<p>For political science departments check out Simon Hix' at </p>
<p>I think it's very good. The winners in it are:
1. Columbia
2. Harvard
3. Stanford</p>
<p>But, it is mostly for use in choosing graduate studies since it is based on research publications.</p>
<p>Mtc, this ranking of Political Science programs seems a little odd. I have never seen a ranking that places Columbia, Ohio State University or Michigan State University among the top 10 in the US and that keeps Berkeley, Michigan or Yale out of the top 5 in the US. The main publications for Political Science department rankings are the USNWR, Gourman and NRC.</p>
<p>Well, they must be good at publishing in the best journals.</p>
<p>Could you post the links to the other rankings, please?</p>
<p>First of all Mtc, rankings cann change so wildly over the course of 1 year...or even over the course of 5 years. It takes a long time for a department with 50-75 professors to really rise or drop in the rankings. </p>
<p>Well, the USNWR requires the use of a code, but the magazine is availlable in every major bookstore. But here is a glimpse of their top 25 Poli-Sci programs:</p>
<ol>
<li> Harvard University (MA) 5.0 </li>
<li> Stanford University (CA) 4.9 </li>
<li> University of MichiganAnn Arbor 4.8 </li>
<li> Princeton University (NJ) 4.7 </li>
<li> University of CaliforniaBerkeley 4.6 </li>
<li> Yale University (CT) 4.6 </li>
<li> University of CaliforniaSan Diego 4.4 </li>
<li> Duke University (NC) 4.3 </li>
<li> University of Chicago 4.3 </li>
<li> Columbia University (NY) 4.2 </li>
<li> Massachusetts Institute of Technology 4.2 </li>
<li> University of CaliforniaLos Angeles 4.2 </li>
<li> Ohio State University 4.0 </li>
<li> University of North CarolinaChapel Hill 4.0 </li>
<li> University of Rochester (NY) 4.0 </li>
<li> University of WisconsinMadison 3.9 </li>
<li> Washington University in St. Louis 3.9 </li>
<li> Cornell University (NY) 3.8 </li>
<li> New York University 3.8 </li>
<li> University of MinnesotaTwin Cities 3.8 </li>
<li> Northwestern University (IL) 3.6 </li>
<li> Michigan State University 3.4 </li>
<li> Texas A&M UniversityCollege Station 3.4 </li>
<li> University of IllinoisUrbana-Champaign 3.4 </li>
</ol>
<p>The Gourman Report isn't even online. But in his last ranking (1999), he had the following order:</p>
<ol>
<li> Yale University 4.92</li>
<li> Harvard University 4.91</li>
<li> University of California-Berkeley 4.90</li>
<li> University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 4.89</li>
<li> University of Chicago 4.87</li>
<li> Massachusetts Institute of Technology 4.86</li>
<li> Stanford University 4.84</li>
<li> University of Wisconsin-Madison 4.83</li>
<li> University of Minnesota-Twin Cities 4.82</li>
<li>Cornell University 4.80</li>
<li>Princeton University 4.78</li>
<li>University of California-Los Angeles 4.76</li>
<li>Northwestern University 4.75</li>
<li>University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill 4.74</li>
<li>Columbia University 4.73</li>
</ol>
<p>Finally, the National Research Council (NRC) has one of the more reliable rankings. Unfortunately, it is outdated. The last one they did was in 1995. However, like I said, departments have not changed dramatically over the last few years. In fact, you will see some incredible similarities between the NRC of 1995 and the USNWR of 2005.</p>
<ol>
<li> Harvard University 4.88</li>
<li> University of California-Berkeley 4.66</li>
<li> Yale University 4.60</li>
<li> University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 4.60</li>
<li> Stanford University 4.50</li>
<li> University of Chicago 4.41</li>
<li> Princeton University 4.39</li>
<li> University of California-Los Angeles 4.25</li>
<li> University of California-San Diego 4.13</li>
<li>University of Wisconsin-Madison 4.09</li>
</ol>
<p>To sum up, Harvard is usually considered to be #1 in Political Science. Cal and Michigan are usually considered the next two and Stanford and Yale follow closely. Those are usually considered the top 5 according to the rankings I have seen.</p>
<p>Sdma,
Thanks, could you describe the fiske analysis, and maybe tell uva's.
thanks.</p>
<p>What do you all think of the reviews/rankings at StudentsReview? The ratings and reviews tend to polarize and you get the students who loved X school the most or hated X school the most. If you take everything with a grain of salt, then I've found you can get some decent information from it.</p>
<p>I have a Fiske guide from 2001 or 2002, I believe, and while it didn't rank colleges with numbers (X school is 1, Y school is 2, etc) it gave 1-5 stars to each school in three categories: academics, social life, and quality of life. Quality of life and social life are more subjective I think--a school that has lots of frat parties might be given a 4 social rating, while a quieter school might be given a 2, but to me, the 2 school might be more appealing. The academic ratings are a little more objective, it seems. If someone wants to know the ratings for a particular school, I'd be willing to look it up and tell them.</p>
<p>UVAjoe, if memory serves, Fiske has 7 publics that get the perfect ***** academic rating. They are:</p>
<p>University of California-Berkeley
University of California-Los Angeles
University of Michigan- Ann Arbor
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
University of Texas-Austin
University of Virginia
University of Wisconsin-Madison</p>
<p>Furthermore, Fiske has 13 LACs that got the ***** rating for academics. They are:</p>
<p>Amherst College
Bowdoin College
Carleton College
Grinnell College
Haverford College
Middlebury College
Oberlin College
Pomona College
Smith College
Swarthmore College
Wellesley College
Wesleyan University
Williams College</p>
<p>Finally, Fiske has 16 Private Research universities that got the ***** academic ranking. They are:</p>
<p>Brown University
California Institute of Technology
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Duke University
Harvard University
Johns Hopkins University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Northwestern University
Princeton University
Rice University
Stanford University
University of Chicago
University of Pennsylvania
Yale University</p>
<p>I may be missing a couple, but that's what I remember. Anybody can confirm that list?</p>
<p>Fiske also rates Quality of Life and Social Life. Unfortunately, I do not find hsi ratings in those two fields to be as accurate.</p>
<p>You can't rank colleges just like you can't rank students. You can group colleges, I guess, but even then, it doesn't describe the nature of a college completely. </p>
<p>By the way, one college sent me a brochure entitled "Rank the Rankings," and I thought this thread was a 'rank Rank the Rankings' thread when I clicked on it. Heh.</p>
<p>I think StudentsReview is good because it is one of the few "ranking" websites that takes account many other factors besides the educational aspect of schools. It's more of a ranking of college experience, and that's probably beneficial to students who want to know more about their universities. Of course, I'm sure there are people who leave dishonest or false reviews, but I think it's easy to tell which ones are true and which are not.</p>
<p>There are a few interesting results on that site. For example, [url=<a href="http://www.studentsreview.com/MA/HU_c.html%5DHarvard%5B/url">http://www.studentsreview.com/MA/HU_c.html]Harvard[/url</a>] gets a low of low marks from undergraduates. In terms of UCs, they get ranked like this (If you sort it by the percentage of people who "Would return to the school")</p>
<p>UCSB
UCLA
UCB
UCD
UCSC
UCSD
UCI
UCR</p>
<p>So it definitely skews to which are perceived to have a better social life.</p>
<p>Oo, one thing Alexandre...I find it interesting that MIT was ranked so high in pol. sci. I hear their humanities department was good, but that good?</p>
<p>MIT has an excellent Humanities and Social Science core, but it is not a very broad and wide-ranging department. For example, MIT is amazing in Economic, Political Science and Psychology as well as in Philosophy and Linguistics. But MIT doesn't really offer much in terms of linterature, English, Sociology, Anthropology, the languages and the classics.</p>