Hi guys!
I just found out that I’ve been accepted into Yale, Johns Hopkins, and Georgetown! I’m planning on majoring in Political Science but I’m also very interested in International Relations. The financial aid for all three schools is roughly the same. Could you all give some pros and cons about these 3?? Thanks!!
Congratulations – what a wealth of choices! For political science, I think Georgetown – due to it’s proximity to the federal government, including the senate and congress, and the experiences and internships you can find there – bests JH and Yale (and I’m saying this as a Yale parent).
As a Yale alum and the parent of a current Yale sophomore, a Georgetown Senior, and a JHU alum, you cannot go wrong with any of these options. My Yalie is a Global Affairs major within the Jackson Institute. He worked on Capitol Hill as a congressional intern last summer and is headed to New Orleans to work in the office of the Public Defender this summer. So no lack of opportunity if you choose Yale. My Hoya is not pursuing political science, but many of his friends are in the School of Foreign Service and have taken advantage of internships on Capitol Hill and undertaken rewarding study abroad experiences associated with their region of concentration. So no lack of opportunity if you choose Georgetown. My JHU alum majored in Public Health, but had a friend in the 5 year BA/MA program through the School of Advanced International Studies. The program entailed 3 years on the Homewood campus and 2 years on the SAIS campus in Washington. So great opportunities in you choose JHU. However, these three schools are very different in environment and feel. Georgetown has a core curriculum while Yale has distributional requirements. Yale students live in residential colleges and are guaranteed housing all four years while JHU students generally move off campus after their 2nd year. Georgetown’s M St. and New Haven’s Chapel St. are very different than Baltimore’s N. Charles or St. Paul St.
Definitely Yale!!! It’s the best name and university on the list! Congrats!!
@LittleLionDude i would say Yale regardless, but especially for your intended major Yale is by far the best choice. Yale is stronger in these fields, it is the strongest overall for undergrad, higher quality of student body, more resources, better name, prestige.
I’m not sure Yale IR is better than JHU or G’town SFS – who are giants in the major – but i agree with everything else @Penn95 just said.
Still, if a kid wants to be in Baltimore or D.C., Yale might not be the best fit.
I wouldn’t chose Yale just because it is considered the most prestigious of the three, however I wouldn’t completely ignore it. Hopkins and G’town are both amazing options and you should be very proud to have a place at any of the three. I know someone who was an undergrad at G’town and majored in Poli sci and was able to intern at Capital Hill. I don’t know much about JHU except that poli sci/IR is considered one of its stronger departments.
Ultimately the choice comes down to who you are as a person. Would you rather be in a large city (G’town), a small city/college town (Yale) or somewhere between (JHU)?
Is campus housing important (Yale’s residential college system) or do you plan on living off campus later in your college career (JHU only guarantees housing for freshmen and sophomores)?
Is one of them closer to your home, and if so, would you want to be closer or further away?
Which campus do you prefer?
In the end you can’t go wrong with any of them. It is a tough choice and you need to ask yourself which one you would regret not going to.
Go to Yale. There is a class called Politics of Public Policy that senator Mikulski is teaching. Besides that, I don’t see how Hopkins could compete with Yale. Baltimore is a terrible place to live in. New Haven is better.
Yale is yale, so congrats! Shhsvri is a bitter Hopkins reject, FYI
The SFS program as others have said is maybe the best in the country for International Relations. And while I’m not a huge fan of rankings (they tend to do more harm than good), Georgetown is also at or near the top for poly sci. I’m guessing New Haven has changed since I’ve been there, it wasn’t that great of a neighborhood. 
With those three schools, I would have also go to Yale, it’s Yale. But for that major, it may come down to fit and where you feel the best, if you get a chance to visit them.
@theloniusmonk for poli sci Georgetown is not exactly near the top, it is outside the top 30.
I would go to Yale for sure.
@Penn95, Georgetown doesn’t have an official political science major, I think it’s part of their government dept, but is it’s #1 in a couple of rankings for undergrad poly sci because they’re evaluating their government program as well. And their international relations program is also top-5. But Yale also has great programs in those fields. I think the general advice to evaluate the three schools on location, culture, residential housing differences, is the right one here.
I know the deadline has passed for OP in making his decision, but for future readers who may be in a similar situation, this is what I would say. I say this as someone who was in a very similar position a few months ago with very similar interests who ended up turning down 4 Ivies, Northwestern, Tufts, and state school full ride for Georgetown, so understand while I will try to be as objective as I can, I might be biased.
First, of all, congratulations! Those are three truly amazing and top-tier insitutions that anyone should be lauded for getting admitted to. You have clearly worked hard for this and now you’ve found yourself in a position where you’re deciding between three schools, all of which will leave every possible door open for you no matter what you’re doing. I have never heard anyone say that a degree from any of those schools did anything but propel them to heights they probably couldn’t have reached without the connections and opportunities they found there. So give yourself a pat on the back sir.
Now, with that being said, my vote is Georgetown. I think that one can almost make the argument that for what OP wants to do, Georgetown is objectively the single best school in the world. One of the pivotal moments in my decision was a conversation I had with my uncle about a week after results came.
Real quick background on my uncle- he’s basically a bigwig in DC. At various points in his career he has been: chief of staff for two separate senators (incidentally, one of whom was a Gtown grad (just did undergrad, no law school), the other went to a no-name state school then Harvard law), on both Clinton campaigns (Bill went to Gtown, and he and Hillary both went to Yale law), one of the chief lobbyists under Obama (Harvard Law), and is now the VP of a particular branch of the world bank (his boss went to Gtown law), and at one point he was offered a job as a lobbyist for Goldman Sachs, and the managing director he talked to happened to be a Gtown MSB grad, interestingly enough (now granted that last one isn’t D.C. it’s Wall Street but I figured I may as well include it as it’s part of my uncle’s story). So he has lead a fairly impressive career in an area extremely relevant to yours.
It is for this reason that I believe that his opinion, as someone who has been out there in the field REALLY doing it for the past three decades, has more credibility than what I, or, quite frankly, most people writing on college confidential can offer.
He believes that, in terms of perceived prestige of undergraduate institutions in Washington, D.C., only a select few carry true weight. In his experience, the only schools D.C. from which a degree will actually have a meaningful impact on how an interviewer sees you are Georgetown, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, and Hopkins- and in that roughly order. The thing is, he says that the lines are really blurry from Harvard all the way to Hopkins, and that basically, all those schools are equal with Georgetown having a slight edge. A few lower Ivy/Duke/Chicago/etc level schools might move the needle in your favor a little bit, but in D.C. any schools that aren’t the absolute best for politics won’t mean much, simply because EVERYONE gunning for positions, jobs, internships, etc. is generally very qualified, and in D.C. you get a LOT of kids from extremely good schools, so employers have been numbed, in a way, to all schools but the few I mentioned. Also, sadly, he thinks that top LACs are very underappreciated, at least in D.C. He has heard of kids from Williams- likely the best liberal arts school out there- who were left stunned when their interviewer had never even heard of their college, and they ended up playing second fiddle to kids from other, more well-known, but not necessarily better schools. Clearly, I don’t agree with this and I believe this state of affairs stinks but it’s just the way it is. Anyway, back to the main point, those schools I mentioned do add some extra flair to a resume. Not to mention D.C. is chock full of alumni from all seven, especially Georgetown, and that’s usually what gives Georgetown the lead. In terms of straight up prestige in D.C., all are about equal with Gtown maybe having a slight edge- but the thing is, D.C. is so rife with Hoyas in every possible corner of power who will hook you up with whatever position you want, that it’s the sheer volume of the network that’s why it has the real competitive advantage. This allows you to not only get any job with ease but move between jobs and up the ladder as well.
In summary- if you want D.C., be a Hoya. There are a few other schools which will leave absolutely no doors closed to you for anything in D.C.- and you got into two of them- but they’re just not the same. Going to the best university in the capital of the most powerful nation in the history of the world as well as under a few miles from most every resource that comes with that (Capitol Hill, World Wank, White house, etc) comes with some serious advantages, especially for those interested in one day making it big in D.C.- whether that means walking the corridors of power, heading an NGO, being an ambassador, or whatever the dream might be.
Of course, Yale and Hopkins each have areas in which they beat Georgetown, and they are both amazing schools. But for this, I would say it’s almost hands-down Georgetown. I mean dude, you’re interested in poli sci and international relations, you truly can’t beat doing that at the best school in Washington, D.C.