Woodrow Wilson School

Colleges & Universities Princeton University
4

<p>I’ll add just a few thoughts to what has already been written above.</p>

<p>I was in the Wilson School as an undergraduate and then went to Harvard for law school. WWS is a public policy school for undergraduates that requires its students to study in a variety of different areas (history, politics, economics, etc.) to provide them with a basis for analyzing public policy issues that might arise in a domestic or international governmental career. A great many WWS graduates go on to law school after their four year program.</p>

<p>The Woodrow Wilson School’s primary distinguishing characteristic is its policy conference and its task force work group exercises. These classes are organized on a ‘think-tank’ model. An important and difficult public policy question is identified and presented to a small group of students. The students, with the guidance of the professor leading the class, identify the salient issues, decide on organizational hierarchies, divide responsibility for researching the separate issues and then go to work. Individual researchers conduct interviews, dig into public data repositories and sometimes perform field research in preparation for writing papers analyzing their portion of the public policy problem. (Task forces and policy conferences have often traveled overseas at Princeton’s expense to research these issues.) </p>

<p>When the papers have been completed, they are individually presented to the group and then distributed for discussion. The next step involves hours of group debate. Now that each of the students has become knowledgeable about the details of the issues, intelligent and lengthy discussions are carried on as the group tries to arrive at consensus (or at least a majority opinion) regarding the primary public policy question. </p>

<p>Finally, a group paper or statement is drafted expressing the findings and providing public policy recommendations. These papers often have real world implications. On numerous occasions, Woodrow Wilson School papers have been distributed to members of Congress, representatives at the United Nations and other policymaking bodies and these papers and their recommendations have shown up in debates (and sometimes even decisions) made by these bodies. </p>

<p>The exercise is exciting and collaborative. The prestige of the Wilson School opens doors in Washington D.C. and elsewhere allowing access to government officials at the highest levels. Even former U.S. Presidents have made private presentations to Wilson School undergraduates in these exercises. Other undergraduate public affairs programs may have something similar to this but, if so, I’m not aware of them.</p>

<p>I hope this helps. If you check the archives of the Daily Princetonian and Princeton’s website, you should find a great deal of information about the undergraduate program.</p>