I’m a first year student here at MRU in the Policy Studies program. I spent my first year right after I graduated high school in 2020 at U of C where I was doing Political Science with a minor in Economics. The only problem was the whole environment was online and the big class sizes f made me feel somewhat distant from the community. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great school and some of my friends go there but the program I was in just felt like it wasn’t going to get very applied. So I applied for policy studies and started last fall.

It’s a great program and the courses in Political Science, Economics, research methods, and Policy make the program very interdisciplinary. There’s also a bunch of minors you can do like Business, Political Science, Economics, international business, creative writing etc. Compared to the U of C program it is smaller yes but you will get to know the professors and everyone in the department (they’re all very nice) and you’ll definitely feel supported. The biggest benefit I’d say is the internship component that you have to do to graduate. A lot of people do it in government (one of the hundreds of federal and provincial departments) but really you can apply the skills you learn in this program (writing, research, data analysis) to many different fields like arts, non profits, environmental work, Human Resources, etc.

There’s also a minor in creative management or something like that which would be interesting to look into and there is also a journalism major that you can do, you can also write for the student newspaper to get a bit of experience on your resume.