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Anyone have a ranking?

By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Friday, July 09, 2004 - 02:22 pm: Edit

According to the US News and World Report, Harvard is #1, Michigan-Ann Arbor and Cal-Berkeley are tied at #2, Stanford, Yale and Chicago are 4-6. However, extrapolating rankings at the graduate level to undergraduate rankings is not accurate. LACs offer a very good foundation too. It depends on what you really want. I took two Political Science classes at Michigan with Raymond Tanter and Kenneth Lieberthal (two of the biggest names in Political Science today) and they really took the time to know the students. So there goes the whole myth that research universities and big name professors don't know their students. Just go for the atmosphere you really feel comfortable with.

By Im_Blue (Im_Blue) on Friday, July 09, 2004 - 06:31 pm: Edit

Top 20:
1. Harvard
2. Stanford / Berkeley / Michigan
5. Yale
6. Princeton
7. UCSD
8. Duke / UCLA / Chicago
11. Columbia / MIT / Rochester / Wisconsin
15. Ohio State / Minnesota / UNC
18. Indiana / Washington University in St. Louis

By Bunmushroom (Bunmushroom) on Friday, July 09, 2004 - 06:32 pm: Edit

Just by reputation, Stanford Harvard Berkeley and Michigan.

By Mini (Mini) on Friday, July 09, 2004 - 06:38 pm: Edit

Are you going to graduate school? (since these are all graduate school rankings?) They MIGHT be good - or they might not -- but you wouldn't know by these rankings unless you are going to graduate school.

By Zephyr151 (Zephyr151) on Friday, July 09, 2004 - 07:29 pm: Edit

i was asking about the undergraduate education

By Yackityack (Yackityack) on Friday, July 09, 2004 - 08:20 pm: Edit

do they even have undergrad rankings for polisci?

By Jab93 (Jab93) on Friday, July 09, 2004 - 08:50 pm: Edit

zephyr...

at the undergrad level, any school in the top 50 is going to have a strong poli sci department... it's not like this is some obscure major...

By Voodoochile (Voodoochile) on Friday, July 09, 2004 - 09:01 pm: Edit

Actually, if you want to get into politics, alumni networking matters a lot.

By Arizonamom (Arizonamom) on Saturday, July 10, 2004 - 05:37 pm: Edit

Claremont-McKenna has a great program

By Bunmushroom (Bunmushroom) on Saturday, July 10, 2004 - 06:47 pm: Edit

Ya, most top schools have solid polysci programs. The only difference is that maybe at a place like Harvard or Stanford you might come across some high calibur faculty. Condi Rice used to teach at Stanford for example.

By Subtrunks (Subtrunks) on Monday, July 12, 2004 - 05:50 am: Edit

Definately most well extablished Universites have good programs and I would say the same about the top 10 LAC's. In that case I would vouch for University of Chicago though. They are pioneers when it comes to certian areas of Poli. Sci.. My huamn geography teacher got his amster there and that one of the few places that offer it and if you plan to do grad school you will take some classes towards the end of your field with grad students.

By Plewis (Plewis) on Thursday, August 05, 2004 - 07:49 pm: Edit

Consider www.phds.org, ranking across educational quality, faculty quality and faculty citations. Publication rates and Gini coefficients are not highly relevant for undergraduates.