<p>I want to do a PhD in Pol Sci, but I am conservative and I know grad school is very liberal. Are there specific programs I should apply to? I know Robert George at Princeton is conservative, but I’m not sure if his colleagues or students will be too…Should I apply in the South and Texas instead, or do they have just as many liberals?</p>
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<li><p>“Grad school is very liberal” is a ridiculous generalization. There are hundreds of graduate programs just in the US alone, and all of them are made up of people who are very different from one another. There are some conservatives, some liberals, and some people in between and who identify with other political affiliations as well. I’m in two departments at the same university and while one is very progressive/liberal, I’d say the other is pretty moderate.</p></li>
<li><p>Whether your professors and students are liberal or conservative is irrelevant to where you should attend graduate school. A PhD program is about getting the best mentor and program for the field you intend to enter. Especially in a field like poli sci, where academic and research positions are hard to find and scarce, it’s very important that you attend a top program with a mentor that can represent you well to potential employers. Even in a field like political science - your own personal affiliation does not matter. Political science is a social <em>science</em>, which means you will be using the scientific method to do your research and your own views and opinions shouldn’t matter much. And as for socializing with professors and students - you need to get used to conversing with people who don’t necessarily think like you. What are you going to do once you have the PhD? Only work in conservative workplaces?</p></li>
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<p>Geography won’t matter much, because graduate students in PhD programs typically don’t stay where they grew up or went to college. So grad programs in the South will have many students from other parts of the country (and also, note that many places in the South where large universities are located are more liberal - I grew up in Atlanta, which is actually a pretty liberal area. So are Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, NC, and Austin, TX).</p>