it would get you on track for being a diplomat. i guess it comes down to what you want to focus your studies on for your future career. cheers!

Reply 2

sj27

Original post by interpol2012

You have your definition of international security very wrong I'm afraid. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_security

Kings is very highly regarded in this field. I think the issue for the OP is that the Kings course is more focused and the SOAS one is broader. I understand that Kings has very good contacts with government departments etc which would help with job searches afterwards.

Reply 3

Socto

Cheers for the responses.

I finally settled on Kings. The main criteria I wanted for my course was a UK/EU centric technical course and going to the SOAS open day it didnt seem like I would get this as most of the talk there was about NGO work and UN work, neither of which interest me. I also wanted to do a dissertation on the relationship between states and guerilla groups in different regions and because of SOAS's speciality it doesnt have much resources for South American groups which makes up a lot of what I wanted to work on.

I really do want to become a diplomat but being from the UK I don't mind taking a roundabout way to get there. By taking the I&IS course it opens me up towards working for the government in different departments with which I can get experience and then apply for diplomatic jobs later, rather than putting all my eggs in one basket and just trying to get into the FCO through the Faststream ,which just taking the SOAS course wouldn't help me too much to achieve.

Kings is also cheaper than SOAS and randomly, its breakdancing society is one of the central Institutions in the UK Breakdancing community (I've been a dancer for 11 years and Breakin KCL has been up and running for nearly a decade now).

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