<p>What school do you think has the best undergrad political science program and what school has the best int'l relations.</p>
<p>Mr first impressions:
Poly Sci: Harvard, Stanford, Yale
Int'l relations: Georgetown SFS, Princeton</p>
<p>UMich-AA: Political Science (#1, arguably)</p>
<p>//EDIT: Alexandre would probably have to field this one. //</p>
<p>Per Capita Undergrad Production of PhDs and Doctoral Degrees </p>
<p>Academic field: Political Science & Public Administration
PhDs and Doctoral Degrees: 1994 to 2003 from NSF database<br>
Enrollment from 2004 USNews<br>
Formula: PhDs divided by undergrad enrollment times 1000 </p>
<p>1 Swarthmore College 23
2 Harvard University 20
3 Haverford College 19
4 Princeton University 18
5 Pomona College 17
6 Oberlin College 17
7 Williams College 17
8 Wesleyan University 16
9 University of Chicago 13
10 Amherst College 13
11 Reed College 13
12 Bryn Mawr College 13
13 Yale University 12
14 Smith College 12
15 Stanford University 12
16 Georgetown University 11
17 Carleton College 11
18 Wellesley College 10
19 Whitman College 10
20 University of the South 10
21 College of Wooster 10
22 Middlebury College 10
23 Franklin and Marshall College 10
24 Claremont McKenna College 10
25 Brown University 10
26 Dartmouth College 9
27 Kenyon College 9
28 Colby College 8
29 Occidental College 8
30 Bowdoin College 8
31 Brandeis University 8
32 Colorado College 8
33 Earlham College 8
34 Colgate University 8
35 United States Air Force Academy 7
36 Duke University 7
37 Lawrence University 7
38 Knox College 7
39 Harvey Mudd College 7
40 Wheaton College (Wheaton, IL) 7
41 Barnard College 7
42 Vassar College 7
43 Davidson College 6
44 United States Military Academy 6
45 Northwestern Univ 6
46 Macalester College 6
47 Columbia University in the City of New York 6
48 Drew University 6
49 University of California-Berkeley 6
50 Grinnell College 6
51 Cornell University, All Campuses 6
52 California Institute of Technology 6</p>
<p>For IR, Tufts and JHU are up there with Georgetown. Many, many schools have good political science departments. Most big universities (and top LACs) have respectable IR AND polysci programs though they may be stronger in a particular geographic region.</p>
<p>POLITICAL SCIENCE, the very best:
Harvard University
Princeton University
Stanford University
University of California-Berkeley
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Yale University</p>
<p>Other excellent programs:
Columbia University
Duke University
MIT
University of California-Los Angeles
University of Chicago
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill</p>
<p>INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, the very best:
Georgetown University
Johns Hopkins University (more of a graduate program)
Princeton University
Tufts University</p>
<p>Other excellent programs:
Brown University
University of Pennsylvania</p>
<p>The Elliot School at GW is also strong for IR.</p>
<p>Middlebury, Iinternational Relations program, Study abroad program, Rohatyn Center of International Studies, languages.</p>
<p>interestedad those statistics would be better if they werent so flawed. obviously larger universities would have a smaller "per capita" considering there are MUCH more students in the undergraduate body of these universities compared to the number of students even pursuing political science. in this case, the total number of phds and doctoral degrees achieved is what we should be looking at not per capita</p>
<p>Columbia was recently ranked #1 in political science. Check out the department's web page</p>
<p>I have never seen Columbia ranked #1 in Political Science. Maybe that rank was one that ranks departments according to papers published by profs.</p>
<p>Shrek2004:</p>
<p>I don't necessarily agree with you. What you are saying would be comparable to stating that more GM owners rate their cars as "sporty" than Porsche owners -- an obvious fact since there are vastly more GM owners. </p>
<p>Inherent in the per capita data is a meaure of whether the average student at each school is likely to be interested enough and talented enough and prepared enough in an academic field to pursue a doctorate degree. So, while the large state universities produce large raw totals, the "typical" student at these schools does not pursue this kind of advanced academic study.</p>
<p>But, if you prefer to look at raw totals, without consideration of the size of the school, here ya go. These are the top 50 undergrad producers of Poli Sci/Public Policy PhDs for the period from 1994-2003. The first number following the school name is the total number of Poli Sci PhDs. The second number is the 2003 undergrad enrollment of each school:</p>
<p>1 University of California-Berkeley 140 > 23206
2 Harvard University 129 > 6597
3 University of Michigan at Ann Arbor 106 > 24517
4 Princeton University 87 > 4837
5 University of California-Los Angeles 86 > 25715
6 Stanford University 82 > 7054
7 Cornell University, All Campuses 78 > 13655
8 University of Wisconsin-Madison 76 > 30234
9 University of Virginia, Main Campus 73 > 13829
10 Georgetown University 71 > 6550
11 Yale University 65 > 5354
12 Brigham Young University, Main Campus 59 > 29932
13 University of Chicago 57 > 4355
14 Brown University 57 > 5906
15 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 53 > 16144
16 Michigan State University 52 > 34853
17 Northwestern Univ 51 > 8001
18 University of Texas at Austin 51 > 38383
19 University of Pennsylvania 50 > 9724
20 Oberlin College 48 > 2883
21 University of California-Santa Cruz 47 > 13660
22 University of Minnesota - Twin Cities 47 > 32474
23 Duke University 46 > 6248
24 Wesleyan University 45 > 2730
25 Columbia University in the City of New York 45 > 7134
26 University of Maryland at College Park 43 > 25379
27 Pennsylvania State U, Main Campus 41 > 35002
28 Rutgers the State Univ of NJ New Brunswick 41 > 27365
29 University of California-Santa Barbara 40 > 17844
30 University of Washington - Seattle 40 > 27962
31 University of Southern California 40 > 16381
32 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 38 > 29226
33 Indiana University at Bloomington 37 > 30319
34 George Washington University 37 > 10436
35 Dartmouth College 36 > 4098
36 University of California-San Diego 36 > 19872
37 Swarthmore College 35 > 1500
38 University of Notre Dame 35 > 8311
39 University of Colorado at Boulder 35 > 26186
40 Ohio State University, Main Campus 35 > 37605
41 Williams College 34 > 2045
42 Smith College 32 > 2682
43 Boston University 32 > 17682
44 University of California-Davis 31 > 23472
45 United States Air Force Academy 31 > 4157
46 SUNY at Binghamton 31 > 10563
47 University of California-Irvine 31 > 19967
48 Washington University 30 > 7188
49 University of Iowa 30 > 15150
50 SUNY at Albany 30 > 11796
51 Miami University, All Campuses 30 > 15150
52 Arizona State University Main 30 > 38627</p>
<p>I still think employment (and or professional school enrollment) is as good , or maybe a better measurement of the quality or "success" of a program than PhD production. I would guess that many Political Science majors enter law school and /or business school.</p>
<p>Alexandre, what is the basis for your listing?</p>
<p>If you would point me to a database of "professional school degrees" attained by the graduates of the several thousand colleges and universities tabulated in the NSF database, I would be happy to add the column to a spreadsheet and give you that per capita ranking as well.</p>
<p>How about a compromise guys. How about we take into consideration % of undergrads majoring in Political Science. For exmple, at Harvard, it is roughly 10%, at Columbia, it is close to 15%, at Michigan and Cal it is more like 5%. At any rate, going for a PhD does not really tell the whole story. At Michigan, I know for a fact that most Poli-Sci majors are pre-law. Roughly 50% of Poli-Sci majors at Michigan end up going to Law School and most of the rest end up working in industry.</p>
<p>1sokkermom, the basis for my listing are several rankings from the NRC, UNSWR, Goruman and a few others.</p>
<p>I don't know if a "per capita" ranking exists for "professional school degrees" or not. However, many schools do take pride in their professional school and employment placement directly upon graduation from an undergraduate program. In today's society and economic climate, I am not sure what kind of a "bang for the buck" one gets out of obtaining a PhD just for the sake of obtaining a PhD, and then having to wait on tables to pay the bills.</p>
<p>I am sure the career placement folks at a particular school of interest would have some current statistics about their undergraduate student placement into professional school, and or into the gainful employment arena. An outdated database about professional school placement alone would be meaningless.</p>
<p>I think the data are fine for comparing similar schools. Small LAC's have far different student bodies in many ways than the big schools. Let's just compare UM and UVa and Wisconsin in one pile and the LAC's in another. Not that many kids are looking at both types anyway.</p>
<p>Sokkermom:</p>
<p>It doesn't have to be "per capita". Just provide me with a tabulation of, for example, law school grads from each of the several thousand undergrad schools and I'll do the work to sort it by total and per capita. </p>
<p>I have looked for this data and find it to be difficult to find for even one school, let alone for thousands of schools with a consistent reporting mechanism.</p>
<p>The National Science Foundation PhD study is based on a survey form filled out by all students when they complete their doctorate degree. The NSF study has compiled this data, nationwide, on a continuous basis since their study began in 1920, about 85 years now.</p>
<p>Alexandre:</p>
<p>Absolutely right. Contributing to the comparative PhD charts is the inherent impact of how many Poli Sci majors there are at a school: i.e. the resources invested by the school in the department and the popularity of that department among the students. The 10% figure is not uncommon among the schools at the top of the per capita rankings. For example, Swarthmore's percentage of poli sci majors is about the same as Harvard's -- somewhere between 9% and 10% depending how far back you want to go.</p>
<p>I totally agree that more Poli Sci majors go to law school than grad school. I think that would be universally true at any of these colleges and universities. Unfortunately, there isn't any readily available data. Even the post grad percentages colleges supply to USNEWs is collected in a variety of ways and isn't directly comparable. For example, according to the numbers they supply, just over 13% of the entire graduating class at Swarthmore goes to law school. But, I don't know how that number is derived or how to go about comparing it to another college that might use a different collection mechanism. </p>
<p>It does seem like a plausible number, given that a recent Williams College study also pegs their law school percentage at 13% for the most recent five years they looked at.</p>
<p>Alexandre, I think you are correct that is what it measures</p>
<p>Barron's:</p>
<p>I agree with you to a large extent. Actually, I would recommend looking at data like the per capita PhD production in two different ways, depending on the stage of the college hunt.</p>
<p>In the initial stage, I believe that high schools students should consider all types of colleges: big/medium/small, urban/surburban/rural, etc. Looking at the combined per capita PhD charts could be a useful part of that broad initial survey.</p>
<p>Once a student has started to focus in on one particular type of school, then it is far more useful to look at comparative data within that smaller group -- LACs versus LACs, private research universities versus private reasearch universities, public research universities versus public research universities, etc. I've seen some overlap between LACs and small, private universities. However, huge state universities really can't be compared to small LACs by almost any measure. The educational demographics are just too dissimilar. For a meaningful comparison, you would need to be able to extract a subset of a large state university's student body that more closely mirrors that of the LAC or small private universities. IMO, you have to view most large state universities as a collection of several different student bodies, with very different qualifications and educational goals, all sharing a large campus. The small private schools tend to be more homogeneous in the academic qualifications and educational goals (and probably family income) of the students.</p>
<p>Barron's:</p>
<p>You can see the demographic problem in comparing large publics clearly in the TOTAL PhD per capita production. Berkeley is the first public on the list, in a positition that probably understates the outcome for very motivated students at the university. Because of the sheer size of the university, the outcomes for the hard-core academic students are statistically diluted. </p>
<p>In another sense, it is probably somewhat fair. I mean, not too many kids go to Caltech before returning home to work at daddy's insurance agency. In that sense, these ranking are probably a decent indicator of percentage of hard-core "academic types" at a school -- future research scientists, college professors, think-tank wonks, public policy analysts, etc. It's arguable whether or not that is a good thing or bad thing!</p>
<p>Per Capita Undergrad Production of PhDs and Doctoral Degrees </p>
<p>Academic field: ALL<br>
PhDs and Doctoral Degrees: 1994 to 2003 from NSF database<br>
Enrollment from 2004 USNews<br>
Formula: PhDs divided by undergrad enrollment times 1000 </p>
<p>1 California Institute of Technology 828
2 Swarthmore College 513
3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 505
4 Harvey Mudd College 467
5 Reed College 394
6 Carleton College 394
7 Harvard University 386
8 Oberlin College 384
9 Yale University 351
10 Bryn Mawr College 342
11 Haverford College 330
12 Princeton University 328
13 Amherst College 320
14 Pomona College 316
15 Williams College 315
16 Grinnell College 298
17 University of Chicago 290
18 Rice University 288
19 Wesleyan University 286
20 Stanford University 269
21 Brown University 263
22 Wellesley College 263
23 Smith College 236
24 Kalamazoo College 227
25 Cornell University, All Campuses 222
26 University of Rochester 215
27 Duke University 210
28 Juilliard School 206
29 Earlham College 206
30 Vassar College 206
31 Mount Holyoke College 205
32 Bowdoin College 203
33 Barnard College 201
34 St Olaf College 200
35 Dartmouth College 199
36 Macalester College 195
37 University of California-Berkeley 193
38 Bates College 176
39 College of William and Mary 175
40 Lawrence University 175
41 Occidental College 174
42 University of Pennsylvania 174
43 College of Wooster 170
44 Trinity University 169
45 Brandeis University 169
46 Hendrix College 169
47 Beloit College 167
48 Knox College 166
49 Davidson College 164
50 Case Western Reserve University 164</p>
<p>BTW, in the interest of accuracy, I want to point out that UChicago gets screwed on this list because they underwent a mammoth increase in the size of the undergrad enrollment in the last few years. Thus, my denominator is too large. I'm working on using actual undergrad degrees from the correct time frame to correct this, but in the meantime, U Chicago should probably be up somewhere around Yale's position.</p>