What programs are Georgetown University well known for?

bclintonk
Thu, 30 Sep 2010 15:36:28 +0000

Their poli sci type programs are top notch, for obvious reasons.



Many people on CC seem to think Georgetown has an outstanding poli sci program. Academics don’t think so. U.S. News ranks Georgetown’s poli sci graduate program #39, on the same level as Florida State and below schools like Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan State, Ohio State, Penn State, Indiana, Iowa, U Maryland-College Park, SUNY Stony Brook, UC Davis, UC Irvine, and Texas A&M—not to mention the usual HYPSM, other Ivies, and “public Ivies” like UC Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, Wisconsin, and UNC-Chapel Hill.

The recently-released National Research Council graduate program rankings are no more kind to Georgetown. They have two measures, each placing schools within a “band” of rankings. On one scale, Georgetown’s poli sci (government) program comes in at #23-#44. On the other scale, Georgetown comes in at #62-#77. Average all these figures out and it comes out around #51 (though its ordinal rank might be slightly higher, probably low 40s—just about where US News puts it). Not terrible, but not outstanding. Nearby GW comes out at exactly the same level in the US News ranking and distinctly higher in the NRC ranking. U Maryland-College Park, in the DC suburbs, comes out much higher in both rankings.

These are all graduate school rankings, of course. Georgetown’s defenders will say, “Yeah, but it’s great for undergrad poli sci.” Well, maybe. The grad program rankings largely reflect the academic reputations of a school’s faculty. My understanding is Georgetown is just crawling with ex-government officials. Great for war stories, maybe, but I’m not so sure it’s great for serious academic study of politics and government. At least, I suspect that’s what academics at other schools are suspicious of, which probably accounts for the (good but) less-than-stellar rankings.