<p>Just what the title says...........can anyone tell me the best LACs for PS, preferably not in California? I'm not ruling anything out, but I want to go away to college.</p>
<p>Washington and Lee has a big politics programs and a lot of unique opportunities like Washington Term and its famous Mock Convention.</p>
<p>This by no means a qualitative ranking, but the following list of the top 30 or so undergrad producers of Poli Sci PhDs per 1000 graduates may give you some schools to consider. It's a good starting point, because it has schools with range of admissions selectivities:</p>
<p>Academic field:Political Science and Government </p>
<p>PhDs and Doctoral Degrees: ten years (1994 to 2003) from NSF database<br>
Number of Undergraduates: ten years (1989 to 1998) from IPEDS database<br>
Formula: Total PhDs per 1000 graduates </p>
<p>1 Swarthmore College 10
2 Haverford College 8
3 Princeton University 8
4 Pomona College 7
5 Harvard University 7
6 University of Chicago 7
7 Oberlin College 7
8 Williams College 7
9 Reed College 7
10 Wesleyan University 6
11 Bryn Mawr College 6
12 University of the South 5
13 Whitman College 5
14 Amherst College 5
15 Yale University 5
16 College of Wooster 5
17 Stanford University 5
18 Georgetown University 5
19 Claremont McKenna College 5
20 Carleton College 5
21 Smith College 4
22 Middlebury College 4
23 Franklin and Marshall College 4
24 Tougaloo College 4
25 Wellesley College 4
26 Occidental College 4
27 Brown University 4
28 Lawrence University 4
29 Harvey Mudd College 4
30 United States Coast Guard Academy 4
31 Earlham College 4
32 Kenyon College 4
33 Knox College 4
34 Brandeis University 4</p>
<p>Here's another list of future PhD percentage in poli sci, this one the top ten from Weighted Baccalaureate Origins Study, Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium; it pretty much tracks the NSF/IPEDS list:</p>
<p>Swarthmore
Haverford
Reed
Princeton
U Chicago
St. John's
Tougaloo
Oberlin
US Coast Guard Academy
Amherst</p>
<p>in new england- colgate, trinity, tufts</p>
<p>Those are good schools for political theory I guess - if you're interested in getting a PhD. But a lot of politics majors aren't and want to be active in actual politics or go to law school instead of just thinking/writing about it by being a political scientist. So my issue with that list is that it ignores the majority of politics/political science majors (and also says nothing about the strength or resources of any of these programs)</p>
<p>I know the Lond School of Economics thinks Bowdoin has the best Poli Sci faculty of a small college anywhere. Swarthmore is best for Public Policy in particular. Tufts is good for International Relations, but so are a lot of places. Smith is easier to get into, and has some very interesting connections to the Democratic and Republican parties, so top students can often get very good internships.</p>
<p>Washington & Lee, Bowdoin, Amherst, Williams, Haverford</p>
<p>how do you know that the london school of economics thinks bowdoin is the best? that doesn't seem like a survey they would regularly conduct...? bowdoin is a great school however and i'll be applying this year. :)</p>
<p>I guess they just looked at # of publications. But here's the link: <a href="http://www.bowdoin.edu/news/archives/1bowdoincampus/001355.shtml%5B/url%5D">http://www.bowdoin.edu/news/archives/1bowdoincampus/001355.shtml</a></p>
<p>oh thanks. also of note is that the lse rankings are # of publications and i don't think they took department size or student ratios into account so, if the # was divided by # of poli sci faculty, bowdoin may be much higher. it's somewhat strange though that given bowdoin's academic prowess with this measure, it doesn't even rank in the top 30 of phd production/grad... hmmm</p>
<p>I've yet to figure out what phd production means precisely. maybe fewer students write theses. anyway, i heard a lot of bowdoin grads go to the Woodrow Wilson Policy school at Princeton for grad. I mean, University of the South ranks the same as Amherst. I'm tempted to take it all with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>Remember that Majors like Poli Sci/Government are less likely to produce PhD's than something like engineering, since there is more than one terminal degree. I think that idad's list is more representative of the students at the schools than the schools themselves. I am not surprised, for example, that Swarthmore Poli Sci grads went on to get PhD's more per capita than Bowdoin Gov grads, but I'd suspect the situation is reverse for JD's. There definitely is a larger pre-professional contigent here at Bowdoin, and in general, the Gov majors here are probably more likely to head towards law firms/government jobs than professorship positions.</p>
<p>hey thanks for all the answers....I'll definitely be checking some of these places out. one thing though, at the risk of sounding like an idiot - how do you pronounce Bowdoin? hahaha sorry.....I've only seen the name written before.</p>
<p>I encourage you to consider department size: number of faculty, number and frequency of course offerings. For an LAC particularly, one might well encounter limitations on course offerings and sub-fields that you are able to pursue as your interests evolve. Other aspects as well: eg, meshing of your interests with the research interests of the few Profs there, for sponsoring Honors projects.</p>
<p>Never mind, I figured it out. The site says it's pronounced Bo-din.
if it helps, I'm probably not looking to get a Phd. I do plan to look at a lot of the programs suggested here and look into things a bit.</p>