Rankings in tiers would be great too 
There will be many prior CC postings on both plus you can google A LOT on this.
In terms of faculty scholarship in economics, these colleges and universities appear to be especially strong:
Williams
Wellesley
Middlebury
Wesleyan
Hamilton
Claremont McKenna
Harvard
MIT
Princeton
UC-Berkeley
UChicago
Stanford
(IDEAS.)
What about Duke? Dartmouth? Northwestern?
You can view the original sources for schools somewhat deeper in the rankings: “Economics Departments at Liberal Arts Colleges,” “US Economics Departments” (IDEAS).
All great in both areas.
Don’t obsess over departmental rankings. They don’t mean much at the undergraduate level.
^^^Agree., don’t obsess about ratings. Focus on finding schools with these attributes:
–Offers your major (virtually every college will). At almost every school you can look online and see what classes are offered in your major as well.
–You are academically qualified to attend (including reach, match, safety schools)
–You can afford – if $ is a factor (look at NPC etc.)
–Has other attributes you like – ex. size, location, religious/secular and anything else you’d like in a school such as Greek Life, sports, etc.
According to IDEAS / REPEC, the ranking of research output and influence from universities (https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.usecondept.html), the top universities for economics are:
Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, Princeton, UChicago, and Stanford.
If you were to ask what the general perception of top economics programs in the country, this list would come up. But this list combines graduate with undergraduate research. If you were in any of these departments, you would be exposed to some of the most influential faculty, yet this would not really affect the quality of education, the research opportunities, or the undergraduate academic experience as the most notable faculty are mostly focused on research.
But, I would argue that the best economics department for undergraduates is at Dartmouth College (disclaimer: I turned down Dartmouth for one of those “top six” econ departments). Dartmouth is ranked 14th out of all universities according to IDEAS. This seems good, but not spectacular, until you realize that Dartmouth doesn’t have a graduate program in Economics. All of the professors producing top 15-level research also teach, mentor, and prepare undergraduates. Many people argue that one of the disadvantages of attending a small school like Dartmouth or Williams is that while undergraduates receive a lot of attention, the “research projects” that they work on are just not of the same caliber as the labwork opportunities offered at large graduate-focused schools such as Harvard or UChicago. This is simply not true for Dartmouth’s economics department, as justified by the research ranking on IDEAS. There is a separate list for LAC Economic Departments, but Dartmouth is ranked alongside all schools with a graduate program in Economics. Pound-for-pound, Dartmouth has the strongest economics department for undergraduates - you will not only get a rigorous economic education, but you have opportunities to be an influential member of very high level economics research (as opposed to another stat jock or data monkey).
Harvard, MIT, etc… are all great schools for economics. Each department has its bent (MIT leans towards developmental economics, UChicago is the cult of Milton Friedman which is actually more of a problem than you’d think), but if you want a well-rounded economics education that can prepare you for finance / banking, politics, grad school, or a PhD program (I personally know a few students who went to Dartmouth for undergraduate and then completed a Harvard PhD in Economics in 3 years), then Dartmouth is the school to shoot for. There are an exorbitant number of opportunities for undergraduates to participate in influential research at both Tuck and the College. The school showers undergraduates with grants / study abroad / travel opportunities. Finally, the Dartmouth Alumni Network makes job recruitment one of the easiest of the Ivy League schools.
I don’t know much about political science / government, but I do know that Dartmouth’s government department is one of the strongest as well (although I can’t back it up in the same way I did for the economics department). Dartmouth graduates currently occupy the fourth highest number of seats in Congress (not a very good metric, but you get the idea).
@Longclaw: You have posted that you are currently on a gap year after high school. In what sense can you be said to have turned down Dartmouth for another school?
For economics, there is some variation in math intensity between different schools’ departments. Some departments offer more than one track differing by math intensity. More math is preferred to go on to PhD study in economics, but may not be desired by one who is looking to apply economics to other subjects.
There are also other differences in emphasis. For example, CMC has a more preprofessional “business” emphasis than Pomona in its offerings.
Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Chicago and Stanford all have higher percentages of small classes overall (< 20 students) than Dartmouth does. Chicago also has a smaller percentage of large classes (>= 50 students) than Dartmouth does. I don’t know about econ and PS courses in particular. Maybe you could figure that out from online course schedule information. I wouldn’t assume, though, that Dartmouth undergraduates necessarily get far more faculty attention than students at all those other schools do.
According to NSF data, for the 10 most recent years, 2005-2015, alumni of those colleges earned the following numbers of PhDs in economics:
146 Harvard (6700 undergrads)
88 Stanford (~7000 undergrads)
71 MIT (~4500 undergrads)
69 UChicago (~5700 undergrads)
57 Princeton (~5400 undergrads)
31 Dartmouth (~4300 undergrads)
I don’t think too many top academic departments promote cults. Anyway, Milton Friedman hasn’t taught at UChicago since the late 1970s. Most of Chicago’s current, large, non-emeritus faculty received PhDs from other universities more recently than that (https://economics.uchicago.edu/facstaff/).
It is very difficult to compare the academic quality of specific departments at peer schools at the undergraduate level.
You can try examining online course listings and faculty bios. It’s harder to tease out post-graduate outcomes that are clearly attributable to program quality. I think one would find that the undergraduate PS and econ programs at all these schools are very good. If you are lucky enough to be admitted to more than one of them, I’d recommend choosing according to other factors (such as net cost, or personal preferences for location/setting, campus atmosphere, etc.)
Of course, there are other excellent choices besides the ones listed in post #2. Dartmouth may indeed be a better choice for some students than any of them.
By “cult of Milton Friedman,” I mean that the school promotes monetarist theory and takes a very quantitative, statistical, and empirical approach to teaching economics. UChicago is very proud of Milton Friedman, but also has a very significant history of promoting his economic research above other fields of economics (e.g. Chicago Boys). Smaller classes doesn’t necessarily reflect more faculty attention, as having more graduate students can indicate that more classes / precepts are available.
@merc81 I messaged you with an explanation.
Michigan has strong Economics and Political Science departments. It also offers an interesting PPE major: