<p>Who were the best professors you had in the political science department? Which professors are most impressive as leaders in their fields? Thanks!!</p>
<p>…you can google the poli sci dept and read the faculty bios. Profs don’t get on Columbia faculty by accident. So if you have an interest in something specific, try to find the person on faculty who specializes in that area - it is very likely they will be top in their field, or at the very least, a rising star.</p>
<p>I graduated a long time ago, but I can share one name: Andrew Nathan. He’s still there. I did independent study with him and got an A+. Nevertheless, my experience was Columbia poli sci professors wanted little to do with undergraduates. I took the “intro” type courses at Barnard, where the profs were more committed to teaching and paid more attention to UGs. In my time, poli sci was considered a relatively “gut” major. Most people who chose it had law school ambitions or plans to work in government.</p>
<p>I wanted to major in history, but there was a requirement (anachronistic even then) for reading fluency in German, and I’d had enough of German. In retrospect, economics would have been more useful than poli sci, but that dept. had a reputation for tough grading & bad teaching. The teacher of the one econ course I took, though a nice guy, was the worst teacher I ever had for anything, yet he won the Nobel a few years later.</p>
<p>Lastly, to make up your own mind about which courses to take, and indeed what to major in, the student evaluations are really quite useful.</p>