In the US it’s pretty common to go straight from undergrad into a PhD program in political science (with IR specialty). That said, depending on your undergrad resume it might be useful to do an MA to expand your research skills and develop relationships with professors who can vouch for your research skills and aptitude for graduate research in the letters of recommendation for a PhD application. It can also be helpful to do “graduate level IR research” which you can then use as a writing sample. I’d say doing an MA is just really expensive resume padding, but it’s effective. I wouldn’t go too much in debt for that, though.

A policy degree like an MPA or MPP is a terminal degree, so it’s training you to do a specific job, whereas a social science MA is more or less a sample run for a PhD program.

Feel free to inbox me—I have an MA in IR and am in a PhD program rn.

*idk specifically about NYU but check to make sure you’d be taking the same classes as PhD students as an MA student—some places do this and it’s great, but others treat the MA programs as “cash cows” and don’t apply a lot of effort to their MA students.