Political science is not the same as politics, and there are lots of different ways to study systems of government and political behavior - you don’t need to be anywhere near DC nor do you have to do a summer or semester in DC. For one thing, every single state in the U.S. has a state capital where government business is done (and frankly, it would be easier to get an internship there than in DC). There’s also international and comparative politics, which may involve studying or interning abroad. Moreover, although DC is the capital there’s lots of business of state done elsewhere. For example, I did an accidental search for “consulate” (I meant to search for “consulate” plus…something, but I hadn’t figured it out yet when I hit enter) and found that there are consulates for Canada, Japan, and Sweden right here in the greater Seattle area.
You would think so, but you might not be right.
Will you have the same faculty teaching the same material? Haha, maybe, but probably not. Faculty at large prestigious research universities with top psychology departments (and similar is true in political science) are not hired to teach. They are hired to do research and rake in grant dollars for the university. In fact, those research dollars allow them to “buy out” teaching time - i.e., the standard load may be a 2/2 (two classes a semester), but having a big grant may allow them to buy their time down to a 1/0 (one class in the fall). The buying out that they do is almost always undergraduate courses. Plus, senior professors always get better choices of coursework, and most usually they choose graduate seminars - because they are less time-consuming to teach and because grad students can substantially contribute to their research or book projects. So those famous cutting-edge researchers you hear about 1) may not be teaching at all; 2) if they are teaching, may only be teaching graduate seminars; and 3) if they do teach undergrad classes, may only teach them once every other year or something.
Instead, these departments hire lecturers and adjunct professors to teach the undergrads (with all that sweet sweet grant money the Bigwig brought in). In a couple of psychology departments I am actually familiar with, that is the case. The freshman and sophomore psychology classes are taught by full-time lecturers and adjunct professors who are hired explicitly for that purpose. The junior-level classes are taught by a mix of junior professors and some adjuncts. Some senior-level seminars are taught by more mid-ranked professors in the department. I know lots of professors who actively avoid teaching undergrads, if they can, because it’s a time suck. They don’t get rewarded for it. Distinguished Professor Bigwig, who discovered sliced bread in 1978 and has been explicating its usefulness since then to much acclaim, is not teaching Intro to Psychology for Majors.
And “the same material.” Haha. Maybe. Not likely. Not always. Some professors do research in pretty advanced areas that aren’t easy to water down for undergrads, and some simply don’t want to. One department I am familiar with does not offer the breadth of coursework for its undergrads that it does for grad students. There are definitely shortages in some areas. (Interestingly enough, a nearby liberal arts college offers a greater breadth of classes, and they are of course smaller and more intimate).
Some facilities matter and others don’t, but the ones programs are ranked on may not matter to undergrads. Why would an undergrad care if the department has its own fMRI scanner or state-of-the-art bat laboratories? You care about study spaces that aren’t exclusive to the doctoral students, libraries with holdings across fields to help you in your distributional requirements (and helpful librarians who teach you the magic of Zotero) and not just ones with esoteric psychology journals you won’t really use, and high-tech classrooms so you can hear the lecturer in your 300-person intro psychology class. One LAC I’m familiar with has an empirical reasoning laboratory, which exists to help students doing research projects with the analysis part of their project. They can go and get FREE help planning their project from beginning to end, including help with the statistical analyses, as well as with statistics homework. That kind of thing is not included in the rankings of graduate programs because they’re irrelevant to doctoral students.
That’s why I always say that graduate departmental rankings are not necessarily a good indicator of the quality of the undergraduate education in a specific place. The things that are directly relevant to a person looking for a good PhD program are not necessarily relevant or important to a person looking for a good undergrad department. There’s also the fact that you’ll only take about 1/3 of your classes in your major anyway, so you want to pick a school that’s good holistically.
Of course, I’m not saying that these places are not good places for undergrads to study psychology or political science - they might be! I’m just saying don’t rely on graduate rankings to help you make that decision.