Any information besides obvious college rankings on Political Science!

College Majors Humanities Majors
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After scrolling through multiple websites that rank colleges, it seems like they all have a similar ranking, although not identical, one could see a similar trend. With that being said, are there any specific places, both influential and uncommonly recognized colleges that have a hidden “unknown” gem or other important things worth mentioning?

(I am aware a few individuals urged me to wait a year or two before being concerned about this stuff, and understand why, but I personally like this place and scrolling about with the few weeks left of summer)

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Undergrad majors usually aren’t ranked or compared on quality, because an undergrad program is a more holistic course of study. You don’t spend most of your time in the department like you would in a graduate program - in fact, you’ll only take about 1/3 of your classes there. So you need to look for colleges that are well-rounded good places to go rather than worrying about “strong” political science departments…generally speaking, good colleges have good departments in most areas.

Some places that may have kind of unique offerings for someone interested in political science or related fields, though:

American University - Located in the nation’s capital, they have a School of International Service and a School of Public Affairs, which have a couple of majors and a host of minors and certificates that you can get in related fields.

Georgetown University - Also located in DC, and has majors in political economy, government, and the School of Foreign Service.

Claremont McKenna College - Government is one of CMC’s most popular majors, and there’s a big focus on jobs in government, politics and political science after college.

Willamette University - a small liberal arts college located in Salem, OR, right across the street from the state’s capital. Willamette has a unique relationship with the state government in Oregon, and they have lots of programs oriented towards that - including a 5-year BA/MBA program in public management.

^To that end, there may be some value in attending a college in a state capital as well, such as Vanderbilt (Nashville - also Vanderbilt is known for having a great political science department at the graduate level), University of Richmond (which also has a philosophy, politics, economics and law major), Emory (Atlanta), etc. There are also global cities that will have lots of political organizations - like Columbia in New York, which has lots of connections to many politically oriented organizations (and I’m sure NYU does as well).

Many, many students from schools like Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and Stanford go onto illustrious careers in politics. While I have no doubt that this is partly because of the high-quality education at those universities, it’s probably also due in large part to the fact that students at those schools are disproportionately wealthy and well-connected already. However, going to a place like Harvard or Princeton will help you with the well-connected part, which is important in that field.

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Depends on what you want out of your political science major. Do you want to help with research? Do you want to be near a capital (state or otherwise)? Do you want to live in a politically important area (such as a swing state/district, DC, etc). Do you want a place where the schools have a lot of other politics majors, thus increasing your chances to network and meet people? Are you concerned with policy? What do you hope to gain out of your major? Do you want to go to law school?

You don’t have to actually answer these. They’re just something to think about when deciding what programs to look into further. But basically, any good school is going to have a good political science department.

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