Hello CC,
I wanted to hear others opinions on an important topic for me.
I want to study political science and would like to continue in the public policy as a career. The top schools for this are certainly the Ivies and Georgetown.
I have heard that most Ivies have a better politics department than Georgetown. But Georgetown is located in DC, has a lot of network to the governent and consultancy companies.
So I would like to hear tour opinion on Georgetown vs Top tier Ivies ( harvard, yale, princeton, upenn, columbia) for someone who wants only public policy as a career.
Getting into any of those schools will be hard - do you have the stats for these places? Even if you do, they are still all reaches and you should look at other schools fore matches and safeties.
Consider GWU and American, who are both also located in DC and have developed good programs.
Northeastern and Drexel both have good programs and co-op programs so you can easily go work in DC while in school as well.
There are lots of others that hopefully others can recommend.
Agree with the above. Perhaps you will be accepted to an Ivy or Georgetown, and I wish you success. Most of these schools will have single-digit acceptance rates in RD and will deny admission to the vast majority of well-qualified applicants. An example I like to share: We visited a top LAC several years ago. In the info session, the rep said that 70% of applicants were fully qualified and they were confident they would succeed at the school. It accepted 14% (lower now). So 1 in 5 fully qualified applicants were denied admission.
I’d add William and Mary as a great option that is still very competitive, especially for OOS applicants, but not a single-digit RD school. Robert Gates, James Comey, and Jen Psaki are all alums, also Serge Kovaleski of the New York Times, Jon Stewart too.
Hamilton and Holy Cross are also great choices. The academics at Holy Cross are as strong as anywhere, and government/political science is a strength. Jon Favreau (not the actor) was working as Barack Obama’s speechwriter not long after graduating. Good luck!
Why study political science if you’re interested in policy? There are many excellent undergraduate programs in public policy. US News has the following as the best graduate programs in public policy (an undergrad ranking doesn’t exist).
Berkeley
Harvard
Michigan
Duke
Chicago
Syracuse
Indiana
Carnegie Mellon
Princeton
Wisconsin
USC
UT Austin / Washington
GWU
Georgetown
Ohio State
Minnesota
UGA
NYU / UCLA
FSU
ASU / Georgia Tech / Georgia State / Texas A&M
American / Maryland
Rutgers / Kentucky
Columbia / JHU / Albany
GMU / Stanford / UNC
As another, probably less useful data point, the following colleges had more than 30 graduates in public policy last year:
158 Duke
141 Princeton
88 Chicago
70 Brandeis
69 UVA
67 SUNY EMpire State College
65 Michigan
63 Arizona State
61 UC Riverside / UNC
58 Cornell / Georgia State
39 Ole Miss
37 William & Mary
34 Northwestern
31 Trinity
30 URI
You definitely don’t need to major in public policy to have a policy career. There are lots of ways to add a policy focus to any major, such as by taking classes from a variety of disciplines that focus on public health, poverty, international affairs, science and technology policy, etc. I can see how being in DC or a state capital would be useful for internships, etc.
If you set this as a postulate, then you may counterproductively limit your college choices, particularly since political science does not adequately represent the study of public policy as an academic track.