I am really struggling to narrow down my college choices, but I did get down to a top four! I absolutely love GWU’s location and the Elliot school is fantastic (majoring in IR) but I am ultimately worried about the very urban campus and missing out on the traditional college experience. WashU and Duke do however offer the traditional experience with gorgeous campuses and amazing people. I love green space and both of these schools offer this in plenty. However, I am not totally on board with the location. Also, although Duke’s poli sci program is amazing and I would double major in that, I am worried with the strength of their ICS major. Northeastern is another really good option for me because it offers green space in a city (although not DC). I love their co-op program and all of the opportunitise to travel would be amazing. Opinions? How do I narrow this down? All of these schools are extremely different and have many pros and cons for me.
You have the opportunity to have your college years and ultimately your career prospects shaped at a top ten university that the WSJ ranked #1 (in a tie with Harvard) for employment outcomes. The answer is simple.
Hopefully, a college education will teach you that when someone says “the answer is simple”, it probably isn’t. The WSJ outcomes measure depends on graduation rates, income after graduation, debt repayment, and academic reputation. Income after graduation was determined by the difference between actual salaries and predicted salaries, based on some model.
The very idea of a predictive model is rather dubious: I doubt that we can predict college salaries accurately based on high school SAT scores, family income, and whether you are a first-generation college student. What are the bias and variance of this model? Also, the model apparently doesn’t control for the different types of jobs taken by those graduates. Graduates that go on to graduate or professional schools will make essentially no salary after graduation, but they will make up for that later on in life. So, the WSJ outcomes model is rewarding exactly the opposite of what it should be doing.
Don’t let simplistic thinking and rankings take the place of a careful evaluation of the factors that matter to you personally. I don’t know what the right answer is here, and I know you are faced with a complex decision. I doubt that the advice from complete strangers on this forum is going to help, especially when they don’t know your situation as well as you do and might have other biases (for example, a random respondent might have gone to a particular school or have children at that school).
My suggestion would be for you to try to visit the schools, if possible. Also, look at the course offerings of each school in your anticipated major. Then, write down the pros and cons of each school, and read up on how Benjamin Franklin used this technique to help with his decision making.
@mdphd92, you have trapped yourself in the detail instead of looking at the big picture. With some issues it is better to take a step back and get perspective.
@am61517 Details do matter, and not everyone has the same situation. We should be helping these young people make a decision that is right for them, not one that may be best for your particular situation or mine.
I don’t profess to know anything about political science or international relations, but a quick Web search reveals a Foreign Policy survey of 1541 scholars that rates the George Washington University program as one of the best places to study IR, and does rank it above Duke. I think that is more relevant to the interests of the original poster than some generic ranking from a financial newspaper that tries to cover all majors and job outcomes.
I would narrow to GWU and Northeastern here, leaning GWU. GWU for the reasons stated, and Northeastern as your option with green space in a city + co-op as a way to work and get experience in DC. I agree with the above that the details matter here.
As a Northeastern student, you don’t get the “traditional” college experience here either, and that’s a good thing to me. While different, GWU and Northeastern share that really. I think it’s a bit culturally romanticized. If I was at GWU and wanted green space, I’d be happy to go with a few friends and hang out in one of the many green spaces in the city itself and do homework, and that’d be just as good for me. I suspect you’d thrive at GWU in ways you may not be considering 
considering the scope of your intended major, GWU already seems to be the best fit. this is just an opinion, but I feel that you’d also be presented with many more extracurricular opportunities geared towards building your career in Washington DC than you would find in, say, Durham or St Louis. I’ve visited and stayed in Durham several times for Duke-related activities, and every time I’m there I get the impression of a slow, lethargic town (with very nice people, of course). I once lived in DC at Georgetown for a month, which is fairly close to GWU, and the city is rife with opportunties.
You can find internship opps at the many many many embassies located a block away from the school, and this is just one example of how DC would be a better place for you.