Hi all,
I am international applicant wanting to major in cultural anthropology. I’m also interested in religious studies (comparative, considering a minor in it), sociology, philosophy, comparative political science. Later on I would like to stay in academia, preferably pursing graduate study at some Ivies or Oxbridge/LSE in the U.K, but obviously that might change with my experience as an anthro undergraduate. I’m looking for schools that will help me become the best social scientists I possibly can, and have the prestige/reputation/teaching in my chosen field that will help me get into a top graduate program.
I am looking at top 50 research universities (although not public ones, due to limited financial aid opportunities for international students) and top 30 liberal arts colleges. I could picture myself fit in both environments, though I must say I value independent opportunities, smaller class sizes and stimulating discussions a lot. Sports aren’t a concern too, neither is setting or social life, I don’t like to drink or having to go to a big party every Friday only to maintain my social status.
So, which schools have great rep for anthro and social sciences, backed up by great teaching and not some fairy tales? I’ve been looking at websites, checking if there are separate departments for anthro, looking at faculty, but honestly, every school looks great on paper. One more thing, I don’t consider going into archeology, so strength in archeology is not a must.
Thanks for any help!
These top 30 (U.S. News) LACs appear in “20 Best Small Colleges for Sociology and Anthropology Degrees”:
Haverford
Vassar
Swarthmore
Hamilton
Wesleyan
Bowdoin
Barnard
https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/small-colleges/sociology-anthropology/
You should also consider Pitzer/Pomona, Bryn Mawr, Beloit, Grinnell and Reed.
The strongest departments will be those that offers courses in the four major anthropological subfields: archaeology and cultural and social, linguistic and biological anthropology. You may also wish to favor, as you noted, those schools at which the anthropology and sociology programs operate through separate departments.
In terms of larger schools, you would find excellent programs at the University of Chicago and George Washington, to name two.
Also look at public universities with honors colleges and merit scholarships.
For religious studies, Holy Cross (Catholic), St Olaf ( Lutheran, and they have a large variety of denominations and faiths on faculty), Baylor (Baptist) are all very strong - investigate anthropology offerings there as well as merit scholarships or financial aid
Thank you! What about religious studies schools which are unaffiliated? Do such schools exist?
Most religious studies programs are unaffiliated with a specific religion and will offer courses in varied topics such as The Old Testament, Indian Buddhism and the spiritualities of Native Americans, as well as in cross-cultural/disciplinary topics such as those relating to the relationships between gender and religion or pilgrimages, for example.
I wouldn’t recommend Reed for sociology, tho.
^ Though I’d noted on another thread that you regard Reed as being light in sociology faculty and presumably course offerings, I included Reed above for its generally excellent preparation for those possibly interested in graduate studies or a career in academia in most liberal arts and sciences fields.
@bombonlina : You might also want to think of religious studies as a field that can overlap significantly with other majors such as American studies, government, history, women’s studies, philosophy, art history and even environmental studies.
Most serious religion departments will have specialists from all denominations and faith traditions. (St Olaf, which “pinches above its weight” in that field, is a good example. Brandeis is another one.)
However if you were interested in specific denominations it was important to bring those up in relation to their denominations.
I agree with the above: American Studies in particular would interest you.
Look into Scripps as well.
@bombonlina Take a look at the NRC rankings for anthropology. https://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/area35.html
UBC has a great museum, and appears to have a strong program:
http://anth.ubc.ca/socio-cultural-anthropology/
The university of Victoria is not a “top 50 in the world” school, but it is a very good university with a good program in anthropology and is likely to be more affordable:
http://www.uvic.ca/socialsciences/anthropology/index.php
Wow, thank you all so much! The NRC rankings are of great help, @Penn95. It seems like Chicago is the top university in all three fields I am interested in. @DadTwoGirls thank you for your suggestions but I’m afraid Canada is out of my reach due to finances 
Among Amherst, Pomona/CMC, Williams and Swarthmore, which one is the strongest in social sciences overall? Also, what do you think about Wellesley and Smith?
@bonbonlina, I would be very careful about making your decisions based on very subjective rankings. All these schools are are roughly of the same caliber. Apply to those where you feel the fit will be strongest and check the common data sets to make sure that you have a decent chance of acceptance.
You say you need financial aid. You can’t afford to be too picky about a specific program, specific courses. All the schools you’ve named are great schools and you’ll be fortunate to get into any of them with aid, so can’t be worrying if Williams has 3 more courses than Smith, or is half a point higher in rankings.
Williams and Amherst do have a sports and partying culture. You don’t have to participate, but many students do.
@bombonlina for international students seeking financial aid, all of the ‘top 30’ liberal arts schools are severely competitive. Vassar, for instance, admits less than 5% of internationals seeking financial aid; Reed, which sits out of rankings, admits 6%. How much are you willing to pay for college? This factor will strongly affect where you will be admitted. Either way you cannot limit yourself to a certain portion of the rankings; you are going to have to apply widely, unless you are an outstanding applicant (have you won an international olympiad, for instance?)
Aside from economics, I don’t think you should generally worry about the quality of education at any of these schools. All of these schools are able to hire rockstar academics in the social sciences and the humanities. Reed’s faculty, for instance, are all trained at Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton. The reason for this is that there is intense competition for academic jobs in the US, and LACs in better locations like LA, Boston and Portland get great talent. For the purposes of an undergraduate education then you don’t really have to worry about the strength of the faculty. Worry about fit and where your chances would be best.
If you are dismissing schools in Canada just because you think they don’t offer any money, think again. UBC, for instance, has an international student scholarship program (http://internationalscholars.ubc.ca/about-the-program/ilot/). You need to do better research. A lot of them can be affordable, depending on how much you are willing to pay and how much merit aid you score. I don’t know where you are from, but if you are interested in LACs worldwide, you could look into the American College of Greece and Bard College Berlin as well.
That NRC ranking (https://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/area35.html) may be a bit dated.
I believe the report came out in 1995 and was based on research completed in 1993.
Here’s a more recent NRC/Chronicle assessment for anthropology:
http://www.chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-/124703
(Good luck deciphering it, though. It deliberately resists an overall, one-up score and ranking).
Here’s another one by QS World:
https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2016/anthropology
Keep in mind, these are all graduate program rankings. Small liberal arts colleges won’t show up in any of them.
I’d add that using graduate department rankings for the purpose of evaluating any undergraduate programs would be outside of their designed purpose, and possibly counterproductive.
^ IMO they aren’t completely worthless, at least not for a student who (a) is pretty clear about intended major (b) prefers research universities to LACs, and © isn’t familiar enough with US universities to identify possible reaches and matches for an initial application list.
A university with a top-rated department presumably will attract top scholars (who may or may not be good undergraduate instructors, but who in turn will tend to attract strong junior faculty and grad students). Its facilities, financial aid, class sizes, location, etc., may not be as attractive as some alternatives with lower-ranked (or unranked) departments. Nevertheless, if you start with a graduate department ranking and work your way down from the top, you should be able to find schools with the other features you want (and where your admission chances are realistic), as long as you’re focused on research universities, and as long as you only use the ranking as a starting point.
Compared to the overall college rankings, the graduate department rankings often have many more state universities near the top.
^ All good points. For me the difficulty arises in analyzing the rankings with sufficient sophistication on individual threads so that reasonable homogeneous comparisons can be made. In this case in particular, the data was initially introduced (#10) without the specification that it was for graduate departments, and was later correctly noted (#16) to be based on data from more than 20 years ago. With several degrees of refinement, perhaps this type of data can be effectively normalized for relevance to an undergraduate, but excepting this, I think it can be confusing for an OP to see potentially great university choices listed as outside of the top 20, and schools without graduate departments omitted entirely.