<p>I've been looking up some info on poli sci departments (my major), and it seems that on each list i look UCI is ridiculously high up (number 7 or 8), beating out huge schools like Berkeley, Georgetown, Princeton, U of Chicago, Yale, JHU, etc.</p>
<p>I'm just wondering if:
A) this is true
B) How it's possible when Irvine is such a smaller school (in terms of money and notability) compared to these other schools</p>
<p>From a quick google search, I can find two rankings in which Irvine's places pretty well (though one of the rankings is questionable). Undoubtedly Irvine has a strong poli sci department, but I would hardly say that it "beats" other top schools like Georgetown, Princeton, and Berkeley. They're all comparable in this aspect.</p>
<p>In addition, there are many low-ranked schools that excel in an area or two. Irvine happens to excel in poli sci and English; UC Santa Cruz has one of the best linguistics programs in the country; and so on.</p>