bearclaw15

hey does anyone know the best universities with political science where you don't need to take the sat? i live in california and was just wondering.

For Shaganov

most schools you need sats, but harvard, yale uc berkley and georgetown have good poli sci

futebolista

i believe UCLA and UCSD both have pretty reputable polisci depts...but cal has the best in the UCs.

bearclaw15

do u need sats for georgetown?

For Shaganov

SAT or ACT

KKaech

whoa, whoa...first, ucsd was rated higher than all uc's in poli sci followed by ucla. if you're transferring with more than 60 units you don't need to take the sats.

bearclaw15

san diego rated higher than cal? do you have rankings online ?

nikkei325i

Top Political Science Departments by Universities

1) Columbia
2) Harvard
3) Stanford
4) Ohio State
5) EUI
6) UC San Diego
7) UC Irvine
8) Indiana
9) Princeton
10) Yale
11) UC Berkeley
12) Michigan State
13) Chicago
14) UC Los Angeles
15) LSE

This was all I found...
Source: www.politicalstudies.org/pdf/psr/hix.pdf

UCLAri

I'm not sure I agree with those rankings. Based on what I've been told by professors, the "top" 10 in the US look more like this:

Harvard
Princeton
Yale
Columbia
Berkeley
Stanford
UCSD
Michigan (not State, Ann-Arbor...the LSE guys are nuts)
UCLA
Chicago or MIT for the last spot.

While I do believe that their method of assessment might be more statistically accurate in gauging department impact, the fact remains that the hallmark of a great department is still placements. In that respect, I might even move UCLA out of the top 10 and put Duke, and maybe drop UCSD a few notches.

Yes, UCSD right now has a better poli sci department than Cal in many respects. Their comparative politics is particularly strong.

Georgetown is not, at least in the poli sci world, considered a superb department. It is good, but not great.

There are no notable political science departments in schools that don't require the SAT inside of the US.

ajp87

how in the world could those lists be accurate? your telling me that Michigan State University has a better poly sci dept. than Georgetown? that seems utterly rediculous and inaccurate.

UCLAri

ajp87,

You did read the paper, right? The rankings are based on the quality of journal output (numbers of journals, quality of journals published, etc.) In many ways, this is a more accurate assessment of the political science that a department is producing. However, it's not necessarily the best criteria for choosing a department as a student, because many well-published departments don't necessarily compete well outside of publishing.

Regardless, it's arguable that Michigan State is on the same ground as Georgetown as far as poli sci goes. Most people seem to believe that Georgetown's poli sci department is good solely based on location or overall university quality. That's rubbish. It is a good department, but it's by no means one of the greats. It's maybe top 15 or top 20, but that's it.

By the way, it's poli sci, the study of politics. It's not poly sci, the study of many sciences. I know I'm being picky, but it's a pet peeve of mine.

ajp87

thanks for correcting me ****** bag

bearclaw15

lol how strange. i seem to be on the same page as ajp. michigane state over georgetown ..hmmm? does it REALLY play a factor though if you were gettin a job or whatever i mean...do MOST ppl know that ucsd is better than cal? shouldn't the name and prestige of the school play a role.

UCLAri

bearclaw,

When ranking political science departments, a school like LSE is not looking at prestige or jobs netted by alumni. They're looking at the quality of the political science being produced by the department. Again, there are some great schools like Brown, Dartmouth, Penn, and Northwestern that only have decent or good political science departments, but are great universities overall. Then, you get places like OSU and Rochester that may not be "top 25" universities overall, but possess outstanding political science departments.

Now, about jobs...What do you want to do? If you want to become a political scientist, then yes, everyone in the know in that field knows how good UCSD is. If you want to go to law school, it might pay to go to Cal. Again, when ranking departments, we are looking at the quality of THAT department alone. The quality of a particular department matters a lot less to an undergrad, who is more interested in the university's aggregate quality.

So, if you just want to get a 9 to 5 job right out of undergrad, then UCSD over Cal might not be the best idea. If you want to go into political science, however, both would become equally good options.

nikkei325i

This is off-topic but I noticed that many of those who go to law school have attended UC's for their undergrad, not CSU's. Why is that?