<p>I'm one of those people who's always known (sort of) what they want to do... I mean, I've always known what interests me. If you had asked me at five, I would have told you I'd become a paleontologist. At twelve, the next Jane Goodall. Today? Indiana Jones. Haha.</p>
<p>I've always been fascinated by such issues, and I hope to major in anthropology, either cultural or archeological, maybe with a minor in Women's Studies. </p>
<p>Does anyone else want to major in anthropology? Know of any schools with exceptional programs that a kid like myself ("meh," to use someone elses words) should look into? </p>
<p>Also, what about career options? Call me shallow if you will, but I'm afraid anthropology is one of those majors where a bachelor's or master's just doesn't cut it financially. I don't want to have to spend 10 years getting my doctorate before I can earn significant cash, but I also don't want to major in business (boring, in my opinion).</p>
<p>Please share any thoughts you have!! Please and thank you. :)</p>
<p>Michigan and Chicago have led the world in anthropology and archeology from time immemorial. Don't worry about a job just now. Get an education first.</p>
<p>That list does not indicate quality, only quantity. I would strongly recommend against reading too much into this publication. No Wisconsin-Madison among the top Sociology programs? No Stanford, NU or Penn among the top Econ departments? No Michigan or Stanford among the top Electrical Engineering program? No Michigan or UIUC among the top Mechanical Engineering? No Chicago or Columbia among the top Finance departments? No Michigan or Harvard among top Management departments? No MIT, Harvard, Chicago or Michigan among the top Math departments? No Harvard, Chicago or Stanford among the top History departments? This entire publication has more holes than all the cheeses manufactured in Wisconsin and Switzerland combined.</p>
<p>Kas, the top 2 Anthropology departments in the US are Michigan and Chicago. Many other schools have excellent Anthropology depaprtments, including Arizona, Cal, Harvard, Penn, Stanford, UCLA, UCSD, UT-Austin and Yale.</p>
<p>Many LACs and smaller research universities have excellent departments, but they will not offer the same breadth or depth as those larger research entities.</p>
<p>I wonder where else one can find this kind of information. In Fiske's Guide to Colleges, it lists the most popular majors but does not rank them. I think there might be a list in one of the other Fiske publications. </p>
<p>Alexandre... I am glad to see that most of the schools you mentioned are actually on the list I found so there must be some validity to it.</p>
<p>Whoa. Someone else who's into anthropology. I'm the only one I know.</p>
<p>No point in listing any more schools, although I'm gonna reiterate Beloit (I'm applying there, although it's not my top choice). They've got a pretty awesome anthropology museum and field study programs. Unfortunately, if you wanna get a job as an anthropologist or archaeologist, I think you're gonna have to do the phd thing... Sad, but it makes sense. You've got to have a lot of specialized knowledge for those fields, and you can't really get it in four years, especially when a big chunk of those four years is spent rounding off your education in other areas...</p>
<p>I would research this more by maybe emailing different departments. I am an anthropology major and here are some ideas:</p>
<p>Duke has a renowned primate center where they involve even undergraduates in their research. Check out their program, I think Duke anthro students are the luckiest ones in the nation.</p>
<p>Arizona State is home to Donald Johannssen, the guy that found Lucy. There is major research going down here due to the star power this school attracts, but I'm not totally sure about research opportunities as an undergrad here. The southwest is also a huge focal point of american anthropology, another thing to consider.</p>
<p>Experience in anthropology is all about doing fieldwork, which you can do anywhere during the summer. However, if you want to be close to where the great research is happening, I'd choose a big public university like Indiana or Berkeley.</p>
<p>The only downside with big publics is that undergrad research opportunities might be hard to come by. Private research schools I'm betting offer better opportunities for undergrads (i.e. Duke, Wash U, Notre Dame)</p>
<p>*I would also be pretty careful about straight up saying michigan and chicago are the two best anthropology schools in the nation. How would you even measure that? If it's by research, which I'm assuming, the best anthro professors usually flock to wherever the resources and good locations are. They move around a lot. But Pac 10 and Big 10 schools in general stay powerhouses because of big government funding; gov funding pretty much runs the field of anthropology.</p>
<p>*Edit: I was mainly talking about Biological Anthropology and Archaeology.</p>
<p>If you're into linguistics, classical archaeology, or cultural anthropology, that's a whole new ballgame. Anthro is a really diverse major.</p>