Colleges for conservatives into political science

College Search & Selection
21

<p>Left-leaning, right-leaning – who cares? Why go to school with a bunch of like-minded folks? Go talk in front of a mirror if you want that.</p>

<p>Find schools that promote healthy political discourse. I would recommend a liberal arts college or any school that emphasizes the importance of classroom discussions. That’s where you will learn most. Also, consider schools where the students are politically involved. And lastly, remember this: just because you’re conservative and student X is liberal, doesn’t mean that you can’t learn from each others ideas. In fact, I think it’s often the best way to…“reach across the aisle.”</p>

22

<p>Hillsdale in MI.</p>

23

<p>Washington and Lee, Notre Dame, UVa</p>

24

<p>I don’t think you should stay away from schools that lean to the left; you should, however, stay away from schools that don’t allow for a diversity of thought and differing viewpoints. There are schools that are so overwhelmingly liberal that a conservative would feel uncomfortable there. Do remember, though, that political science is the science of political systems and governments, and not necessarily politics.</p>

25

<p>I’ll try not to make this political. From a behavioral science personality theory perspective, then, there may be a reason why there is tilt away from conservatism in academia. Conservatives, as the term implies, want to conserve traditional morals and world-views. Science requires a skeptical attitude, which leads to questioning all received wisdom. </p>

<p>Ironically, some of the greatest conservative academics have been those who have rebelled against the received wisdom of academia–Milton Friedman comes to mind. </p>

<p>My advice would be to pick the best academic college you get into. Someone mentioned Liberty University. But would you really rather go there than Berkeley?</p>

<p>And I’m hoping that all schools, from Berkely to Washington and Lee are afflicting the comfortable attitudes of all their students.</p>

26

<p>I tend to believe that finding political diversity among the student body is key. IMO going to a “prestige” school is most likely to equate to a broader spectrum of viewpoints from students. If School X is known for political science and considered to be among the “best” places to go for political science then all types of students with all types of viewpoints will clamor to attend, because they want the <em>name.</em> Just a random thought.</p>

27

<p>You’ve got one of the best political science departments in the country at the University of Michigan. </p>

<p>[Ph.D.'s</a> From Top Political-Science Programs Dominate Hiring, Research Finds - Faculty - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“Ph.D.'s From Top Political-Science Programs Dominate Hiring, Research Finds”>Ph.D.'s From Top Political-Science Programs Dominate Hiring, Research Finds)</p>

28

<p>None of the top Political Science departments will be overly conservative. You will have conservative students and faculty, but they will be in the minority. Raymond Tanter was such a professor at Michigan back in my day (I heard he now teaches at Georgetown). Whether one adheres to liberal or conservative ideals does not matter. What matters is one’s ability to present their point of view in a manner that is respectful of others, regardless of their believes, backgrounds, nationality, religion etc… and devoid of prejudice and ignorance.</p>

<p>Residents of the state of Michigan have two excellent PS departments in Michigan and MSU.</p>

29

<p>“It is hard to find a school that doesn’t have leftist professors or a liberal student body.”</p>

<p>Also hard to find a school that doesn’t have right-leaning professors and conservative students.</p>

<p>You also said that you wanted to stay away from schools that “lean to the left.” Without getting too deep in to the issue, my fondest politics (NOT poli sci) dream is that we have 3-4 elections in a row with 85-90% turnout. I think you’d see some evidence then of how the country tends a bit left.</p>

<p>In other words, if you want to study the good ol’ USA you should go to a college that has some leftist profs, too . . . </p>

<p>P.S. :slight_smile: what post #14 said about english departments</p>

30

<p>I live in Arizona. A pretty red state. Although the profs here might be “liberal” they are likely only liberal compared to the general public. There are lots of right leaning local kids at ASU and at least when I was in grad school a vocal young repubs group.</p>

31

<p>I think at a school like Michigan, which has by all accounts one of the nation’s very best political science departments, the faculty are going to work very hard to avoid being overtly ideological in the classroom. At least that was my experience there back in the day, at a time when politics were at least as polarized as they are now. These people are serious academics. Their subject matter is not who’s right or who’s wrong on contemporary matters of policy, or who should win elections. It’s about understanding, in a scientific way, the dynamics of the political process: what influences voting behavior, what factors influence congressional decision-making, the nature of presidential authority as it has actually evolved over time, how nations interact with each other, how political arrangements in different societies differ and how they are similar. At a school like Michigan, there will also be a heavy emphasis on research methods, which gets pretty technical at times; and particularly at Michigan, a heavy emphasis on quantitative methods, with every effort made to squeeze out ideological biases. A lot of it is pretty dry and, frankly, pretty “academic” in the sense that it’s at a far remove from the push and pull of everyday politics. Very little of it is ideologically driven, though no doubt at the margins even the best efforts to be “objective” may be influenced by unexamined assumptions. The one exception is in the subfield of political theory which by its very nature is largely normative; but even there you’re much better off being schooled by a top-notch theorist with whom you disagree (often the best way to sharpen your own arguments and theory-building skills) than by a second-rate hack with whom you agree.</p>

<p>If I were a Michigan resident seriously interested in political science–and not just partisan or ideological politics–I wouldn’t hesitate for a minute to attend the University of Michigan, regardless of my political leanings. On its face the question is almost as absurd as a politically conservative student interested in music asking whether a prospective music major should avoid the University of Michigan because its music faculty overwhelmingly support Democratic candidates. </p>

<p>And if as a Michigan resident I couldn’t get into the University of Michigan, I’d go for Michigan State in a heartbeat, because as Alexandre says, its political science department has the same academic values as Michigan, and some extraordinarily talented people on its faculty.</p>

32

<p>There are several schools on this list from Choosing the Right College:</p>

<p>[CollegeGuide.org</a> - Browse](<a href=“http://www.collegeguide.org/itembrowse.aspx?f=&m=1&p=1&s=]CollegeGuide.org”>http://www.collegeguide.org/itembrowse.aspx?f=&m=1&p=1&s=)</p>

<p>If you see a green light, the school is considered tolerant of conservative views (not necessarily conservative overall). Yellow lights are cautionary. Red lights you’d likely want to stay away from.</p>

<p>If you find three schools you think you’d like to look at more closely, choose them and try checking out. At the end, you used to be able to put the code in 3FREE to see three schools for free (this was in 2010 when my oldest used it, but others have said it was still available more recently - for my middle I just paid $25 and subscribed since we liked the details…)</p>

33

<p>Just an addition that I just browsed the list again out of curiosity. I saw many schools on there that could be good choices for Poly Sci including Fordham, Gettysburg, Dartmouth, Princeton, etc, all had green lights.</p>

<p>U Michigan gets a yellow light, so you might want to choose that as one of your potential freebies to see why if the school interests you.</p>

<p>I did not read this whole thread to know your stats or financial restraints, etc.</p>

34

<p>^^ re: Post #32,</p>

<p>LOL. I’ve never seen this list before. Michigan is in some pretty good company in that “yellow light” category: Bates, Bowdoin, Brown, UC-Berkeley, UCLA, Carleton, Colby, Colgate, Columbia, Cornell, Emory, Georgetown, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Penn, Rice, Smith, Stanford, Swarthmore, Tufts, USC, Vanderbilt, Wellesley, Yale.</p>

<p>Add to that some heavy hitters on their “red light” list: Amherst, Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Bucknell, Duke, Georgia Tech, Grinnell, Hamilton, Holy Cross, Macalester, Middlebury, Mount Holyoke, Oberlin, Vassar, Wesleyan.</p>

<p>Put those two together and it starts to look like a “Who’s Who” of top colleges and universities.</p>

<p>The only top-ranked schools they seem to fully approve of are Boston College, Caltech, the Claremont Colleges, Carnegie Mellon, Chicago, Colorado College, Dartmouth, Davidson, Haverford (really? How can Bryn Mawr be red while its fraternal twin Haverford is green?), MIT, UNC-Chapel Hill, Princeton, UVA, Wake Forest, Washington and Lee, WUSTL, and Williams.</p>

<p>I’d say that’s pretty heavily stacked against academic excellence.</p>

35

<p>Just for fun, I correlated the “stoplight” rankings linked in post #32 against the US News top 50 graduate programs in political science. Here’s what you get:</p>

<p>Red: #10 Duke, #23 UC Davis, #32 SUNY Stony Brook, #45 Rutgers,</p>

<p>Yellow: #1 Harvard, #2 Stanford, #4 Michigan, #4 Yale, #6 UC Berkeley, #7 Columbia, #8 UC San Diego, #10 UCLA, #15 NYU, #15 Ohio State, #15 Wisconsin, #19 Cornell, #19 Minnesota, #21 Northwestern, #21 Texas, #23 Illinois, #25 Emory, #25 Indiana, #25 Texas A&M, #28 Penn State, #28 Maryland, #28 Penn, #28 U Washington, #32 Michigan State, #32 Rice, #32 Iowa, #36 Notre Dame, #36 Vanderbilt, #40 Georgetown, #40 Johns Hopkins, #45 Brown, #45 U Colorado-Boulder, #48 Arizona</p>

<p>Green: #2 Princeton, #8 MIT, #12 Chicago, #13 UNC-Chapel Hill, #13 WUSTL, #15 University of Rochester, #36 UVA, #36 George Washington, #40 UC Irvine, #40 Florida State, #48 Georgia, #50 Florida, #50 UCSB</p>

<p>Not rated in “stoplight’ ratings: #40 Pitt, #50 SUNY Binghamton, #50 Syracuse </p>

<p>My reaction: any rating that gives negative marks to an overwhelming majority of the top programs in the country is pretty marginal, and is going to tend to marginalize the students who follow its advice.</p>

36

<p>bclintonk - it surprises me that you have as many posts as you have and have not yet looked at that guide. It’s often referred to here on cc, esp when it comes to conservative-tolerant schools. Many of us like their reports finding them to be spot on with regards to the colleges we personally know.</p>

<p>As for me and my house… my guys considered green and yellow colleges (along with some that they don’t review) and were quite happy with their options. (None of mine are Poly-Sci guys.)</p>

<p>Looking at your list of rankings vs color I only see 4 that are red. It would be super easy to avoid those 4 and have plenty of choices for a conservative-minded student who wanted tolerance for their views. Yellow is not 100% negative. It merely means one should beware of some aspect - and one can read to find out what that is or if it’s important to the individual. Red is negative. Green does not mean there is no liberal aspect. It means they’ve found nothing to suggest conservative views are discriminated against.</p>

<p>When in doubt about a school, read the report to see why they get the rating they do. If it’s a fit problem for the student, avoid the school. If not, keep it on the list.</p>

<p>FWIW, I also know families who use the guide looking for those colleges in the red (wanting those)… as noted above, those of us who use it consider it spot on for colleges we actually know. We only wish they did more schools.</p>

37

<p>So Duke got a red but Berkeley got a yellow?</p>

38

<p>The ranking system they use seems WAY off — in terms of tolerance of conservatives I’d rate the top schools like this:</p>

<p>Green – Princeton, Duke, Dartmouth, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Chicago, MIT, UPenn, Caltech, Rice, Georgetown, USC, UVA, Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, BC, Lehigh, Claremont McKenna, Davidson, Washington and Lee, Colgate</p>

<p>Yellow - Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, Emory, Stanford, Northwestern, Tufts, Michigan, Brandeis, William and Mary, Rochester, Carnegie Mellon, Case Western, UNC, Amherst, Williams, Middlebury, Pomona, Bowdoin, Haverford, Harvey Mudd, UCLA, Hamilton, Colby</p>

<p>Red – Columbia, Brown, UC-Berkeley, NYU, Swarthmore, Wellesley, Carleton, Vassar, Smith, Wesleyan, Oberlin</p>

39

<p>Hmmmmmmm. Duke is either red or green? I would say that a good compromise would be Brown. :-)</p>

40

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<p>On the other hand, some of their “green” colleges may not be appropriate places for liberals, or conservatives who are not conservative enough or of the matching religion.</p>

<p>For example, their top 10 exceptional colleges includes Providence, Gordon, and Christendom: [CollegeGuide.org</a> - Rating America’s Colleges](<a href=“http://www.collegeguide.org/itemdetail.aspx?item=486fb85a-5d15-4d1f-a8f5-5ce2804c3129&page=3]CollegeGuide.org”>http://www.collegeguide.org/itemdetail.aspx?item=486fb85a-5d15-4d1f-a8f5-5ce2804c3129&page=3) . Their “green” list also includes Liberty. But Yeshiva is “yellow”.</p>