I’m a high school senior interested in studying Political Science next year and have applied to the 10 schools listed below. I’m really interested in politics and government (domestic more so than international), and intend on going to law school. Secondary interests include economics and American history. Career wise I’m still unsure - maybe politics, or some type of international organization, or practicing law.
So far, I’ve been admitted to Georgetown and Boston College EA.
Please rank these schools by their Political Science/Government undergraduate programs, taking into consideration grad school placement, internship/career oppurtunities, and anything else you deem appropriate. I would also appreciate any comments on individual programs you may have knowledge about even if you can’t rank the others. Cost is not an issue. Thanks!
The 10 schools, listed alphabetically:
Boston College
Brown
Georgetown (Political Economy, not SFS)
Harvard
University of Pennsylvania (maybe PPE program)
University of Southern California (maybe PPL)
University of Virginia
Vanderbilt
Washington University in St. Louis
Yale (maybe EPE)
Villanova and ND would rank equally or higher in Poli Sci than a few on that list. I work with a woman that went to the Kennedy School of Government that would rank St. Anselm among the best at the undergrad level. She didn’t go there undergrad.
Yale EPE
Georgetown SFS
Harvard
Georgetown (Political Economy)
University of Pennslvania
Brown
University of Virginia
Boston College
Vanderbilt
University of Southern California
Washington University in St. Louis
Here is the USNWR political science department ranking order:
Harvard
Yale
Washington University in St. Louis
University of Pennsylvania
University of Virginia
Vanderbilt
Georgetown
Brown
University of Southern California
Boston College
The NRC/Chronicle ranking also would place Harvard first and BC last, fairly consistently, but shuffle up the rest depending on which criterion you emphasize. If you average all the NRC sub-factor rankings, you get:
Harvard U.
Yale U.
WUSTL
U. of Southern California
Vanderbilt U.
Brown U.
UPenn
U. of Virginia
Georgetown U.
Boston College
Those are graduate program rankings. For undergrads, they’re all good enough for PS (and otherwise) that for many students it would make sense to choose based on net price or personal fit.
I’m aware that grad rankings are available online - I’m more interested in opinions about the undergrad programs. Price most likely isn’t going to be very different for me at any of the schools - I won’t get any financial aid though I did apply for merit scholarships at a few.
jackrabbit, all of the schools on your list have graduate programs in Political Science. As such, you can gauge the quality of their undergraduate programs just by looking at the graduate rankings. They all have good departments, but if I had to group them in terms of overall quality, it would be as follows:
Harvard
Yale
Brown
Georgetown SFS
Georgetown Political Science
Penn
UVa
Vanderbilt
WUSTL
Graduate program ranking may be a little relevant to undergrad program ranking. The professors in the department, the grant money coming into the department, the quality of the research, the opinions of outsiders - all of that is the same regardless of whether you are there as a grad student or an undergrad.
However, graduate programs are ranked on factors that are irrelevant to undergrads - and may even be detrimental to undergrad education. For example, professors. The best professors may work at the top political science programs, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will be teaching undergrad classes. In fact, the “best” professors are usually ranked based on how much research money they bring into the school and how well-recognized they are for that research. Well, one of the ways they have TIME for all that high-profile research is to minimize their commitment to teaching, primarily undergrad teaching. So if they get grants they buy out their time and the money is used to pay adjuncts or lecturers to do the teaching instead. If you go to a top-flight department of political sciences, chances are pretty good that your intro classes in your first year or two will be taught by adjuncts or lecturers, and even your junior-level elective classes are more likely to be taught by junior professors in the department (who don’t yet have the money to buy out course time) than the senior top researchers.
Also, grant money may not be specifically relevant to undergrads if the money doesn’t fund things they are allowed to use. A professor may get a $2.5 million grant to do a political science study, but much of the money may go to paying his graduate students, lecturers to teach your classes while he’s busy with his study, equipment for his research group, and conference travel. Conversely, a small school like Amherst or Swarthmore (which aren’t on your list, but still) may only get a $100,000 grant, but they use that $100K to fund some special summer research program for undergrads.
Here’s my take. You are not going to a “political science undergraduate program.” You are going to an undergraduate college, where you may take a major course of study in political science. It’s not like a graduate program, where you wil take all of your courses in one department and your whole scholarly life will likely take place in that department. You’ll take about 1/3 of your classes there; the majority of your coursework will be in other departments, and you may even decide to change your major. Lots of politicians have majored in something other than political science.
All of these are excellent universities with great political science departments, and you would get an excellent education in poli sci regardless of which one you chose. So don’t choose on the basis of an absolute ranking - choose based on other factors.
At many research universities, top-flight or not, chances are good that those intro to intermediate classes will be taught by adjuncts, lecturers, or junior professors. However, the top professors in top departments, whether they teach undergraduates or not, will tend to attract better-qualified grad students and junior facultyrs. So I would expect to see some “trickle down” effects at top universities.
Still, I agree with juillet’s advice about going to an “undergraduate college” v. going to a “political science undergraduate program”. Even if you could be 100% sure about your major, It would be hard to advise you with very confident claims, because (1) there are no reliable assessments of undergraduate program quality for most individual arts & science departments, and (2) few of us are personally familiar with the current quality of multiple specific departments at multiple schools.