Should it be relevant to the thread, Berkeley’s middle-range ACT is 28-33 (current CDS).
“rankings don’t really matter . . .” (#17)
Then don’t introduce them:
“and get a shot at higher-ranked schools” (#12)
“Anyhow, rankings don’t really matter…Michigan and NYU will carry far more prestige and opportunities in political science than a school like “Hamilton” which is likely ranked higher due to a subjective/poor methodology.”
You say rankings don’t matter then proceed to suggest they do and that Hamilton is only ranked well because of ‘subjective/poor methodology’.
Do you have any evidence to backup this claim?
Do rankings matter or not?
Enough with facts, logic and stuff! Time to use the Gator Hypnotic Stare™!
@-) @-) Come to UF…Come to UF…Cooommmeee to UUUFFF… @-) @-)
@merc81 No need to get nitpicky. College rankings don’t matter - as in rankings by USNews, Washington Monthly etc. are all very subjective and are prone to poor methodologies. When I say “higher-ranked colleges”, I mean ones that will provide far more opportunity for a student interested in political science than others, like the list of reaches that I provided. For instance (barring financial circumstances), no one is ever going to turn down Harvard to attend Cornell, and no one is going to turn down Brown to attend FSU.
I’m not making it difficult to offer input of value to the OP… in fact, a lot of input of value has already been offered. If anything, I might be making it difficult for a “Hamilton” grad/parent to mislead a student into applying somewhere that will offer far more opportunities at around the same level of selectivity. If you look at this thread a lot of people have been pushing and suggesting their own schools and alma maters to the OP when in reality they aren’t offering anything of value.
Finally, anyone who takes the time and effort to study and improve their test scores WILL be able to improve them. I don’t know how many times the OP has taken the ACT/SAT, but if she’s only taken them once then taking them a second time will offer a considerable boost to her application.
@apple23 lol
whoops, reposted
@yinous: You haven’t even read the thread and appear to have some sort of agenda. However, this won’t be the first time nor the last that it
(Last comment, #26, pre-posted)
@yinuos: You appear not to have even read the thread and you also appear to have some sort of agenda. The temporal relationships of the posts, in particular, seem to have been lost on you. (For example, the OP described her academic background and expressed her interest in playing collegiate softball before mentioning her tentative academic interests.)
Beyond that, your knowledge of political science programs and, for that matter, softball programs is nil. For you to have mentioned the schools you did (#12) without including Georgetown, George Washington, Notre Dame and, perhaps, Villanova shows this. And, if you don’t think a LAC with a term-lengh program in Washington might, just might, offer better opportunities for the study of domestic politics than can be found at a school, for example, such as Vanderbilt, then your bias may be beyond correction.
However, I, too, have been accused of bias from time to time . . . a few days ago it was a suggestion of favoritism toward Clarkson in my case. You, by appearances, seem to favor schools that are large and, as often as not, not extremely selective. So what? That can be either bias or preference.
Next, do you even realize you called a ranking of schools based entirely on student standardized scoring “subjective?”
As for “lol,” directed elsewhere, that’s often, ironically, the sign of a sadly weak interest in anything actually substantive.
UF is a very good school and will be hard to beat with in-state tuition, etc., but there is a lot out there. Out of state tuition can be prohibitive these days, so you should look at the COA calculators too. Check out the SEC schools and the ACC schools, though some are pretty competitive. The Big 10 has a lot of great schools too. Do you know what part of the country interests you. You can look at TCU, Arizona, Oregon and Washington. UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara and UC Santa Cruz are universally loved by the majority of their students. Best of luck in your search.
“no one is ever going to turn down Harvard to attend Cornell” (#24)
Those given the option of attending Harvard are not always happy with their decision to have done so. When then candidate, now Massachusetts governor, Charlie Baker was asked by the Boston Globe to take the Proust Questionnaire, he responded as follows:
Q: What is your greatest regret?
A: Not going to Hamilton College. I never really felt comfortable at Harvard.
If you have any interest in smaller schools, my kid got into Dickinson with stats similar to yours. Don’t know what division you hope to play softball for, but they are DIII. They are pretty “sporty” for a liberal arts college (a fairly athletic student body), and you might get some merit aid to defray the cost.
If you don’t have a copy of the Fiske Guide to Colleges, you should get one.
I don’t know if this helps, but we have quite similar stats. Some of the schools I’m looking at are University of Texas, University of Michigan, Vanderbilt, University of North Carolina and Duke. As listed on US News, here are the top 40 political science schools that you would match with your scores:
4. University of Michigan
13. (tied) UNC, Washington U in St. Louis*
15. (tied) NYU, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Rochester**
19. University of Minnesota
21. University of Texas
23. University of Illinois
25. (tied) Emory** (this is a bit of a reach), Indiana, Texas A&M
28. (tied) Penn State, University of Maryland, University of Washington
32. (tied) Michigan State University, Rice University (slight reach), Stony Brook University—SUNY, University of Iowa
36. George Washington University**
40. (tied) Florida State, Georgetown University, University of Pittsburgh
If you score slightly higher on your ACT (I’m thinking ~33), you have a chance at any school you want to go to. The list above is just schools that I think you could get into that have very strong political science majors.
Do not let any of the comments on here decide what schools you can get into and should apply to. Do some research based on your major, how much you want to pay and if softball at the next level is really what you want. If it is, email the coaches from the schools you’re interested in and tell them about yourself (i.e. grades, stats, etc.). Even if a school is done with their recruiting for 2017 grad years, if you inform them of your interest to walk on, it can possibly increase your chances of getting in. Best of luck in your search!
*Link to the full article: http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-humanities-schools/political-science-rankings
** You could most likely play softball at these schools, due to them being in a lower division. Ultimately, you can walk onto any school on this list and try to play, but note that practice and games will take away from your overall college experience, especially at a D1 school.
@allison1225 Thank you so much and good luck in your search as well!!
Isn’t George Washington University Division I?
@intparent They are division 1, but a lower level D1 and, from what I’ve gathered, she could play for them.
I guess it isn’t that clear from here posts so far what her actual level of skill is. She says she is on a traveling team, but not good enough for UF. That could still mean a huge range of skills, IMHO. And not everyone wants to play Division I (even a lower level D1 school) given the big time commitment.
I’m guessing yinuos is a HS student.
(Although I agree on the Brown assessment).
I would not pay OOS to go to a UC currently.
OP: I agree on Hamilton for Poli Sci/Gov, Dickinson, Middlebury, Barnard, Fordham, Georgetown (not SFS), Tufts, GWU, AU (scholars/honors + SIS), GMU (Honors), would all be possibilities covering reach/match.
Tufts, Williams, Middlebury recruit for softball and are pretty good (D3 so no scholarships).
Try to get one (or all) of these: Fiske Guide, Insider’s Guide to the Colleges, Princeton Review’s Best Colleges. Start reading and put post it notes next to the colleges you like.
I am curious, why would you say specifically that Williams, for example, “recruits for softball”? How is that different from Dickinson or Hamilton, who have teams as well?
Regarding #31, those are graduate school rankings. By definition, they will not apply directly to you, @mizunograd. In general, graduate school rankings seem to represent a point of confusion for students selecting their undergraduate colleges. Dickinson, for example, has an excellent and noteworthy political science department, but would ineligible for inclusion. In terms of the universities themselves, the program evaluations consider different criteria than that which may be relevant to an undergraduate.
Re, #36, @MYOS1634, the notable aspect of the Brown assessment is that it occurred after that poster quite clearly referred to colleges such as Middlebury (16% female acceptance rate) as “safeties” (#12). The point I subsequently tried to make – using perhaps more statistics than may have been effective – relates to it being generally the case that what is true for one of these two cited schools would also be roughly true for the other.