political science phd boston college

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Doctoral Program

• Current Doctoral Students
• Published Books
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• Placement Resources
• Graduate Placement

Fourteen courses (42-43 credits) are required for students entering the program with no previous graduate work or a master's degree. Students choose three courses per semester. Of the 14 courses, three may be in independent study and two (not more than one per semester) in non-graduate courses. Generally, graduate students taking non-graduate courses are required to do additional work beyond the requirements.

Students entering the program with the master's degree will take at least ten courses (30 credits), two of which may be in independent study and two at the undergraduate level. The precise number of courses required of master's degree holders will depend mainly on how well their previous work corresponds to our requirements.

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The department's course offerings are organized in four fields: Political Theory, American Politics, International Politics, and Comparative Politics. These fields are organized into sub-fields, as listed below. Students choose one field as their major area of concentration, along with one minor field.  A major consists of eight courses within a particular field, with preparation in at least three sub-fields (four if the major field is Political Theory). A minor consists of four courses. Students are required to take two additional courses; these may be distributed however the student chooses, and may even be taken in another department. These two courses could also be used toward an optional second minor, which consist of only two courses.

In both the major and minor fields, considerable discretion will be left to students as to the choice of courses, but students may be held accountable on comprehensive exams for a core body of knowledge in the field as well as for their own individual coursework.

American Politics

• National Political Institutions
• Parties and Elections; Interest Groups; Social Movements
• Political Economy, Public Policy and Administration
• American Foreign Policy
• Constitutional Law
• American Political Thought
• State and Urban Politics

International Politics

• International Relations Theory
• International Security
• International Political Economy
• Foreign Policy

Political Theory

• Ancient and Medieval Theory
• Early Modern Theory: Machiavelli to Montesquieu
• Late Modern Theory: Rousseau to Nietzsche
• Empirical and Contemporary Theory

Comparative Politics

• Students may choose to specialize in a particular region or to focus on a thematic approach. They are expected, however, to demonstrate some substantial competence in both approaches to Comparative Politics.

First-Year Review Ph.D.

Students' performance will be reviewed by the graduate committee during the second semester of their first year. The Department requires a minimum GPA of 3.5 for Ph.D. students.

Second-Year Review

Each Ph.D. student, after three semesters of coursework, will submit a "Statement of Academic Interests," which assists in assessing the student's suitability for continued pursuit of the doctorate. Since this assessment involves a comprehensive review of the student's performance in the program, the student will also be asked to meet with the faculty members of the department's graduate committee to review his or her progress in the program.

Graduate Assistantships

The Graduate Program Director will monitor and evaluate a student's teaching/research performance. The Graduate Program Director will forward any cases of sub-standard performance for review by the Graduate Committee. Sub-standard performance may result in the loss of a student's stipend.

Foreign-Language Requirement

All Ph.D. students must demonstrate proficiency in one foreign language. The language requirement must be satisfied prior to the comprehensive examination. The language examination is arranged by the department.

Comprehensive Examination

After completing their course and language requirements, Ph.D. students take written comprehensive examinations in their major and minor fields.

The comprehensive examinations consist of a six to eight hour written examination in the major field and a four to six hour written examination in the minor fields. An oral examination is given approximately 10 days later.

Students who enter the doctoral program with a master's degree must take the comprehensive exams by the end of their fourth semester, and those entering without a master's degree must do so by the end of their sixth semester.

Doctoral Dissertation

Dissertation committee.

After completing the comprehensive examinations, the student is expected to assemble a committee of faculty to direct his or her dissertation, with one of these professors agreeing to chair the committee and thus take on principal responsibility for directing the dissertation. Dissertation committees vary in size. The committee may not consist of fewer than three faculty.

Dissertation Proposal

The doctoral student is expected to submit a dissertation proposal to the committee within six months of passing the comprehensive examinations. Proposals vary in length according to the nature of the study. The proposal should state the purpose of the research, its relation to major work done on the subject, the approach or methods that will be used, sources of information or data, and any hypotheses to be tested. The proposal must be approved by the dissertation committee before a student may proceed with work on the dissertation.

Dissertation Seminar

Students in the writing stage, and in residence, are expected to participate in the Dissertation Seminar. The seminar provides students with an opportunity to present work at various stages of completion.

Dissertation Defense

After the dissertation has been completed and approved by the dissertation committee for presentation, the candidate will present a public defense. This consists of a lecture, not to exceed one half-hour in length, in which the candidate states the chief findings of the dissertation. This is followed by questions from the dissertation committee and from other members of the University community who are present.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of the doctoral program, our students are expected to:.

• demonstrate substantial knowledge of two subfields of political science
• complete a major research project
• be strong candidates for professional jobs inside and outside the academy that require Ph D degrees
• have a good understanding of proper professional ethics in political science

Political Science Department McGuinn Hall 201 617-552-4160 (phone)

617-552-2435 (fax)

Best Political Science Programs

Ranked in 2021, part of Best Social Sciences and Humanities Schools

Political science is a discipline

Political science is a discipline that combines history, current events and analysis. Graduate students are often able to specialize in a certain area of politics. These are the best political science programs. Each school's score reflects its average rating on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (outstanding), based on a survey of academics at peer institutions. Read the methodology »

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2024 Best Colleges for Political Science in the Boston Area

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1-25 of 27 results

Harvard University

Cambridge, MA •

• • Rating 4.15 out of 5   848 reviews

Alum: Attending Harvard College was transformative. The housing system fostered a strong sense of community, facilitating academic support and social interaction. The rigorous academics, led by renowned faculty, challenged me to think critically and pursue my interests. Harvard's commitment to diversity enriched my experience, and the vibrant location in Cambridge provided endless opportunities for exploration and growth. Harvard College offered an unparalleled experience that has left an indelible mark on my life. ... Read 848 reviews

• grade  A+ Overall Niche Grade

Acceptance rate 4%

Net price $13,910

SAT range 1480-1580

#1 Best Colleges for Political Science in Massachusetts .

CAMBRIDGE, MA ,

848 Niche users give it an average review of 4.1 stars.

Featured Review: Alum says Attending Harvard College was transformative. The housing system fostered a strong sense of community, facilitating academic support and social interaction. The rigorous academics, led by renowned... .

Read 848 reviews.

Overall Niche Grade : A+ ,

Acceptance Rate : 4% ,

Net Price : $13,910 ,

SAT Range : 1480-1580 ,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• • Rating 4.16 out of 5   662 reviews

Sophomore: Great place to be challenged, learn, and grow. A safe environment to fall and fail. Lots of support and resources available but you need to take the initiative to reach out about them ... Read 662 reviews

Net price $30,958

SAT range 1510-1580

#2 Best Colleges for Political Science in Massachusetts .

662 Niche users give it an average review of 4.2 stars.

Featured Review: Sophomore says Great place to be challenged, learn, and grow. A safe environment to fall and fail. Lots of support and resources available but you need to take the initiative to reach out about them .

Read 662 reviews.

Net Price : $30,958 ,

SAT Range : 1510-1580 ,

Boston College

Chestnut Hill, MA •

• • Rating 3.66 out of 5   1,604 reviews

Sophomore: I really enjoy the numerous clubs on campus, they are a great way to get involved and meet people. There is no Greek life so joining a club is a great way to feel part of something greater than you. Additionally there are a lot of in campus employment opportunities if you are looking to make money on top of class. The food is pretty good and it is all made on campus. There are plenty of options and the dining hall hours are sufficient. There is a large population of students from the east coast specifically the northeast but there are also plenty of international students and students from across the country. BC is an amazing school with the most beautiful campus ever. ... Read 1,604 reviews

Acceptance rate 19%

Net price $30,159

SAT range 1420-1530

#3 Best Colleges for Political Science in Massachusetts .

Blue checkmark.

CHESTNUT HILL, MA ,

1604 Niche users give it an average review of 3.7 stars.

Featured Review: Sophomore says I really enjoy the numerous clubs on campus, they are a great way to get involved and meet people. There is no Greek life so joining a club is a great way to feel part of something greater than you.... .

Read 1604 reviews.

Acceptance Rate : 19% ,

Net Price : $30,159 ,

SAT Range : 1420-1530 ,

Francis Marion University

FLORENCE, SC

• • Rating 3.62 out of 5   953

Drew University

MADISON, NJ

• • Rating 3.49 out of 5   579

California State University - Channel Islands

CAMARILLO, CA

• • Rating 3.65 out of 5   1,111

Boston University

Boston, MA •

• • Rating 3.69 out of 5   3,634 reviews

Graduate Student: As a student at Boston University (BU), I've found it to be an exhilarating and challenging place to study. Nestled in the heart of Boston, the campus buzzes with intellectual energy and cultural diversity. BU offers a wide array of programs across various fields, and the quality of education is top-notch, with access to accomplished faculty and cutting-edge facilities. The student body is incredibly diverse, bringing together perspectives from around the globe, which enriches the learning and social environment. Life here is never dull, with countless clubs, activities, and events to get involved in. Whether it's engaging in research projects, participating in student government, or just enjoying the city's historic sites, BU provides a robust and fulfilling college experience. ... Read 3,634 reviews

Net price $25,852

SAT range 1360-1520

#5 Best Colleges for Political Science in Massachusetts .

BOSTON, MA ,

3634 Niche users give it an average review of 3.7 stars.

Featured Review: Graduate Student says As a student at Boston University (BU), I've found it to be an exhilarating and challenging place to study. Nestled in the heart of Boston, the campus buzzes with intellectual energy and cultural... .

Read 3634 reviews.

Net Price : $25,852 ,

SAT Range : 1360-1520 ,

Wellesley College

Wellesley, MA •

• • Rating 3.77 out of 5   634 reviews

Sophomore: I really love it here and am glad that I decided on Wellesley! I'm class of 2026, so I've been on campus for about two years now and each year, I've been able to meet some of the best professors and even better people. Conversations with peers are just as nuanced as the people and although the campus could still do with some diversity, I think we're definitely on the better end (I say this as a half Black and half-Asian student from a very predominantly white town). I've found that it's really easy to make friends because the campus and class sizes are so small (that being said, I'm also more extroverted). However, even my more introverted friends have said that they were eventually able to find close friends as their first or second year progressed -- the key is to be involved in campus or go to events and intentionally talk to people and reach out. ... Read 634 reviews

Acceptance rate 16%

Net price $21,862

SAT range 1400-1540

#6 Best Colleges for Political Science in Massachusetts .

WELLESLEY, MA ,

634 Niche users give it an average review of 3.8 stars.

Featured Review: Sophomore says I really love it here and am glad that I decided on Wellesley! I'm class of 2026, so I've been on campus for about two years now and each year, I've been able to meet some of the best professors and... .

Read 634 reviews.

Acceptance Rate : 16% ,

Net Price : $21,862 ,

SAT Range : 1400-1540 ,

Northeastern University

• • Rating 3.75 out of 5   3,748 reviews

Alum: Northeastern's co-op program was a launchpad for my career. I didn't just graduate with a degree - I gained invaluable real-world experience and a built-in network through my co-op placements. As a health science student, the location couldn't have been better. Imagine being surrounded by top research hospitals like MGH, BWH, Beth Israel, and Boston Children's! Finding mentors and internships was a breeze and I had a plethora of opportunities to choose from. The heart of Boston became my campus too. With museums, a vast array of restaurants and bars, and endless activities on my doorstep, weekends were anything but dull. Whether exploring on campus or venturing into the city, there was always something new to discover. ... Read 3,748 reviews

Acceptance rate 18%

Net price $38,927

SAT range 1430-1550

#8 Best Colleges for Political Science in Massachusetts .

3748 Niche users give it an average review of 3.7 stars.

Featured Review: Alum says Northeastern's co-op program was a launchpad for my career. I didn't just graduate with a degree - I gained invaluable real-world experience and a built-in network through my co-op placements. As a... .

Read 3748 reviews.

Acceptance Rate : 18% ,

Net Price : $38,927 ,

SAT Range : 1430-1550 ,

• Will you get in? Understand your chances of getting accepted into any college in the country, and it's completely free

Tufts University

Medford, MA •

• • Rating 3.7 out of 5   1,073 reviews

Freshman: Tufts is an excellent school with lots of freedom to explore your passions. The professors are excellent and care about each student individually. There are lots of clubs to choose from and people are always welcoming. The campus vibe is very nice and laid back generally. Everyone is very passionate about some subject which is inspiring to be around. The dining halls are not amazing but Kindelvan and the other cafes are very convenient. Some of the activities can be hard to join as freshmen because it can be competitive but gets easier to get involved in later years. The dorms are not fancy but they certainly aren’t bad in general. People are quirky and a little nerdy but it keeps it interesting. In my experience, financial aid is also one of the best available. Overall I highly recommend going to Tufts! ... Read 1,073 reviews

Acceptance rate 11%

Net price $31,630

SAT range 1440-1550

#11 Best Colleges for Political Science in Massachusetts .

MEDFORD, MA ,

1073 Niche users give it an average review of 3.7 stars.

Featured Review: Freshman says Tufts is an excellent school with lots of freedom to explore your passions. The professors are excellent and care about each student individually. There are lots of clubs to choose from and people... .

Read 1073 reviews.

Acceptance Rate : 11% ,

Net Price : $31,630 ,

SAT Range : 1440-1550 ,

Brandeis University

Waltham, MA •

• • Rating 3.51 out of 5   1,101 reviews

Alum: The academics really are great, world class in some cases. If you find the right niche you really can get ahead in your career, especially if you align with one of the universities academic strengths. The students are great too, but it can be a bit hard to meet them because the student life is so poor. Housing and food really do suck, but sometimes sacrifices need to be made. Be proactive, and you can have a great time at Brandeis. ... Read 1,101 reviews

• grade  A Overall Niche Grade

Acceptance rate 39%

Net price $35,147

SAT range 1370-1530

#14 Best Colleges for Political Science in Massachusetts .

WALTHAM, MA ,

1101 Niche users give it an average review of 3.5 stars.

Featured Review: Alum says The academics really are great, world class in some cases. If you find the right niche you really can get ahead in your career, especially if you align with one of the universities academic... .

Read 1101 reviews.

Overall Niche Grade : A ,

Acceptance Rate : 39% ,

Net Price : $35,147 ,

SAT Range : 1370-1530 ,

University of Massachusetts Boston

• • Rating 3.54 out of 5   1,466 reviews

Sophomore: After visiting my stser plenty of times there, I instantly wanted to transfer there. Living right in boston is amazing especially with a wonderful school and amazing Biology program. The school is right on the water and full of people from many diverse backgrounds! I would totally recommend to anyone that University of Massachusetts Boston is an amazing school and that they should consider going. ... Read 1,466 reviews

• grade  B Overall Niche Grade

Acceptance rate 79%

Net price $17,575

SAT range 1060-1280

#16 Best Colleges for Political Science in Massachusetts .

1466 Niche users give it an average review of 3.5 stars.

Featured Review: Sophomore says After visiting my stser plenty of times there, I instantly wanted to transfer there. Living right in boston is amazing especially with a wonderful school and amazing Biology program. The school is... .

Read 1466 reviews.

Overall Niche Grade : B ,

Acceptance Rate : 79% ,

Net Price : $17,575 ,

SAT Range : 1060-1280 ,

Wheaton College - Massachusetts

Norton, MA •

• • Rating 3.6 out of 5   689 reviews

Sophomore: I haven't been with Wheaton for very long but it's been my best academic experience so far! The school is perfect if you're someone who is looking for that classic college environment but on a much smaller scale. The campus is beautiful, clean, and well kept. There are plenty of places to go to enjoy the outdoors and many of the vintage buildings are great places to explore. Student culture is diverse, active, and playful, everyone here is always looking for more people to join their various clubs. Classes are just as diverse, there is something for everyone here academically. All academic buildings are littered with everything you need to succeed in whatever you pursue. As a Visual Arts Major there are so many tools for me to play with, it's very exciting. The neighboring woods is a great place to explore and experience a good amount of nature, fairly safe and fun to find all the student landmarks. Housing and dorms are a hassle, most buildings are definitely NOT made the same. ... Read 689 reviews

Acceptance rate 82%

Net price $28,867

SAT range 1160-1360

#17 Best Colleges for Political Science in Massachusetts .

NORTON, MA ,

689 Niche users give it an average review of 3.6 stars.

Featured Review: Sophomore says I haven't been with Wheaton for very long but it's been my best academic experience so far! The school is perfect if you're someone who is looking for that classic college environment but on a much... .

Read 689 reviews.

Acceptance Rate : 82% ,

Net Price : $28,867 ,

SAT Range : 1160-1360 ,

Stonehill College

Easton, MA •

• • Rating 3.59 out of 5   601 reviews

Alum: Stonehill College is a very good university. They have a wide variety of majors and pretty good career placement post grad. This is a very small tight knit community where you will know most people around you if you are a sociable person. Athletics are not bad, I participated on the Track and Field team and had a wonderful time. There are good scholarship opportunities in athletics as well. I would recommend the university to anyone college searching as they do have a strong commitment to student success. ... Read 601 reviews

Acceptance rate 72%

Net price $31,467

SAT range 1030-1230

#18 Best Colleges for Political Science in Massachusetts .

EASTON, MA ,

601 Niche users give it an average review of 3.6 stars.

Featured Review: Alum says Stonehill College is a very good university. They have a wide variety of majors and pretty good career placement post grad. This is a very small tight knit community where you will know most people... .

Read 601 reviews.

Acceptance Rate : 72% ,

Net Price : $31,467 ,

SAT Range : 1030-1230 ,

Simmons University

• • Rating 3.6 out of 5   834 reviews

Alum: The best things about Simmons are the location, professors, environment, and work opportunities. For the most part classes and enjoyable with great professors that genuinely care about students. Also lovely to go to a women's centered college, creating a welcoming, comfortable environment. In terms of what Simmons could change, the dining hall options are very limited, especially on res campus. The PLAN is also whack and should be altered significantly. ... Read 834 reviews

Acceptance rate 84%

Net price $19,026

SAT range 1140-1360

#19 Best Colleges for Political Science in Massachusetts .

834 Niche users give it an average review of 3.6 stars.

Featured Review: Alum says The best things about Simmons are the location, professors, environment, and work opportunities. For the most part classes and enjoyable with great professors that genuinely care about students. Also... .

Read 834 reviews.

Acceptance Rate : 84% ,

Net Price : $19,026 ,

SAT Range : 1140-1360 ,

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University of Massachusetts Lowell

Lowell, MA •

• • Rating 3.69 out of 5   1,445 reviews

Sophomore: UMass Lowell is known for its strong programs in science, engineering, and technology, as well as its commitment to research and innovation. Many students appreciate the hands-on learning opportunities provided by the university, including co-op programs, internships, and research projects. The campus is also praised for its diverse student body and supportive community atmosphere. However, like any institution, some areas could be improved. Some students have expressed concerns about the availability of certain courses, particularly in high-demand majors, and the need for more resources in certain departments. Additionally, while the campus has undergone significant improvements in recent years, there may still be room for further enhancements to facilities and infrastructure. Overall, experiences at UMass Lowell can vary depending on individual interests and needs, but many students find it to be a rewarding and enriching educational experience. ... Read 1,445 reviews

• grade  B+ Overall Niche Grade

Acceptance rate 85%

Net price $13,227

SAT range 1170-1340

LOWELL, MA ,

1445 Niche users give it an average review of 3.7 stars.

Featured Review: Sophomore says UMass Lowell is known for its strong programs in science, engineering, and technology, as well as its commitment to research and innovation. Many students appreciate the hands-on learning... However, like any institution, some areas could be improved. Some students have expressed concerns about the availability of certain courses, particularly in high-demand majors, and the need for more... Overall, experiences at UMass Lowell can vary depending on individual interests and needs, but many students find it to be a rewarding and enriching educational experience. .

Read 1445 reviews.

Overall Niche Grade : B+ ,

Acceptance Rate : 85% ,

Net Price : $13,227 ,

SAT Range : 1170-1340 ,

Suffolk University

• • Rating 3.48 out of 5   1,080 reviews

Freshman: As a first-year, Student- Athlete at Suffolk University, my experience of college has had its ups and downs. I moved from Michigan to Boston for the city life, great educational opportunity, and for the commitment to play volleyball. While transitioning into college, I found studying more demanding and class work more rigors. At first it was a challenge and an intimidation. Finding a balance between athletics, class-work and my social life was overwhelming. However, the community of Suffolk offered many resolutions and opportunities for help. The ability to have access to Tutoring was a great advantage in my eyes and thoroughly helped me excel academically. Suffolk's ability to be inclusive and resourceful shined bright this year. I also enjoyed being a part of the Honors Program. The program held multiple events that brought together Honors students through fun crafts to educational opportunities. These events allowed me to navigate my through college effectively and progressively. ... Read 1,080 reviews

• grade  B minus Overall Niche Grade

Acceptance rate 88%

Net price $32,393

SAT range 1080-1280

1080 Niche users give it an average review of 3.5 stars.

Featured Review: Freshman says As a first-year, Student- Athlete at Suffolk University, my experience of college has had its ups and downs. I moved from Michigan to Boston for the city life, great educational opportunity, and for... .

Read 1080 reviews.

Overall Niche Grade : B minus ,

Acceptance Rate : 88% ,

Net Price : $32,393 ,

SAT Range : 1080-1280 ,

Gordon College

Wenham, MA •

• • Rating 3.72 out of 5   812 reviews

Freshman: My experience at Gordon College was truly transformative. From the moment I stepped onto campus, I felt a sense of belonging and community that I had never experienced before. The small class sizes allowed for intimate discussions and personalized attention from professors who were not only experts in their fields but also genuinely invested in their students' success. One of the things that stood out to me most about Gordon was its strong Christian identity. As someone who values faith and spirituality, I appreciated the opportunity to explore my beliefs in a supportive environment. Chapel services, Bible studies, and other spiritual formation activities were an integral part of campus life, helping me grow both academically and spiritually. Academically, I was challenged in ways that pushed me to excel. The rigorous coursework prepared me well for my future career, and the hands-on learning experiences. ... Read 812 reviews

Acceptance rate 93%

Net price $25,917

SAT range 1020-1370

WENHAM, MA ,

812 Niche users give it an average review of 3.7 stars.

Featured Review: Freshman says My experience at Gordon College was truly transformative. From the moment I stepped onto campus, I felt a sense of belonging and community that I had never experienced before. The small class sizes... One of the things that stood out to me most about Gordon was its strong Christian identity. As someone who values faith and spirituality, I appreciated the opportunity to explore my beliefs in a... Academically, I was challenged in ways that pushed me to excel. The rigorous coursework prepared me well for my future career, and the hands-on learning experiences. .

Read 812 reviews.

Acceptance Rate : 93% ,

Net Price : $25,917 ,

SAT Range : 1020-1370 ,

Merrimack College

North Andover, MA •

• • Rating 3.61 out of 5   649 reviews

Freshman: Academically Merrimack College has been rewarding in numerous ways. As an Honors student on campus I am involved in classes I find interesting, engaging, interactive, and challenging. The small campus feel with a great student to professor ratio helps enable a great developement between each student with their professor in a way big schools cannot. Whenever I feel I am struggling I know I can go to my professor or other students for guidance as the relationships developed in class allow me to do so. The campus is beautiful and is easy to navigate new classes and facilities. I find the biggest struggle to be residency, finding enjoying food or having clean outlets to use the restroom. I believe this is mostly from having freshman housing, as you start from the bottom and build your way up. Overall, I am glad I chose Merrimack and look forward to furthering my education and earning degrees here. ... Read 649 reviews

• grade  C+ Overall Niche Grade

Acceptance rate 80%

Net price $35,500

SAT range 930-1120

NORTH ANDOVER, MA ,

649 Niche users give it an average review of 3.6 stars.

Featured Review: Freshman says Academically Merrimack College has been rewarding in numerous ways. As an Honors student on campus I am involved in classes I find interesting, engaging, interactive, and challenging. The small... .

Read 649 reviews.

Overall Niche Grade : C+ ,

Acceptance Rate : 80% ,

Net Price : $35,500 ,

SAT Range : 930-1120 ,

Emmanuel College - Massachusetts

• • Rating 3.49 out of 5   707 reviews

Freshman: As a first year student at Emmanuel College, I have enjoyed my time here so far! I really love the small community that Emmanuel has to offer. I have had the greatest and most easy going professors, and since our student:faculty ratio is 13:1, I find it incredibly easy to make long lasting connections with them. Emmanuel is also in a great area; Boston is the best college town! There is always so much to do, and I never feel bored or restless. There is so much to explore and so much to learn! ... Read 707 reviews

Acceptance rate 74%

Net price $28,133

SAT range 1150-1280

707 Niche users give it an average review of 3.5 stars.

Featured Review: Freshman says As a first year student at Emmanuel College, I have enjoyed my time here so far! I really love the small community that Emmanuel has to offer. I have had the greatest and most easy going professors,... .

Read 707 reviews.

Acceptance Rate : 74% ,

Net Price : $28,133 ,

SAT Range : 1150-1280 ,

Salem State University

Salem, MA •

• • Rating 3.39 out of 5   1,223 reviews

Alum: Salem was a vibe.. freshman year was absolutely amazing, I made friends, lived on campus and had a phenomenal experience. The only thing that was terrifying was doing it alone. No one (admin, professor or school employee) truly asks you what’s going on. So when something traumatic happened to me and my grades started to slip. None is there to help you out. “Adult life” right. Assuming advisors were going to be there and help pick up pieces was a false narrative I spewed to myself. Not everyone’s experience will be the same. The school itself as a whole, good. The professors do their jobs, the cafe always gave me bubble guts but that’s all part of the experience. Either way, if your thinking about going to school and your unsure… pros list and cons list were equal.. make the choice that is better for YOU. ... Read 1,223 reviews

• grade  C Overall Niche Grade

Acceptance rate 90%

Net price $18,125

SAT range 1010-1160

SALEM, MA ,

1223 Niche users give it an average review of 3.4 stars.

Featured Review: Alum says Salem was a vibe.. freshman year was absolutely amazing, I made friends, lived on campus and had a phenomenal experience. The only thing that was terrifying was doing it alone. No one (admin,... .

Read 1223 reviews.

Overall Niche Grade : C ,

Acceptance Rate : 90% ,

Net Price : $18,125 ,

SAT Range : 1010-1160 ,

Bridgewater State University

Bridgewater, MA •

• • Rating 3.48 out of 5   1,231 reviews

Junior: The professors are always willing to engage and communicate with the students at all times, and are willing to create a teaching environment that intrigues the student. They always go above and beyond when helping students, often offering time after class or even scheduling a time to assist a student if the need may be. Faculty are always willing to help students with whatever needs, whether that be registering for classes or even obtaining information about clubs and upcoming events. Communication is always fast and easy, and you can always expect a reply from either faculty or professors within 48 hours. Students that attend are always very accepting of each other, and strive to assist others in order to progress and succeed throughout the school year(s). Bridgewater is a great university to attend, and I have never had any issues with it! ... Read 1,231 reviews

Acceptance rate 86%

Net price $12,744

SAT range 1010-1200

BRIDGEWATER, MA ,

1231 Niche users give it an average review of 3.5 stars.

Featured Review: Junior says The professors are always willing to engage and communicate with the students at all times, and are willing to create a teaching environment that intrigues the student. They always go above and... .

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Acceptance Rate : 86% ,

Net Price : $12,744 ,

SAT Range : 1010-1200 ,

Endicott College

Beverly, MA •

• • Rating 3.44 out of 5   935 reviews

Freshman: Endicott College is a very good school for academics, providing lots of opportunities for students to make connections and search for future jobs. The small classes have helped a lot in my learning having more one on one opportunities with the professor when I have questions or when the class has questions everyone has an opportunity to ask and understand the topic better. I was able to make friends fairly quickly as there are lots of events in the beginning of the school year that allow incoming and returning students to interact with each other. ... Read 935 reviews

Acceptance rate 77%

Net price $38,196

SAT range 980-1160

BEVERLY, MA ,

935 Niche users give it an average review of 3.4 stars.

Featured Review: Freshman says Endicott College is a very good school for academics, providing lots of opportunities for students to make connections and search for future jobs. The small classes have helped a lot in my learning... .

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Acceptance Rate : 77% ,

Net Price : $38,196 ,

SAT Range : 980-1160 ,

Regis College

Weston, MA •

• • Rating 3.37 out of 5   390 reviews

Alum: I went to Regis undergrad nursing and graduated 5.5 years ago. I had lived in campus and had a wonderful time. It is a small college but that appealed to me because I didn’t want to be in a lecture hall with 400 other people. My biggest class size was about 35 people and it was a lecture course. There was a pretty good array of extra curricular activities for those like Me that don’t do sports. I enjoyed campus ministry and in my freshman year, I was a part of the theatre troupe and put on the play Godspell. I do wish there had been more plays or musicals during my time. The biggest problem during my time there was the food. The dining hall struggled to provide good nutrition but by my senior year they had hired a new company and were making good strives to fix it. There was also a Dunkin’ on campus which was awesome and then the LSU had a grill and premade meals. If you’re looking for a small school, with a beautiful campus, and faculty actually knows your name, Regis is for you! ... Read 390 reviews

Acceptance rate 89%

Net price $35,775

SAT range 840-1060

WESTON, MA ,

390 Niche users give it an average review of 3.4 stars.

Featured Review: Alum says I went to Regis undergrad nursing and graduated 5.5 years ago. I had lived in campus and had a wonderful time. It is a small college but that appealed to me because I didn’t want to be in a lecture... Me that don’t do sports. I enjoyed campus ministry and in my freshman year, I was a part of the theatre troupe and put on the play Godspell. I do wish there had been more plays or musicals during my... .

Read 390 reviews.

Acceptance Rate : 89% ,

Net Price : $35,775 ,

SAT Range : 840-1060 ,

Framingham State University

Framingham, MA •

• • Rating 3.27 out of 5   767 reviews

Sophomore: I recommend Framingham State to anyone who wants a safe campus. Many students are commuters, and the culture between students is polite and accepting. The staff work hard to maintain a respectful and safe culture between students. Everyone is very kind here. The professors and staff also have many office hours, have a career services center, and a tutoring center to help people succeed academically and in choosing a career. For anyone looking for a college experience where the professors are very open and communicative, where you have a chance to succeed in areas where you could not succeed in high school, and get attention from professors and respect from peers, Framingham State is the right place. While it is true that it is a very "vanilla" college, with few parties and little alcohol consumption, most people here were looking for a safer college experience. I hope Framingham State can improve upon its academics. The academics are not as strong as other Massachusetts universities. ... Read 767 reviews

Net price $16,900

SAT range 990-1140

FRAMINGHAM, MA ,

767 Niche users give it an average review of 3.3 stars.

Featured Review: Sophomore says I recommend Framingham State to anyone who wants a safe campus. Many students are commuters, and the culture between students is polite and accepting. The staff work hard to maintain a respectful and... I hope Framingham State can improve upon its academics. The academics are not as strong as other Massachusetts universities. .

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Net Price : $16,900 ,

SAT Range : 990-1140 ,

Bunker Hill Community College

• • Rating 3.84 out of 5   580 reviews

Other: Bunker Hill is a great college and I'd overall recommend. It has good resources and programs, and most professors there want to see you succeed. However, some classes can be hit or miss, and their disability office is non-accessible ... Read 580 reviews

Acceptance rate 100%

Net price $9,001

SAT range —

580 Niche users give it an average review of 3.8 stars.

Featured Review: Other says Bunker Hill is a great college and I'd overall recommend. It has good resources and programs, and most professors there want to see you succeed. However, some classes can be hit or miss, and their... .

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Acceptance Rate : 100% ,

Net Price : $9,001 ,

Northeastern University Lifelong Learning Network

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Massachusetts Bay Community College

Wellesley Hills, MA •

• • Rating 3.77 out of 5   281 reviews

Graduate Student: I have really enjoyed my time here at MassBay! Everyone there is very helpful. While on campus you feel part of the school community! There are many clubs, activities, and sports on campus! They are an open and welcoming school who are dedicated to help student grow into their future career goals! Every student has an opportunity to succeed and to do well! Help is always offered and the professors and school committees and they are wonderful! ... Read 281 reviews

Net price $6,902

WELLESLEY HILLS, MA ,

281 Niche users give it an average review of 3.8 stars.

Featured Review: Graduate Student says I have really enjoyed my time here at MassBay! Everyone there is very helpful. While on campus you feel part of the school community! There are many clubs, activities, and sports on campus! They are... .

Read 281 reviews.

Net Price : $6,902 ,

St. Joseph's University, New York - Long Island

PATCHOGUE, NY

• • Rating 3.62 out of 5   340

Concord University

• • Rating 3.42 out of 5   492

Kenyon College

GAMBIER, OH

• • Rating 3.69 out of 5   415

Showing results 1 through 25 of 27

50 Best Colleges for Political Science – 2024

April 29, 2024

Political science is a popular and useful undergraduate major that can lead to successful careers in business, finance, government, journalism, or academia. While learning about American politics, international affairs, and political theory, you will refine important analytical, writing, and communication skills that will translate into any of the fields above as well as prepare you for the rigors of graduate school. The schools that made our list of the Best Colleges for Political Science all possess ample study abroad opportunities, premiere internship opportunities, and world-renowned faculty. Well respected by industry and graduate schools alike, these colleges and universities will open doors for graduates in their future endeavors.

Methodology 

Click here to read our methodology for the Best Colleges for Political Science.

Best Colleges for Political Science

Here’s a quick preview of the first ten political science institutions that made our list. Detailed profiles and stats can be found when you scroll below.

1) Georgetown University

2) Dartmouth College

3) Columbia University in the City of New York

4) Harvard University

5) University of Pennsylvania

6) Yale University

7) Wake Forest University

8) Duke University

9) Princeton University

10) United States Naval Academy

All of the schools profiled below have stellar reputations in the area of political science and commit substantial resources to undergraduate education. For each of the best political science colleges, College Transitions will provide you with—when available—the university’s:

We will also include a longer write-up of each college’s:

• Academic Highlights – Includes facts like student-to-faculty ratio, average class size, number of majors offered, and most popular majors.
• Professional Outcomes – Includes info on the rate of positive outcomes, companies employing alumni, and graduate school acceptances.

Georgetown University

• Washington, D.C.

Academic Highlights: The student-faculty ratio is 11:1, and 60% of classes enroll fewer than 20 students. While some classes are a bit larger, only 7% cross the 50-student threshold. Those desiring to join the world of politics or diplomacy are in the right place. The Government and International Affairs programs are among the best in the country. The greatest number of degrees are conferred in the social sciences (38%) followed by business (20%), interdisciplinary studies (8%), and biology (7%).

Professional Outcomes: Within six months of graduating, 75% of members of the Class of 2022 entered the workforce, 19% went directly into a graduate or professional program of study, and 3% were still seeking employment. The Class of 2022 sent massive numbers of graduates to a number of major corporations including JPMorgan Chase (22), Citi (21), BOA (18), Morgan Stanley (16), and EY (10). Those attending grad school stay at Georgetown or flock to other elite schools like Columbia and Harvard.

• Enrollment: 7,900
• Cost of Attendance: $85,000
• Median SAT: 1500
• Median ACT: 34
• Acceptance Rate: 12%
• Retention Rate: 97%
• Graduation Rate: 96%

Dartmouth College

• Hanover, NH

Academic Highlights: Dartmouth sports 60+ majors and a stunning breadth of course selections for an institution of its size. The learning environment at Dartmouth is extraordinarily intimate. Not only do 61% of course sections have under twenty students, but 18% have single-digit enrollments. The student-to-faculty ratio is an outstanding 7:1. Top programs offered by Big Green include biology, economics, neuroscience, and government. The social sciences are the most popular, accounting for 32% of degrees conferred, followed by computer science (10%), mathematics (9%), engineering (9%), and biology (7%).

Professional Outcomes: A great reputation along with a passionate alumni network that is 80,000 strong leads Dartmouth grads to successful transitions into graduate school and the world of work. Included in the top ten employers of Dartmouth grads are a number of investment banks including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bain & Company, Citibank, and Deutsche Bank. Right off the bat, 52% of graduates make more than $70,000 in salary. Those pursuing graduate degrees often flock to the likes of Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton.

• Enrollment: 4,458
• Cost of Attendance: $87,793
• Median SAT: 1550
• Acceptance Rate: 6%
• Retention Rate: 98%
• Graduation Rate: 95%

Columbia University

• New York, NY

Academic Highlights: Columbia offers 100+ unique areas of undergraduate study as well as a number of pre-professional and accelerated graduate programs.  Class sizes at Columbia are reasonably small and the student-to-faculty ratio is favorable; however, in 2022, it was revealed that the university had been submitting faulty data in this area. It is presently believed that 58% of undergraduate courses enroll 19 or fewer students. The greatest number of degrees are conferred in the social sciences (22%), computer science (15%), engineering (14%), and biology (7%).

Professional Outcomes: Examining the most recent graduates from Columbia College and the Fu Foundation School of Engineering & Applied Science, 73% had found employment within six months, and 20% had entered graduate school. The median starting salary for graduates of Columbia College/Columbia Engineering is above $80,000. Many graduates get hired by the likes of Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Google, Citi, McKinsey, and Microsoft.

• Enrollment: 8,832
• Cost of Attendance: $89,587
• Median SAT: 1540
• Median ACT: 35
• Acceptance Rate: 4%

Harvard University

• Cambridge, MA

Academic Highlights: There are 50 undergraduate fields of study referred to as concentrations; many are interdisciplinary. Even with a graduate population of over 14,000 to cater to, undergraduate class sizes still tend to be small, with 42% of sections having single-digit enrollments and 71% being capped at nineteen. Economics, government, and computer science are the three most popular areas of concentration at Harvard. Biology, chemistry, physics, math, statistics, sociology, history, English, and psychology all sit atop most departmental ranking lists.

Professional Outcomes: The Crimson Class of 2022 saw 15% of students head directly into graduate/professional school. Of the graduates entering the world of work (virtually everyone else), 58% were entering either the consulting, finance, or technology field. Over 1,000 Harvard alumni presently work for Google and over 500 for Microsoft, McKinsey & Company, and Goldman Sachs. Turning our attention to those moving on to graduate school, Harvard grads with at least a 3.5 GPA typically enjoy acceptance rates into medical school of 90% or greater.

• Enrollment: 7,240
• Cost of Attendance: $79,450
• Acceptance Rate: 3%
• Graduation Rate: 98%

University of Pennsylvania

• Philadelphia, PA

Academic Highlights : 90 distinct degrees are available across four schools: the College of Arts & Sciences, the College of Applied Science and Engineering, the College of Nursing, and the world-renowned Wharton School. The greatest number of students pursue degrees in business (19%), social sciences (14%), biology (11%), health sciences (9%), engineering (9%), and computer science (9%). The university boasts an exceptional 26% of courses with an enrollment under ten and 59% with an enrollment under twenty as well as multiple ways for undergrads to conduct research.

Professional Outcomes: 75% of Class of 2022 grads were employed within six months of graduating, and 18% were in graduate school. Finance attracted the highest percentage of grads (30%) followed by consulting (20%), technology (15%), and healthcare (10%). Employers hiring the greatest number of 2022 grads included JPMorgan, Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey, Bain & Company, Meta, and Goldman Sachs. The median starting salary for all graduates is $80,000. For those continuing their educational journeys, the most popular move is to remain at Penn, followed by Columbia and Harvard.

• Enrollment: 9,760 (undergraduate); 13,614 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $89,028
• Acceptance Rate: 7%

Yale University

• New Haven, CT

Academic Highlights: Yale offers 80 majors, most of which require a one- to two-semester senior capstone experience. Undergraduate research is a staple, and over 70% of classes—of which there are over 2,000 to choose from—have an enrollment of fewer than 20 students, making Yale a perfect environment for teaching and learning. Among the top departments are biology, economics, global affairs, engineering, history, and computer science. The social sciences (26%), biology (11%), mathematics (8%), and computer science (8%) are the most popular areas of concentration.

Professional Outcomes: Shortly after graduating, 73% of the Yale Class of 2022 had entered the world of employment and 18% matriculated into graduate programs. Hundreds of Yale alums can be found at each of the world’s top companies including Google, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey & Company, Morgan Stanley, and Microsoft. The most common industries entered by the newly hired were finance (20%), research/education (16%), technology (14%), and consulting (12%). The mean starting salary for last year’s grads was $81,769 ($120k for CS majors). Nearly one-fifth of students immediately pursue graduate school.

• Enrollment: 6,590 (undergraduate); 5,344 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $87,705
• Acceptance Rate: 5%

Wake Forest University

• Winston-Salem, NC

Academic Highlights: All freshmen enter the Undergraduate College, which offers 45 majors and 60 minors. Sporting a student-to-faculty ratio of 10:1, classes are kept on the small side with 59% of sections enrolling fewer than 20 students. 60% of students engage in hands-on research for academic credit. Wake Forest is strong across myriad disciplines, most notably chemistry, communication, accounting, finance, and international affairs. The most frequently conferred degrees are in business (22%), the social sciences (20%), journalism (8%), and biology (8%).

Professional Outcomes: Within six months of graduation, 97% of the Class of 2022 had found their next destination, with 71% starting their first professional job and 26% matriculating into a graduate program. Management/consulting, investment banking, and healthcare were the top three industries. Employers landing the highest numbers of alumni included national and multinational corporations IBM, Siemens, Volvo, Goldman Sachs, Disney, Deloitte, Dell, Gucci, PepsiCo, EY, and Nike. By the start of mid-career, Wake Forest alumni earn the second-highest median salary of any school in North Carolina.

• Enrollment: 5,447 (undergraduate); 3,516 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $87,622
• Median SAT: 1450
• Median ACT: 33
• Acceptance Rate: 21%
• Retention Rate: 94%
• Graduation Rate: 90%

Duke University

Academic Highlights: The academic offerings at Duke include 53 majors, 52 minors, and 23 interdisciplinary certificates. Class sizes are on the small side—71% are nineteen or fewer, and almost one-quarter are less than ten. A stellar 5:1 student-to-faculty ratio helps keep classes so reasonable even while catering to five figures worth of graduate students. Computer Science is the most popular area of concentration (11%), followed by economics (10%), public policy (9%), biology (8%), and computer engineering (7%).

Professional Outcomes: At graduation, approximately 70% of Duke diploma-earners enter the world of work, 20% continue into graduate schools, and 2% start their own businesses. The industries that attract the largest percentage of Blue Devils are tech (21%), finance (15%), business (15%), healthcare (9%), and science/research (6%). Of the 20% headed into graduate school, a hefty 22% are attending medical school, 18% are in PhD programs, and 12% are entering law school. The med school acceptance rate is 85%, more than twice the national average.

• Enrollment: 6,640
• Cost of Attendance: $85,238
• SAT Range: 1490-1570
• ACT Range: 34-35
• Graduation Rate: 97%

Princeton University

• Princeton, NJ

Academic Highlights: 39 majors are available at Princeton. Just under three-quarters of class sections have an enrollment of 19 or fewer students, and 31% have fewer than ten students. Princeton is known for its commitment to undergraduate teaching, and students consistently rate professors as accessible and helpful. The Engineering Department is widely recognized as one of the country’s best, as is the School of Public and International Affairs.

Professional Highlights: Over 95% of a typical Tiger class finds their next destination within six months of graduating. Large numbers of recent grads flock to the fields of business and engineering, health/science, & tech. Companies presently employing hundreds of Tiger alumni include Google, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, McKinsey & Company, Morgan Stanley, IBM, and Meta. The average salary ranges from $40k (education, health care, or social services) to $100k (computer/mathematical positions). Between 15-20% of graduating Tigers head directly to graduate/professional school.

• Enrollment: 5,604 (undergraduate); 3,238 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $86,700

United States Naval Academy

• Annapolis, MD

Academic Highlights: The Naval Academy has some of the top-ranked undergraduate engineering programs in the world with standout reputations in aerospace, computer, electrical, and mechanical engineering. 26 different undergraduate programs are offered in a variety of disciplines, but at least 65% of each class must complete degrees in a STEM discipline in order to meet the highly technological needs of the Navy. Close to three-quarters of course sections will contain fewer than 20 students, and the student-to-faculty ratio is a stellar 7:1.

Professional Outcomes: USNA midshipmen have a mandatory five-year military commitment upon graduating, so the vast majority immediately become ensigns in the Navy or second lieutenants in the Marine Corps. Very few are cleared to enter graduate school directly after receiving their bachelor’s. However, upon entering civilian employment/life, alumni flock to companies that include Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Booz Allen Hamilton, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and McKinsey and Co. They also enjoy some of the highest average salaries of any alumni group in the country.

• Enrollment: 1,175
• Cost of Attendance: $0
• Median SAT: 1330
• Median ACT: 30
• Acceptance Rate: 9%
• Retention Rate: 87%
• Graduation Rate: 86%

University of Notre Dame

• Notre Dame, IN

Academic Highlights: 75 majors are offered across six undergraduate colleges: the School of Architecture, the College of Arts and Letters, the Mendoza School of Business (one of the country’s best business schools), the College of Engineering, the Keough School of Global Affairs, and the College of Science. In 2022, the most degrees were conferred in business (20%), the social sciences (18%), engineering (12%), and biology (8%). A solid 60% of courses enroll fewer than 20 students, and 15% have single-digit numbers. 75% of Notre Dame undergrads study abroad.

Professional Outcomes: 69% of 2022 grads directly entered the world of employment, with the most common industries being financial services (21%), consulting (17%), technology (12%), and health services (9%). Massive numbers of alumni can be found at Deloitte, EY, PwC, IBM, Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and McKinsey & Co. The median early-career salary was $76,000. Of the 20% of grads who went directly into their graduate/professional studies, 18% were pursuing medical degrees and 9% were studying law.

• Enrollment: 8,971 (undergraduate); 4,134 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $86,125
• Acceptance Rate: 13%

Northwestern University

• Evanston, IL

Academic Highlights : Northwestern is home to six undergraduate schools, including Medill, which is widely regarded as one of the country’s best journalism schools. The McCormick School of Engineering also achieves top rankings, along with programs in economics, social policy, and theatre. The social sciences account for the greatest number of degrees conferred (19%), followed by communications/journalism (13%), and engineering (11%). 45% of classes have nine or fewer students enrolled; 78% have fewer than twenty enrollees. 57% of recent grads had the chance to conduct undergraduate research.

Professional Outcomes: Six months after graduating, 69% of the Class of 2022 had found employment and 27% were in graduate school. The four most popular professional fields were consulting (18%), engineering (18%), business/finance (16%), and communications/marketing/media (13%). Employers included the BBC, NBC News, The Washington Post , NPR, Boeing, Google, IBM, Deloitte, PepsiCo, Northrop Grumman, and Goldman Sachs. Across all majors, the average starting salary was $73k. Of those headed straight to graduate school, engineering, medicine, and business were the three most popular areas of concentration.

• Enrollment: 8,659 (undergraduate); 14,073 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $91,290
• Median SAT: 1530

University of California, Los Angeles

• Los Angeles, CA

Academic Highlights: UCLA offers 125 majors in 100+ academic departments, and more than 60 majors require a capstone experience that results in the creation of a tangible product under the mentorship of faculty members. The most commonly conferred degrees are in the social sciences (25%), biology (16%), psychology (11%), mathematics (8%), and engineering (7%). Departmental rankings are high across the board, especially in computer science, engineering, film, fine and performing arts, mathematics, and political science.

Professional Outcomes: UCLA grads flow most heavily into the research, finance, computer science, and engineering sectors. High numbers of recent grads can be found at Disney, Google, EY, Teach for America, Amazon, and Oracle. Hundreds also can be found at Bloomberg, Deloitte, Mattel, Oracle, and SpaceX. The average starting salary exceeds $55,000. 16% of recent grads enrolled directly in a graduate/professional school, with other CA-based institutions like Stanford, Pepperdine, USC, Berkeley, and Loyola Marymount being the most popular.

• Enrollment: 33,040 (undergraduate); 15,010 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $38,517 (in-state); $71,091 (out-of-state)
• Median SAT: Test Blind
• Median ACT: Test Blind
• Graduation Rate: 93%

Stanford University

• Palo Alto, CA

Academic Highlights: Stanford has three undergraduate schools: the School of Humanities & Sciences, the School of Engineering, and the School of Earth, Energy, and Environmental Sciences. 69% of classes have fewer than twenty students, and 34% have a single-digit enrollment. Programs in engineering, computer science, physics, mathematics, international relations, and economics are arguably the best anywhere. In terms of sheer volume, the greatest number of degrees are conferred in the social sciences (17%), computer science (16%), engineering (15%), and interdisciplinary studies (13%).

Professional Outcomes: Stanford grads entering the working world flock to three major industries in equal distribution: business/finance/consulting/retail (19%); computer, IT (19%); and public policy and service, international affairs (19%). Among the companies employing the largest number of recent grads are Accenture, Apple, Bain, Cisco, Meta, Goldman Sachs, Google, McKinsey, Microsoft, and SpaceX. Other companies that employ hundreds of Cardinal alums include LinkedIn, Salesforce, and Airbnb. Starting salaries for Stanford grads are among the highest in the country.

• Enrollment: 8,049 (undergraduate); 10,236 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $87,833

University of Chicago

• Chicago, IL

Academic Highlights: There are 53 majors at UChicago, but close to half of all degrees conferred are in four majors: economics, biology, mathematics, and political science, all of which have particularly sterling reputations. Economics alone is the selection of roughly one-fifth of the undergraduate population. Over 75% of undergrad sections have an enrollment of nineteen or fewer students, and undergraduate research opportunities are ubiquitous as 80% of students end up working in a research capacity alongside a faculty member.

Professional Outcomes: On commencement day, 99% of the Class of 2023 were employed or continuing their education. Business and financial services (30%) and STEM (12%) were the two sectors that scooped up the most graduates, but public policy and consulting were also well-represented. The most popular employers of recent grads include Google, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey & Company, Bank of America, Citi, and Accenture. For those heading to grad school, the top seven destinations are Yale, Columbia, Penn, MIT, Stanford, UCLA, and Johns Hopkins.

• Enrollment: 7,653 (undergraduate); 10,870 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $89,040
• Retention Rate: 99%

Vanderbilt University

• Nashville, TN

Academic Highlights: Four of Vandy’s ten schools cater to undergrads: the College of Arts and Sciences, the Blair School of Music, the Peabody College of Education and Human Development, and the School of Engineering. In the 2022-23 school year, 87% of course sections contained 19 or fewer students. Of the 70 undergraduate majors, economics, politics and government, and neuroscience are the most popular. The School of Engineering has a strong national reputation as do offerings in biology, economics, education, and music.

Professional Outcomes: Six months after graduating, 96% of the Class of 2021 were employed or in graduate school. The most commonly entered industry was finance followed by technology, consulting, education, and engineering. Alumni can be found in droves at Capital One, Goldman Sachs, Bain & Company, JP Morgan Chase, Citi, and Meta. Among 2022 alumni who directly pursued advanced degrees, the majority enrolled at Vanderbilt followed by Columbia, Harvard, Penn, NYU, and Northwestern.

• Enrollment: 7,151 (undergraduate); 6,559 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $89,590
• Retention Rate: 96%

Washington University in St. Louis

• St. Louis, MO

Academic Highlights : WashU admits students into five schools, many of which offer nationally recognized programs: Arts & Sciences, the Olin School of Business, the School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, and the Art of Architecture programs housed within the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts. The most commonly conferred degrees are in engineering (13%), social sciences (13%), business (13%), biology (11%), and psychology (10%). 66% of classes have fewer than 20 students, and over one-quarter have single-digit enrollments. 65% double major or pursue a minor.

Professional Outcomes: The Class of 2022 sent 52% of grads into the workforce and 28% into graduate and professional schools. Companies employing the highest number of WashU grads feature sought-after employers such as Amazon, Bain, Boeing, Deloitte, Google, IBM, Goldman Sachs, and Microsoft. Of the employed members of the Class of 2022 who reported their starting salaries, 79% made more than $60k. The universities welcoming the largest number of Bears included the prestigious institutions of Caltech, Columbia, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Stanford.

• Enrollment: 8,132 (undergraduate); 8,880 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $83,760
• Acceptance Rate: 11%

Boston College

• Chestnut Hill, MA

Academic Highlights: The college offers roughly 60 majors across four schools that award undergraduate degrees. Approximately half of the college’s sections contain nineteen or fewer students. 95% of graduates reported learning how to think critically at BC, and 93% said they learned how to write clearly and effectively. BC offers highly respected programs in communications, psychology, and business through the renowned Carroll School of Management. Other popular and well-regarded majors include economics, biology, and chemistry.

Professional Outcomes: Within six months of graduation, 96% of the Class of 2022 had landed at their next destination. The most favored industries were financial services and real estate (26%), health care/science (20%), and business/consulting (16%). The median starting salary for a 2022 BC grad was $67,000. Eighteen percent of the Class of 2022 entered graduate schools including Brown, Columbia, the University of Chicago, and Yale. Examining the Class of 2022 data, 16% entered law school, and 14% pursued some other type of doctoral degree.

• Enrollment: 9,484
• Cost of Attendance: $86,155
• Average SAT: 1482
• Average ACT: 34
• Acceptance Rate: 17%
• Retention Rate: 95%
• Graduation Rate: 92%

Bowdoin College

• Brunswick, ME

Academic Highlights: Class sizes are small—64% contain fewer than twenty students—and 21% have fewer than ten students. The student-faculty ratio is 9:1. More than half of Bowdoin undergrads report interacting with a professor outside of regular class time at least once per week. The greatest percentage of degrees are conferred in the social sciences (30%), biology (13%), area/ethnic/gender studies (8%), computer science (7%), and mathematics (7%). Economics and government and legal studies are two of the more popular majors within the social sciences.

Professional Outcomes: An examination of three recent years’ worth of outcomes data reveals that one year after graduation, between 73 and 77% of recent grads have found full-time employment, and 15% have gone directly into graduate school. Of those entering graduate school, 48% were enrolled in master’s programs, 23% in PhD programs, 13% in law school, and 8% in med school. The top twenty graduate schools attended, by volume, in the last five years make an exclusive list including six Ivies along with Duke, MIT, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford.

• Enrollment: 1,915
• Cost of Attendance: $82,600
• Median SAT: 1510
• Graduation Rate: 94%

Washington and Lee University

• Lexington, VA

Academic Highlights: The university offers 36 majors and 29 minors. With an exceptionally low 7:1 student-to-faculty ratio, over 80% of class sections contain 19 or fewer students. Instructors earn rave reviews. The renowned Williams School of Commerce, Politics, and Economics offers outstanding programs, as do the Journalism and Mass Communication, English, and History Departments. Altogether, business accounts for 23% of the degrees conferred; the social sciences (25%), biology (9%), and foreign language (6%) are also popular.

Professional Outcomes: Last year, 69% of recent graduates found employment within six months of leaving Lexington; the most frequently entered industries were financial services, economics/finance, education, consulting, and real estate. Companies presently employing more than two dozen Generals including EY, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, PwC, JPMorgan, Capital One, and Morgan Stanley. Starting salaries are solid with the majority of the cohort being paid $55,000 or more while 18% brought home in excess of $75,000.

• Enrollment: 1,867 (undergraduate); 376 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $87,000
• Median SAT: 1480

Wesleyan University

• Middletown, CT

Academic Highlights: With 45 majors and 32 minors, Wes truly has something for everyone. The academic requirements are relatively minimal, giving undergrads a high degree of intellectual freedom. Under 75% of class sections have fewer than twenty students; students rave about the accessible faculty. Research opportunities with professors are plentiful. Offerings in economics, English, film studies, and neuroscience typically receive the most praise from employers/grad schools; accordingly, the social sciences (24%), psychology (17%), and the visual and performing arts (12%) are the most popular.

Professional Outcomes: Within six months of graduating, 66% of 2022 grads had entered employment, with tech/engineering/sciences, education, and arts/entertainment being the three top sectors. The companies employing the highest numbers of recent Wesleyan grads included Google, Epic, Analysis Group, Boston Medical Center, Booz Allen Hamilton, Accenture, and Apple. Graduate school was the next stop for 18% of new alums; enrolling institutions included MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Yale, Harvard, Temple, and UMass.

• Enrollment: 3,069 (undergraduate); 184 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $89,094
• Median SAT: 1430
• Median ACT: 32
• Acceptance Rate: 14%

Johns Hopkins University

• Baltimore, MD

Academic Highlights: With 53 majors as well as 51 minors, JHU excels in everything from its bread-and-butter medical-related majors to international relations and dance. Boasting an enviable 6:1 student-to-faculty ratio and with 78% of course sections possessing an enrollment under 20, face time with professors is a reality. Many departments carry a high level of clout, including biomedical engineering, chemistry, English, and international studies. Biology, neuroscience, and computer science, which happen to be the three most popular majors, can also be found at the top of the national rankings.

Professional Outcomes: The Class of 2022 saw 94% of graduates successfully land at their next destination within six months of exiting the university; 66% of graduates entered the world of employment and a robust 19% went directly to graduate/professional school. The median starting salary across all majors was $80,000 for the Class of 2022. JHU itself is the most popular choice for graduate school. The next most frequently attended institutions included Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and MIT.

• Enrollment: 6,044
• Cost of Attendance: $86,065

Colgate University

• Hamilton, NY

Academic Highlights: Fifty-six majors are on tap at Colgate, including all of the expected liberal arts concentrations. With a student-faculty ratio of 9:1 and an average class size of 16, Colgate undergraduates work intimately with their instructors. The social sciences account for 35% of all degrees conferred and, within that umbrella, economics, political science, and English are among the most popular and most well-regarded majors.

Professional Outcomes: Nine months after graduation, only a small number of Colgate alumni are still looking for work; in 2022, that group represented less than 2% of the graduating class. A substantial 80% had already landed full-time jobs. Employers hiring the most Colgate grads included BOA, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan, EY, Wayfair, and the NIH. 85-95% of law school applicants are accepted into one of their target institutions. The medical school numbers were even more impressive with 100% of graduating seniors gaining acceptance into at least one med school.

• Enrollment: 3,130
• Cost of Attendance: $83,814
• Median SAT: 1470
• Graduation Rate: 91%

College of the Holy Cross

• Worcester, MA

Academic Highlights: The college offers thirty traditional majors as well as additional subjects in which one can pursue a student-designed major. The average class size is a manageable 19 students, and 62% of courses have enrollments lower than that. There are no majors that undergrads flock to in overwhelming numbers, but the most popular are the social sciences (29%), psychology (14%), history (7%), and biology (6%). All of those popular departments also rank well nationally.

Professional Outcomes: Six months after moving their tassels to the left, 68% of the Class of 2021 (most recent stats available) were employed, 19% were in graduate school, and only 3% were still seeking full-time employment. Organizations employing more than one recent graduate include Fidelity Investments, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Massachusetts General Hospital, Deloitte, EY, PwC, Oracle, and Dell. Among those enrolled in graduate school, 14% were in law school, 14% were pursuing degrees in a health profession, and 6% were in PhD programs.

• Enrollment: 3,233
• Cost of Attendance: $78,600
• Median SAT: 1360
• Acceptance Rate: 36%

University of Michigan

• Ann Arbor, MI

Academic Highlights: There are 280+ undergraduate degree programs across fourteen schools and colleges, and the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) enrolls the majority of students. The Ross School of Business offers highly rated programs in entrepreneurship, management, accounting, and finance. The College of Engineering is also one of the best in the country. By degrees conferred, engineering (15%), computer science (14%), and the social sciences (11%) are most popular. A solid 56% of classes have fewer than 20 students.

Professional Outcomes: Within three months of graduating, 89% of LSA grads are employed full-time or in graduate school, with healthcare, education, law, banking, research, nonprofit work, and consulting being the most popular sectors. Within three months, 99% of Ross grads are employed with a median salary of $90k. Top employers include Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, EY, Morgan Stanley, PwC, Deloitte, and Amazon.  Within six months, 96% of engineering grads are employed (average salary of $84k) or in grad school. General Motors, Ford, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Meta employ the greatest number of alumni.

• Enrollment: 32,695 (undergraduate); 18,530 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $35,450 (in-state); $76,294 (out-of-state)
• Acceptance Rate: 18%

Cornell University

Academic Highlights: A diverse array of academic programs includes 80 majors and 120 minors spread across the university’s seven schools/colleges. Classes are a bit larger at Cornell than at many other elite institutions. Still, 55% of sections have fewer than 20 students. Most degrees conferred in 2022 were in computer science (17%), engineering (13%), business (13%), and biology (13%). The SC Johnson College of Business houses two undergraduate schools, both of which have phenomenal reputations.

Professional Outcomes: Breaking down the graduates of the College of Arts and Sciences, the largest school at Cornell, 68% entered the workforce, 28% entered graduate school, 1% pursued other endeavors such as travel or volunteer work, and the remaining 3% were still seeking employment six months after receiving their diplomas. The top sectors attracting campus-wide graduateswere financial services (18%), technology (17%), consulting (15%), and education (10%). Of the students from A&S going on to graduate school, 15% were pursuing JDs, 5% MDs, and 22% PhDs.

• Enrollment: 15,735
• Cost of Attendance: $88,150
• Median SAT: 1520

Bates College

• Lewiston, ME

Academic Highlights: Thirty-four percent of courses at Bates have a single-digit enrollment, and 63% of classrooms contain nineteen or fewer students. The student-to-faculty ratio is 10:1, and not a single graduate student is present to vacuum up professorial attention. Twenty-eight percent of all degrees earned at Bates are in the social sciences, and psychology (14%), biology (13%), and the physical sciences (7%) are next in popularity. Though strong across many disciplines, Bates boasts exemplary programs in political science, art, philosophy, economics, and psychology.

Professional Outcomes: Within six months of graduation, 99% of the Class of 2022 were either employed, enrolled in graduate school, or otherwise meaningfully engaged in a fellowship or internship. The most frequently entered fields were healthcare (17%), education (16%), finance/banking (14%), and technology (7%). Within ten years of graduation, approximately 13% of Bates graduates are in, or have completed, law school whereas 7% enroll in medical school.

• Enrollment: 1,790
• Cost of Attendance: $81,382
• Retention Rate: 93%

Brown University

• Providence, RI

Academic Highlights: Students must choose one of 80+ “concentration programs,” but there are no required courses. Class sizes tend to be small—68% have fewer than twenty students—and 35% are comprised of nine or fewer students. Biology, economics, computer science, mathematics, and engineering are among the most popular areas of concentration at Brown; however, it is hard to distinguish any one program, because Brown possesses outstanding offerings across so many disciplines.

Professional Outcomes: Soon after receiving their Brown diplomas, 69% of graduates enter the world of employment. Companies employing the greatest number of Brown alums include Google, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Amazon, Morgan Stanley, Apple, McKinsey & Company, and Bain & Company. The Class of 2022 saw 27% of graduates go directly into graduate/professional school. Right out of undergrad, Brown students boasted an exceptional 81% admission rate to med school and an 81% admission rate to law school.

• Enrollment: 7,639
• Cost of Attendance: $84,828

Emory University

• Atlanta, GA

Academic Highlights: This midsize university offers a diverse array of majors (80+) and minors (60+), and 30% of Emory students pursue more than one area of study. Over half of Emory’s student body works directly with a faculty member on academic research and 58% of courses have class sizes of under twenty students. Ultimately, the greatest number of students go on to earn degrees in the social sciences (15%), biology (14%), business (14%), health professions (12%), and mathematics (9%).

Professional Outcomes: Shortly after graduation, 66% of 2022 grads were already employed, and 96% had arrived at their next destination. The top employers of recent Emory grads include Deloitte, Epic, ScribeAmerica, Meta, Morgan Stanley, and Cloudmed. Graduates of the Goizueta Business School found strong starting salaries with an average of $81k.  In the last few years, multiple Emory grads/alums received acceptance letters from the following top law schools like Columbia, Berkeley, and Georgetown. Med school acceptances included Duke, Johns Hopkins, and Vanderbilt.

• Enrollment: 7,101
• Cost of Attendance: $83,702

Davidson College

• Davidson, NC

Academic Highlights: With its small size, the impressive part of the college is the exceptional quality of its offerings, not the breadth of them, as only 37 majors are available. The student-to-faculty ratio is 9:1, which allows the college to ensure that 62% have fewer than twenty students and 24% have enrollments you can count on two hands. Overall, the average number of students per class is only 18. Top programs at Davidson include psychology, political science, chemistry, and English; biology is also quite popular, accounting for 12% of degrees conferred in 2022.

Professional Outcomes: Looking at the outcomes data for 2022 grads, 70% landed jobs within six months of graduation, 26% were enrolled in a graduate program, and 3% were still seeking employment. Of those who attended grad school, the highest number were in healthcare-related programs (including MDs), law school, and laboratory sciences. Significant numbers of students pursue advanced degrees at other Southern gems including Vanderbilt, Emory, Duke, Wake Forest, and UNC.

• Enrollment: 1,927
• Cost of Attendance: $76,450

George Washington University

Academic Highlights: GW undergraduates choose from 75+ majors spread across nine colleges. The school’s 12:1 student-to-faculty ratio translates to a mix of small, medium, and large undergraduate sections. Twelve percent of courses have single-digit enrollments, 10% have over 50 students, and the majority fall in the 10 to 29 range. The social sciences (31%) are the area in which the greatest number of degrees are awarded followed by health professions (17%), business (15%), biology (5%), and computer science (5%).

Professional Outcomes: Within six months of leaving GW, 96% of the Class of 2022 had found their way to gainful employment or graduate school while 4% were still job hunting. Of the 68% of grads already in the workplace, 68% were in a for-profit industry, 25% had entered a nonprofit position, and 8% were working in government. A healthy 27% of those earning their diplomas in 2022 immediately turned their attention to earning an advanced degree. Among that group were 76% seeking master’s degrees, 11% entering law school, 5% pursuing a medical degree, and 3% entering a doctoral program.

• Enrollment: 11,482
• Cost of Attendance: $85,740
• Median SAT: 1410
• Acceptance Rate: 49%
• Retention Rate: 90%
• Graduation Rate: 85%

Claremont McKenna College

• Claremont, CA

Academic Highlights: CMC offers 33 majors and 11 “sequences,” series of courses that can be completed across the neighboring schools in addition to one’s major. The college boasts an average class size of eighteen, and 82% of course sections have fewer than twenty students. Economics, government, international relations, biology, and psychology are the most popular majors, and among the strongest. Interdisciplinary majors such as Environment, Economics, and Politics (EEP) and Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) also carry outstanding reputations.

Professional Outcomes: Eighty-eight percent of 2022 graduates found employment within six months of graduation, and only 4% were still looking for work. The median starting salary for a 2022 Claremont grad is $87,000. You name the prestigious graduate/professional program and, chances are, a recent CMC grad (or two or three) is presently studying there. Since 2001, more than 120 alumni have enrolled at USC and UCLA. More than 60 grads have headed to UChicago, Columbia, and Stanford.

• Enrollment: 1,386
• Cost of Attendance: $86,500
• Acceptance Rate: 10%

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Chapel Hill, NC

Academic Highlights: Undergraduates can choose from 74 bachelor’s degree programs in a number of schools and colleges, the largest of which is the College of Arts & Sciences. 44% of classes have a student enrollment under 20. The social sciences (15%), biology (12%), media/journalism (9%), computer science (8%), and business (6%) are the areas in which the most degrees are conferred. The Kenan-Flager Business School is internationally renowned and requires separate admission. Other strong programs include those in chemistry, journalism, psychology, and political science.

Professional Outcomes: Six months after leaving Chapel Hill, 97% of 2022 grads had entered employment, military service, or graduate school. Among the for-profit companies that hire the most graduates are Wells Fargo, IBM, Cisco, Deloitte, EY, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, McKinsey & Company, and Goldman Sachs. In the nonprofit sector, a large number of alumni are employed by AmeriCorps, NIH, Teach for America, and the Peace Corps. The average starting salary is $70,619. 18% of 2022 grads enrolled directly in graduate/professional school.

• Enrollment: 20,210 (undergraduate); 11,739 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $27,036 (in-state); $60,040 (out-of-state)

Colby College

• Waterville, ME

Academic Highlights: Offering 56 majors and 35 minors, Colby provides a classic liberal arts education with a high degree of flexibility and room for independent intellectual pursuits. A 10:1 student-to-faculty ratio is put to good instructional use as roughly two-thirds of courses have fewer than 19 students. Being a true liberal arts school, Colby has strengths across many disciplines, but biology, economics, and global studies draw especially high praise. These programs along with government and environmental science attract the highest number of students.

Professional Outcomes: Within six months of graduation, 93% of the Class of 2022 had either obtained jobs or were enrolled full-time in a graduate program. Eighteen percent of graduates enter the financial industry and large numbers also start careers in education, with government/nonprofit, STEM, and healthcare next in popularity. The Medical school acceptance rate over the past five years is 68%, nearly double the national average.

• Enrollment: 2,299
• Cost of Attendance: $86,720
• Average SAT: 1485
• Average ACT: 33
• Acceptance Rate: 8%
• Graduation Rate: 87%

University of California, San Diego

• San Diego, CA

Academic Highlights: There are 140+ undergraduate majors offered at UCSD, and all students join one of eight undergraduate colleges meant to forge flourishing communities within the larger university. Biology has the highest representation of all majors (19%) followed by engineering (12%), the social sciences (11%), and computer science (9%). UCSD’s computer science and engineering programs have stellar reputations in the corporate and tech communities, and programs in biology, economics, and political science are among the best anywhere.

Professional Outcomes: Employers of recent graduates included the Walt Disney Company, Tesla, NBC Universal, PwC, Northrop Grumman, and EY. More than 1,000 current Google employees are UC San Diego alumni, and Qualcomm, Amazon, and Apple all employ 500+ each. The median early career salary is $65,000 across all majors, placing the university in the top 10 public universities in the country. UCSD also fares well in measures of its return-on-investment potential.

• Enrollment: 33,096 (undergraduate); 8,386 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $31,830 (in-state); $64,404 (out-of-state)
• Acceptance Rate: 25%
• Graduation Rate: 88%

University of California, Berkeley

• Berkeley, CA

Academic Highlights: More than 150 undergraduate majors and minors are available across six schools: the College of Letters and Science, the College of Chemistry, the College of Engineering, the College of Environmental Design, the College of Natural Resources, and the Haas School of Business. Many departments have top international reputations including computer science, engineering, chemistry, English, psychology, and economics. 22% of sections contain nine or fewer students, and over 55% of students assist faculty with a research project or complete a research methods course.

Professional Outcomes: Upon graduating, 49% of Cal’s Class of 2022 had already secured employment, and 20% were headed to graduate school. Business is the most popular sector, attracting 62% of employed grads; next up are industrial (17%), education (8%), and nonprofit work (7%). The median starting salary was $86,459 across all majors. Thousands of alumni can be found in the offices of Google, Apple, and Meta, and 500+ Golden Bears are currently employed by Oracle, Amazon, and Microsoft. The school is the number one all-time producer of Peace Corps volunteers.

• Enrollment: 32,831 (undergraduate); 12,914 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $48,574 (in-state); $82,774 (out-of-state)

College of William & Mary

• Williamsburg, VA

Academic Highlights: Forty undergraduate programs are available and William & Mary has a 13:1 student-to-faculty ratio. Class sizes are rarely tiny seminars, but 44% do enroll fewer than twenty students, and only 9% contain more than fifty. Among the college’s most notable academic programs are (1) government and (2) international relations, both of which serve as pipelines to Washington, DC, employers. The Mason School of Business is highly regarded in the corporate world. The social sciences (20%) and biology (11%) are also popular.

Professional Outcomes: 52% of the most cohort joined the workforce, and 36% entered graduate school within six months of graduation. Over 500 employers snatched up at least one member of the Tribe. Companies hiring at least four 2020 grads included Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton, KPMG, and Deloitte. Many of those opting for immediate entry into graduate school stayed at their alma mater and the next most frequented universities included Columbia, Duke, Harvard, Northwestern, and the University of Chicago.

• Enrollment: 6,797
• Cost of Attendance: $39,595 (In-State); $63,967 (Out-of-State)
• Median SAT: 1460
• Acceptance Rate: 33%

Tulane University

• New Orleans, LA

Academic Highlights: Tulane offers 75 majors within five colleges, with the A.B. Freeman School of Business and programs in architecture, biology, and neuroscience enjoying strong national reputations. The most degrees are conferred in business/marketing (22%), the social sciences (20%), psychology (9%), biology (8%), and health professions (8%). The average class size is 21 students and a solid 21% of courses have single-digit enrollments, providing a seminar-style environment. The majority of undergraduate courses are taught by full-time professors.

Professional Outcomes: Over three-fifths of Tulane grads find employment within six months of graduation. The most popular occupations were financial analyst, management analyst, marketing specialist, and postsecondary teacher. Significant numbers of alumni can be found working in the Louisiana-based Ochsner Health System or at corporations such as Shell, EY, Google, PwC, IBM, Morgan Stanley, Deloitte, and Accenture. 35% of grads eventually enroll in graduate or professional school—the most common destinations are Tulane itself, Louisiana State University, Boston University, and Johns Hopkins University.

• Enrollment: 7,295 (undergraduate); 4,990 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $86,000
• Acceptance Rate: 15%
• Graduation Rate: 89%

Rice University

• Houston, TX

Academic Highlights : Rice offers more than 50 majors across six broad disciplines: engineering, architecture, music, social science, humanities, and natural science. Programs in biology, biochemistry, cognitive science, and music are incredibly strong, while the School of Architecture and the George R. Brown School of Engineering are among the highest-ranking schools in their disciplines. One-third of computer science majors are female, almost twice the national average. Class sizes are ideally small with 66% containing fewer than 20 students and a median class size of only fourteen.

Professional Outcomes: Six months after graduation, 88% of Rice grads have found careers or a graduate school home. Companies that employ many recent grads include Deloitte, Capital One, JP Morgan Chase, Google, and Microsoft. Over one hundred alumni are also current employees of companies such as Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Amazon, Accenture, and Meta. Across all majors, the average starting salary is $73k. One-third of graduates move directly into graduate or professional school, with Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, and Berkeley being the most popular destinations.

• Enrollment: 4,494 (undergraduate); 4,178 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $78,278
• Median SAT: 35

Wellesley College

• Wellesley, MA

Academic Highlights: There are 50+ departmental and interdisciplinary majors. Thirty-six percent of course sections have single-digit enrollments while 77% have 19 or fewer students. In addition, opportunities for participation in research with faculty members abound. Most programs possess sterling reputations, including chemistry, computer science, neuroscience, and political science, but the Department of Economics shines most brightly, leading many into PhD programs and high-profile careers. Economics, biology, and computer science are the most frequently conferred degrees.

Professional Outcomes : Six months after graduating, 97% of the Class of 2022 had achieved positive outcomes. Of the 76% of grads who were employed, 24% were working in the finance/consulting/business fields, 17% in education, 17% in internet and technology & engineering, and 15% in healthcare/life sciences. Top employers included JPMorgan Chase, Google, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Goldman Sachs. The average starting salary for one recent cohort was a solid $63k. Of the 20% of 2022 grads who directly entered an advanced degree program, common schools attended included Harvard, Columbia, Brown, Stanford, MIT, and Emory.

• Enrollment: 2,447
• Cost of Attendance: $84,240
• Median SAT: 1490

Bucknell University

• Lewisburg, PA

Academic Highlights: Over 60 majors and 70 minors are on tap across three undergraduate schools: the College of Arts & Sciences, Freeman College of Management, and the College of Engineering. Getting well-acquainted with your professors is easy with a 9:1 student-faculty ratio, and class sizes are reasonably small. The greatest number of degrees are conferred in the areas of the social sciences (26%), engineering (14%), business (14%), biology (11%), and psychology (9%).

Professional Outcomes: Nine months after graduation, 94% of the Class of 2022 had launched their careers or entered graduate school. Financial services is the most common sector for Bucknell grads to enter, attracting 24% of alumni. Across all disciplines, the average salary for a Class of 2022 grad was $69,540. Bucknell saw 18% of 2022 grads go directly into an advanced degree program. Bison alumni heading to graduate school predominantly pursue degrees in the medical field, social sciences, business, or engineering.

• Enrollment: 3,747
• Cost of Attendance: $80,890
• Median SAT: 1380
• Retention Rate: 91%

Pomona College

Academic Highlights: There are 48 majors and minors to select from with the most popular being social sciences (23%), biology (13%), and computer science (12%). Majors in economics, international relations, chemistry, and mathematics receive especially high marks. More than 600 courses are on the menu at Pomona alone, but students can access any of the Claremont Consortium’s 2,700 courses. Pomona’s 8:1 student-to-teacher ratio leads to an average class size of only 15 students, and over 50% of the undergraduate population conduct research alongside a faculty member.

Professional Outcomes: 71% of the Class of 2022 were employed within six months of graduating. Overall, the largest number of alumni can be found at Google, Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta. Recently, economics degree-earners have landed jobs at Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, or Accenture. Majors in the hard sciences frequently landed at top research laboratories and hospitals. Of the 21% of 2022 grads who were accepted directly into graduate school, the most frequently attended institutions included the University of Cambridge, Duke, Harvard, Caltech, UChicago, and Stanford.

• Enrollment: 1,761
• Cost of Attendance: $88,296

Williams College

• Williamstown, MA

Academic Highlights: The school’s 25 academic departments offer 36 majors and a number of concentrations rather than minors. An unparalleled 40% of courses have fewer than ten students enrolled; the median class size is 12 students. Programs in economics, English, history, math, and political science are especially renowned, and the greatest number of degrees are conferred in the social sciences (26%), the physical sciences (10%), math and statistics (9%), psychology (9%), and computer science (7%).

Professional Outcomes: Among the Class of 2022, 92% were employed or continuing their educational journey within six months of graduating. Business and education typically attract the most students, with popular companies/organizations including Apple, Google, Goldman Sachs, The New York Times Co., the Peace Corps, and Teach for America. The median annual income for 2022 grads was $75,000. 75% pursue an advanced degree within five years of leaving Williams, with the most frequently attended graduate programs being Harvard, Columbia, and Yale.

• Enrollment: 2,152 (undergraduate); 53 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $81,160

Middlebury College

• Middlebury, VT

Academic Highlights: Midd offers 50 departments and programs in which to major and minor. The school’s 9:1 student-faculty ratio allows 100% of courses to be taught by professors, not graduate assistants. Most classes are small; the mean class size is 16, and 14% of sections contain fewer than ten students. Middlebury is renowned for its Language Department as well as its programs in economics and international studies. The college has a robust international program (75 programs in 40 countries); over 50% of juniors take a semester abroad.

Professional Outcomes: Six months after graduating, 81% of the Class of 2022 had landed jobs and 12% were in graduate school. The most commonly held jobs fell under the categories of financial services (19%), consulting (14%), science and healthcare (14%), and media and technology (12%). Many Middlebury grads now enter tech-related fields; Google and Facebook are two of the leading employers alongside Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Deloitte, Amazon, and JP Morgan. More than 100 alumni work in the US State Department.

• Enrollment: 2,773 (undergraduate); 70 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $89,850

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Academic Highlights: Undergraduates pursue one of 57 majors and 59 minors at this world-class research institution that continues to be one of the world’s most magnetic destinations for math and science geniuses.  The student-to-faculty ratio is an astonishing 3-to-1, and over two-fifths of all class sections have single-digit enrollments, and 70% of courses contain fewer than twenty students. The highest numbers of degrees conferred in 2022 were in the following majors: engineering (31%), computer science and engineering (28%), mathematics (10%), and the physical sciences (7%).

Professional Outcomes: The Class of 2023 saw 29% of its members enter the world of employment and 43% continue on their educational paths. The top employers included Accenture, Amazon, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Google, General Motors, the US Navy, Apple, Bain & Company, and McKinsey. The mean starting salary for an MIT bachelor’s degree holder was $95,000. The most frequently attended graduate schools are a who’s who of elite institutions including MIT itself, Stanford, Caltech, Harvard, and the University of Oxford.

• Enrollment: 4,657
• Cost of Attendance: $82,730

American University

Academic Highlights: There are 60+ undergraduate degrees for students to choose from at AU across six colleges. A low 12:1 student-to-faculty ratio allows 58% of offered courses to be capped at nineteen students; the average undergraduate class size is 23. American’s School of International Service (SIS) is one of the top-ranked programs in the country—its Public Affairs program also receives universally high marks. In terms of sheer popularity, the most commonly conferred degrees are in the social sciences (35%), 17% (business), and journalism (11%).

Professional Outcomes: Within six months of graduation, 90% of AU grads have found employment, are enrolled in grad school, or both. Across all graduating years, more than 100 alumni presently work for the US House of Representatives, the US Department of State, Booz Allen Hamilton, Google, EY, IBM, PwC, and Accenture.  Many of the most popular grad school destinations are only a Metro stop away. George Washington, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, and American itself head the list.

• Enrollment: 7,917
• Cost of Attendance: $76,176
• Median ACT: 31
• Acceptance Rate: 41%
• Graduation Rate: 79%

University of California, Santa Barbara

• Santa Barbara, CA

Academic Highlights: There are 90 undergraduate majors across three schools: the College of Letters and Science, the College of Engineering, and the College of Creative Studies. The social sciences are the most popular area of study, accounting for 27% of the total degrees conferred. Biology (10%), math (9%), and psychology (9%) are next in popularity. The school has highly regarded programs in communication, computer science, engineering, physics, environmental science, and the performing arts. More than half of sections contain fewer than 20 students, and 72% enroll 29 or fewer.

Professional Outcomes: Within six months of earning their diplomas, 84% of grads had found employment. The most popular industries were science/research (16%), engineering/computer programming (14%), business (13%), finance/accounting (11%), and sales (10%). Top employers of recent grads include Google, EY, KPMG, Oracle, Amazon, IBM, and Adobe. Many alumni also can be found at Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Salesforce. Two years after graduating, UCSB alumni make an average salary of $55k; more than half make $100k by mid-career.

• Enrollment: 23,460 (undergraduate); 2,961 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $41,289 (in-state); $73,863 (out-of-state)
• Acceptance Rate: 28%
• Retention Rate: 92%

Tufts University

• Medford, MA

Academic Highlights: Three schools serve Tufts’ undergraduate population: the College of Arts & Sciences, the College of Engineering, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. The three schools combined offer more than 90 majors and minors; approximately one-third of all students double major, and half declare a minor. 15% of all courses see fewer than ten students enrolled, and 60% have sub-twenty enrollments. The most popular majors include international relations, economics, computer science, political science, and biology—all of which receive very high marks.

Professional Outcomes: Six months after earning their diplomas, 97% of 2022 graduates were employed or attending graduate school. The most commonly entered fields were finance, consulting, real estate (23%); engineering and technology (22%); health, life sciences, environmental (21%); and education, advocacy, social services (11%). Prolific employers of Tufts alums include Booz Allen Hamilton, JPMorgan, MITRE, Google, Deloitte, Amazon, Raytheon, Morgan Stanley, and BlackRock. Of the 21% of 2022 grads who went directly to graduate school, 85% were accepted into their first-choice institution.

• Enrollment: 6,815 (undergraduate); 6,616 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $88,300

Trinity College

• Hartford, CT

Academic Highlights: Trinity offers 41 majors that are well-regarded across the board. In particular, their economics department feeds many leading investment banks and the engineering program is among the best you will find at a small liberal arts school. Most degrees are conferred in the social sciences (36%), biology (11%), psychology (7%), and the visual and performing arts (5%). 69% of course sections boast an enrollment of nineteen or fewer students, and roughly two-thirds of students engage in some type of undergraduate research.

Professional Outcomes: 96% of 2022 grads had a positive outcome within six months of commencement. Those entering the world of employment landed jobs at organizations like the New York City Ballet, NBC Universal, and Morgan Stanley. Many alumni can also be found in the corporate offices of Citi, Merrill Lynch, Fidelity Investments, Google, IBM, and Goldman Sachs. Finance (43%), science/engineering (15%), and health and medicine (15%) were the most frequently entered fields in 2021. 60% of alumni have entered or completed a graduate or professional program within five years.

• Enrollment: 2,167 (undergraduate); 38 (graduate)
• Cost of Attendance: $87,510
• Graduation Rate: 84%

Lafayette College

Academic Highlights: Lafayette offers 51 areas of study over four academic divisions: engineering, humanities, natural sciences, and the social sciences. One-on-one attention from professors is a reality at Lafayette, thanks to a 10:1 student-to-faculty ratio and no graduate students to compete with. A solid 62% of sections contain fewer than twenty students; 11% enroll nine or fewer. Of the degrees conferred in 2022, social sciences (34%) and engineering (19%) were the disciplines in which the largest number of degrees were earned.

Professional Outcomes: Within six months of graduation, a stellar 98% of the Class of 2022 had already landed full-time jobs or were enrolled in graduate/professional school. Companies employing large numbers of Lafayette alumni include Merck, IBM, Morgan Stanley, Citi, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan Chase Co., Deloitte, and EY. Those attending graduate school frequently land at some of the top programs in the country within their respective disciplines. Medical school applicants with a 3.6 GPA or above enjoy a 72% acceptance rate, and dental school candidates find homes at an 89% clip.

• Enrollment: 2,729
• Cost of Attendance: $84,402
• Median SAT: 1400
• Acceptance Rate: 34%

We hope you have found our list of the Best Colleges for Political Science to be useful and informative as you continue your college search process. We also invite you to check out some of our other resources and tools including:

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A licensed counselor and published researcher, Andrew's experience in the field of college admissions and transition spans two decades. He has previously served as a high school counselor, consultant and author for Kaplan Test Prep, and advisor to U.S. Congress, reporting on issues related to college admissions and financial aid.

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Political Science & Government at Boston College

Here, you'll find out more about the major, including such details as the number of graduates, what degree levels are offered, ethnicity of students, average salaries, and more. In addition, we cover how Boston College ranks in comparison to other schools with political science programs.

Jump to any of the following sections:

• Available Degrees
• Student Debt
• Student Demographics
• Related Majors

Featured Political Science & Government Programs

Learn about start dates, transferring credits, availability of financial aid, and more by contacting the universities below.

BA in Political Science

Gain a solid understanding of American political history, the current political landscape, and the major political parties with this online bachelor's from Southern New Hampshire University.

Political Science & Government Degrees Available at Boston College

• Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science
• Master’s Degree in Political Science
• Doctorate Degree in Political Science

Boston College Political Science Rankings

Boston College is in the top 10% of the country for political science. More specifically it was ranked #36 out of 607 schools by College Factual. It is also ranked #2 in Massachusetts .

Popularity of Political Science at Boston College

During the 2020-2021 academic year, Boston College handed out 231 bachelor's degrees in political science & government. This is an increase of 34% over the previous year when 172 degrees were handed out.

In 2021, 5 students received their master’s degree in political science from Boston College. This makes it the #108 most popular school for political science master’s degree candidates in the country.

In addition, 7 students received their doctoral degrees in political science in 2021, making the school the #30 most popular school in the United States for this category of students.

How Much Do Political Science Graduates from Boston College Make?

Salary of political science graduates with a bachelor's degree.

The median salary of political science students who receive their bachelor's degree at Boston College is $45,951. This is higher than $33,089, which is the national median for all political science bachelor's degree recipients.

How Much Student Debt Do Political Science Graduates from Boston College Have?

Student debt of political science graduates with a bachelor's degree.

While getting their bachelor's degree at Boston College, political science students borrow a median amount of $18,000 in student loans. This is not too bad considering that the median debt load of all political science bachelor's degree recipients across the country is $24,439.

The typical student loan payment of a bachelor's degree student from the political science program at Boston College is $717 per month.

Boston College Political Science Students

Take a look at the following statistics related to the make-up of the political science majors at Boston College.

Boston College Political Science & Government Bachelor’s Program

The political science program at Boston College awarded 231 bachelor's degrees in 2020-2021. About 49% of these degrees went to men with the other 51% going to women.

The majority of bachelor's degree recipients in this major at Boston College are white. In the most recent graduating class for which data is available, 63% of students fell into this category.

The following table and chart show the ethnic background for students who recently graduated from Boston College with a bachelor's in political science.

Boston College Political Science & Government Master’s Program

All of the 5 students who graduated with a Master’s in political science from Boston College in 2021 were men.

The majority of the students with this major are white. About 80% of 2021 graduates were in this category.

The following table and chart show the ethnic background for students who recently graduated from Boston College with a master's in political science.

Most Popular Majors Related to Political Science

View All Political Science & Government Related Majors >

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PhD Political Science

Program overview.

The Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Political Science program serves students interested in academic positions as well as research and policy careers. The department and its  faculty  are committed to providing doctoral students with an excellent educational experience through coursework, comprehensive examinations, and the dissertation. 

The curriculum introduces students to all four fields and also develops their research skills through a series of methodology courses. Students may develop a traditional, academic focus in one of the fields, or they may combine it with public policy to highlight a policy orientation.

The PhD in Political Science covers four major fields in the discipline:

• American Government and Politics
• Comparative Politics
• International Relations
• Public Policy

All PhD students are fully funded for 5 years via a Tuition Assistantship which includes stipend, full tuition, and student health insurance. Answers to frequently asked questions can be found here from the department and here from the College of Social Sciences and Humanities.

For more information on curricular requirements for the PhD program see the  Course Catalog .

Type of Program

• PhD Program

Get more information about this graduate program.

More programs, bachelor of arts, political science, bachelor of science, political science, certificate in security and resilience studies, master of arts in political science, master of science in resilience studies.

Graduate Program

Pushing the Scholarly Frontier

PhD in Political Science

Our doctoral students are advancing political science as a discipline. They explore the empirical phenomena that produce new scholarly insights—insights that improve the way governments and societies function. As a result, MIT Political Science graduates are sought after for top teaching and research positions in the U.S. and abroad. Read where program alumni are working around the world.

How the PhD program works

The MIT PhD in Political Science requires preparation in two of these major fields:

• American Politics
• Comparative Politics
• International Relations
• Models and Methods
• Political Economy
• Security Studies

We recommend that you take a broad array of courses across your two major fields. In some cases, a single course may overlap across the subject matter of both fields. You may not use more than one such course to "double count" for the course distribution requirement. Keep in mind that specific fields may have additional requirements.

You are free to take subjects in other departments across the Institute. Cross-registration arrangements also permit enrollment in subjects taught in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University and in some of Harvard's other graduate schools.

Requirements

1. number of subjects.

You will need two full academic years of work to prepare for the general examinations and to meet other pre-dissertation requirements. Typically, a minimum of eight graduate subjects are required for a PhD.

2. Scope and Methods

This required one-semester seminar for first-year students introduces principles of empirical and theoretical analysis in political science.

3. Statistics

You must successfully complete at least one class in statistics.

You must successfully complete at least one class in empirical research methods.

5. Philosophy

You must successfully complete at least one class in political philosophy.

6. Foreign language or advanced statistics

You must demonstrate reading proficiency in one language other than English by successfully completing two semesters of intermediate-level coursework or an exam in that language, or you must demonstrate your knowledge of advanced statistics by successfully completing three semesters of coursework in advanced statistics. International students whose native language is not English are not subject to the language requirement.

7. Field research

We encourage you to conduct field research and to develop close working ties with faculty members engaged in major research activities.

8. Second Year Paper/workshop

You must complete an article-length research paper and related workshop in the spring semester of the second year. The second-year paper often develops into a dissertation project.

9. Two examinations

In each of your two elected fields, you must take a general written and oral examination. To prepare for these examinations, you should take at least three courses in each of the two fields, including the field seminar.

10. Doctoral thesis

As a rule, the doctoral thesis requires at least one year of original research and data collection. Writing the dissertation usually takes a substantially longer time. The thesis process includes a first and second colloquium and an oral defense. Be sure to consult the MIT Specifications for Thesis Preparation as well as the MIT Political Science Thesis Guidelines . Consult the MIT academic calendar to learn the due date for final submission of your defended, signed thesis.

Questions? Consult the MIT Political Science Departmental Handbook or a member of the staff in the MIT Political Science Graduate Office .

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Three new tenure-track professors join Macalester’s faculty

• Categories: College Newswire , Featured College News
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Three new tenure-track professors will be joining the Macalester faculty in the coming months: Sheharyar Imran , Political Science; Kristin Heysse , Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science; and Zuoyu Tian , Linguistics.

Professor Imran is an expert in international relations focusing on critical political economy and postcolonial theory. His current research examines the colonial construction of global economic order. He traces trans-imperial connections across the Indian and Atlantic Ocean worlds to examine how colonialism has shaped capitalist social relations, including private property, free labor, and development. He will be teaching courses on international relations, global political economy, and infrastructural development with a focus on colonial history and anticolonial, abolitionist futures. Originally from Karachi, Pakistan, Professor Imran is completing his doctorate in political science at Johns Hopkins University and received his BA in international studies at Vassar College.

Professor Heysse is a discrete mathematician who is focused on utilizing graph theory and spectral techniques coming out of linear algebra to analyze complex networks. Her current research focuses on the spectra of non-backtracking matrices. These complicated arrays of numbers, when analyzed using this approach, can offer better models for interpreting processes on networks such as disease transmission, where patterns rarely reverse back to where they originated. Dr. Heysse will teach graph theory, discrete optimization, and calculus, among other courses, and has taught at Macalester as a visiting assistant professor and non-tenure track professor since 2017. Professor Heysse grew up in St. Cloud, Minnesota and earned her doctorate in mathematics from Iowa State University and her BA in mathematics from Concordia College. 

Professor Tian specializes in computational linguistics. His current research focuses on using computational methods to study language change in ancient languages, as well as sensitive speech and misinformation detection in social media. He will teach courses that include introduction to linguistics and computational methods in linguistics. Dr. Tian grew up in Dalian, China and completed his doctoral study in computational linguistics from Indiana University, his MA in linguistics from Beijing Foreign Studies University, and his BA in Chinese language and literature from Beijing Language and Culture University. 

More College Newswire News

The professors are Sheharyar Imran, Political Science; Kristin Heysse, Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science; and Zuoyu Tian, Linguistics.

Maccolades for April 2024: Awards galore

Maccolades is a monthly round-up of the most recent accolades and accomplishments earned by the Macalester community.

Macalester is a Top Peace Corps Producing Institution in 2024

Four macalester students and one recent graduate receive 2024 fulbright awards.

Jane Skjonsby ‘24, Zoe Scheuerman, '24, Rio Osorio Nava, '24, Carly Carte '24, and Ronan Wallace, '22 have received Fulbright U.S. Student Program awards for the 2024-2025 academic year.

Department of Energy awards $1.8 million grant to Macalester-led project on battery recycling

Led by Dr. Roopali Phadke, professor of environmental studies, CollectED hopes to increase participation in battery recycling programs.

Brenda Piatz receives the 2024 Staff Outstanding Service Award

Brenda Piatz, program assistant for Academic Programs and Advising, has been awarded the 2024 Staff Outstanding Service Award.

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Two N.C. A&T Journalism Students Named Inaugural HBCU Science Journalism Fellows at MIT

By Markita C. Rowe / 05/01/2024 College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

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EAST GREENSBORO, N.C. (May 1, 2024) – Two juniors in North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University's Journalism and Mass Communication Department, Christén Davis and Steven Matthews Jr., have been selected as inaugural HBCU (historically Black college or university) Science Journalism Fellows at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Davis, an Honors College multimedia major from Charleston, South Carolina, has reporting interests that include international economics and infectious diseases, while Matthews, a public relations major from Waldorf, Maryland, focuses on meteorology and natural disasters.

The HBCU Science Journalism Fellowship offers comprehensive training, mentorship and early career support to equip the next generation of journalists with the skills and knowledge necessary to report on critical issues in science, health and environmental reporting.

Davis and Matthews join eight other students from HBCUs selected for the program, including Florida A&M University, Hampton University, Howard University and Morgan State University. The fellows’ varied reporting interests range from astronomy and artificial intelligence to women’s health and environmental justice.

As part of the fellowship, students will participate in a week-long summer camp at the Knight Science Journalism Program’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During this intensive program, they will receive hands-on training from award-winning journalists, visit leading science institutions, explore career opportunities in science journalism and network with editors from top science publications.

In addition, students will receive a year-long mentorship from a professional science journalist who will collaborate with them to develop story pitches for national and regional science publications.

The Knight Science Journalism Program covers the fellows’ travel expenses and provides each fellow with a $5,000 stipend.

“Congratulations to Christén and Steven for stepping out of their traditional journalistic comfort zones to take advantage of this inaugural program,” said David Squires, lecturer in the A&T Journalism and Mass Communication Department. “African American voices and opinions are needed in the field of science journalism, and I’m grateful the selection committee saw the talents and creativity that our students demonstrated in their applications.”

The Knight Science Journalism Program, established at MIT in 1983, is the world’s leading science journalism fellowship program. More than 400 leading science journalists from six continents have graduated from the program, which offers a course of study at MIT, Harvard University and other leading institutions in the Boston area, as well as specialized training workshops, seminars and science-focused field trips for all attendees.

For more information on the HBCU Science Journalism Fellowship program and the Knight Science Journalism Program, visit https://ksj.mit.edu/fellowships/hbcu-science-journalism-fellowship/ .

Media Contact Information: [email protected]

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05/01/2024 in College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

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04/30/2024 in Alumni , College of Engineering

A&T Advances to 35th Honda Campus All-Star Challenge National Championship

04/29/2024 in Students

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For undergraduate commencement student speaker Rebecca Bamidele, politics and medicine are a potent mix

Northeastern shaped the 2024 biology and political science graduate from a shy freshman into a future doctor laser-focused on improving public health policy — with the confidence to wear bedazzled boots on a weekday.

This isn’t Rebecca Bamidele’s first speech. But it’s certainly the biggest.

As senior class president, Bamidele spoke at her high school’s graduation in 2019. But the crowd on hand for Concord High School’s ceremony in New Hampshire numbered a few thousand. On Sunday, she may have an audience of more than 30,000 for Northeastern’s undergraduate commencement at Fenway Park.

Nerves would be understandable. But a week before she takes the big stage in center field, Bamidele is still riding high from getting the email — in the middle of one of her last classes, a fashion design elective — tapping her as the university’s 2024 undergraduate student speaker. 

She feels more ready than anxious.

“Obviously it’s a big responsibility and a lot of pressure to speak for a whole class,” says Bamidele, a combined major in biology and political science. “But I feel so secure in my experiences, and I’m trusting that I have something valuable to say. I think that overcomes the nerves for me.”

Christine McEvoy, an adviser at Intervarsity — the campus Christian fellowship that served as Bamidele’s social and spiritual home during her undergrad years — says Bamidele should have no trouble commanding a space as big as Fenway. She expects “Reebs,” as her close friends know her, to fill the ballpark with trademark warmth and energy.

“She’s joy personified,” McEvoy says. “When Reebs gets in the room, we’re all like, ‘Oh, it’s going to be a good time now.’”

After getting a taste of it in high school, Bamidele dreamed of speaking at her college graduation — though not necessarily at Northeastern. Her older brother is a graduate of the university, and she was eager to chart a new path. “I applied all over: West Coast, the South, everywhere imaginable,” she says. “I wanted to do my own thing.”

It quickly became clear, however, that Northeastern was the best place to do just that. When she got to campus, Bamidele wasn’t totally sure how her wide-ranging intellectual interests would come together.  A standout science student with plans for medical school, Bamidele also has a passion for writing, deep experience in student government and a knack for trivia. She was on her high school’s Quiz Bowl team and cites pop culture questions — not science or history — as a particular strength.

The more I learned, the more I felt compelled to do something about it. – Rebecca Bamidele on using her Northeastern education to improve public health policy

But “Northeastern helps you figure out who you are,” she says. In her case, it’s someone with an ambition to bring training in both practical medicine and policy toward improving public health — particularly in areas with thorny systemic inequities, like maternal mortality rates in communities of color. During undergrad, she was a founding member of the Health Humanities Club , an organization dedicated to helping students think about health care through an interdisciplinary lens. At Intervarsity, she took the lead in coordinating the group’s volunteer events, like partnering with area churches on food drives.

“It really highlights that dedication that she has to serve people,” McEvoy says of Bamidele’s long-term goals. “It makes sense for the things she’s passionate about, and the way that she’s wired.”

That multifaceted trajectory only became clear to Bamidele through the combination of coursework, co-ops and community engagement that is a hallmark of a Northeastern education.

“There are a lot of doctors who don’t necessarily have political knowledge, but also a lot of political people who don’t understand health care,” she says. “I think having more people who can understand the needs between those two spaces will help make a better system overall.”

In a sense, that intersection of interests is in Bamidele’s blood. Her mother is a pharmacist; her father is an attorney who works with advocacy groups including the Refugee Human Rights Center. Her parents emigrated from Nigeria and settled in Concord a few years before her eldest brother was born. Bamidele says that straddling of two cultures helped shape an open mindset, in terms of both backgrounds and intellectual modes of looking at problems.

“Understanding how two very different things fit together has always interested me,” she says. “I never felt the need to confine myself to being just one thing.”

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As a kid, she certainly didn’t. A musical theater lover, she sang and acted in school productions; her favorite role was Nala in “The Lion King.” She played saxophone in the high school band and was active in student government, all while winning academic honors for outstanding work in her chemistry and Latin classes. Coming from a relatively small city in New Hampshire, she was drawn to the urban bustle of Northeastern’s Boston campus.

“Northeastern is not just in Boston, It’s really in Boston, if that makes sense,” she says. “You’re out in the world, not confined to your college campus. I could see myself growing into the person I always hoped college would make me into.”

She was interested in medicine but initially unsure she wanted to be a health care worker. “My first year, I was in more bioengineering courses,” she says. But the broader possibilities of the medical field came into focus when she took a seminar in U.S. health and welfare policy; the issues the class addressed “sparked her soul.”

“The more I learned, the more I felt compelled to do something about it,” she says. “That’s what got me leaning toward political science.”

She dove into more classes at the intersection of health and policy, including Social Problems in Health Care. The class was “sitting with some of those really hard topics, like doctor-assisted suicide, and how we allocate organs or vaccines,” she says. “This was also during COVID-19. So there were a lot of new moral and social problems. It was interesting, as a 19-year-old college student trying to work out the answers to questions that even people in power didn’t necessarily know.”

On co-op, it became clear that she could tackle those broad, systemic issues while helping patients on an individual level. Her first position was at Voyager Therapeutics, a biotech company developing gene therapies for neurological diseases. Her second, as a clinical assistant at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear hospital, had her interacting with patients and doctors every day.

“It solidified that I was interested in that,” Bamidele says. “I definitely had hard days, and it could be a lot. But those moments of sitting with people who were overwhelmed or answering their questions helped me see that this was something I liked, and that I had a gift for.”

Ruth Stuart, a close friend and 2024 graduate in criminal justice, says she and Bamidele bonded, in part, over their ambitions to ignite sweeping changes from the ground in their chosen fields.

“What drew me to criminal justice is the inequities within the system, so my desire is to go directly into law enforcement to try to make a difference,” Stuart says. “Similarly to Rebecca in the medical field.”

On Sunday, Bamidele will call on her fellow graduates to reflect on the ways Northeastern helped shape them — in a personal sense as well as an academic and career-oriented one. For her, that meant blossoming from an 18-year-old who had trouble making friends to a 23-year-old who wants to talk to everyone and has formed lifelong bonds; from a wallflower trying desperately to escape notice to the first one on the dance floor, and “someone who walks around Boston in bedazzled knee-high boots on a Tuesday just for the sake of turning heads,” per her speech.

And she’ll shout out the things she and the rest of the class of 2024 will miss about the Boston campus: bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwiches from Wollaston’s; cozying up for study sessions at Snell; catching the Green Line to the Beanpot after class.

“I’ll miss the familiarity, and those moments of running into my people and feeling known,” she says. “Even on a campus this big, it makes it feel a little smaller.”

Schuyler Velasco is a Northeastern Global News Magazine senior writer. Email her at [email protected] . Follow her on X/Twitter @Schuyler_V .

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We’re addicted to ‘true crime’ stories. This class investigates why

MSCR 3920: True Crime Media unpacks our collective fascination with the darkest parts of human nature.

These Northeastern graduates are improving our neighborhoods one tree at a time

The drive to plant and care for trees has never been more important. The Northeastern community is doing its part in Greater Boston.

This former cheerleader is aiming to be a ‘world-class star’ in hammer throw

Liangie Calderon, a Northeastern sophomore, won the Under-20 Puerto Rico championship last summer as a relative newcomer to the sport.

This student spent co-op on an island helping protect sea turtles and other endangered species

An environmental conservation volunteer in Seychelles included diving with coral and helping sea turtles to safety.

Why is this Northeastern student and ROTC cadet running a marathon with a 40-pound weight on her back?

Kayla McCann, a 5-foot-4 nursing student, is running in her boots and fatigues with a heavy rucksack in a race for charity.

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Department of Politics

Admission to the PhD program has been paused for the 2023-2024 academic year.

The Brandeis doctoral degree program in politics aims to prepare scholars, teachers, and policy analysts of the highest quality. To that end, the program offers training in a range of research methods with particular strength in qualitative methods, political theory, and comparative case analysis.

The program’s small size fosters attentive mentoring. Small seminars and individualized tutorials bring students into close and regular contact with their advisers. Teaching assignments, both as section leaders for survey classes and occasionally as independent course instructors, help our doctoral students to develop excellent pedagogical skills.

You must complete a minimum of three years in residence and twelve term courses (five core graduate field seminars and seven electives). In addition, all graduate students are required to enroll in the year-long Departmental Proseminar, which provides a forum for students and faculty to discuss their research, methodological approaches to the study of politics, and professional development.

Our department offers a full tuition waiver, a stipend and health insurance to all incoming PhD students regardless of financial need or nationality.

Why Brandeis?

Our faculty include world-renowned experts with a wide range of interests, from political theory and contemporary American politics, to the study of terrorism, international organizations, and the politics of the Middle East.

If you have interdisciplinary interests, Brandeis boasts several centers — including the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies , the  Center for German and European Studies  and the Crown Center for Middle East Studies — that support students in stimulating inter-disciplinary settings. You may also attend courses in local institutions that are part of the Boston Area Graduate Consortium, such as Tufts, Boston College, and Boston University.

Our program provides the best of a Brandeis education: small classes, dedicated mentoring by distinguished faculty, intellectual diversity and access to the wealth of academic and cultural resources only Boston can offer.

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In recent years, our students, have earned post-doctoral fellowship and research appointments at Oxford University, the Washington Institute of Near East Policy, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland-College Park; tenure track positions at Providence College, University of Dubuque and University of San Diego; and administrative positions at Yale University’s Silliman College, The Cohen Institute for Leadership and Public Service at the University of Maine and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Our graduates also publish with top-level presses and in highly visible professional journals. Books and articles by recent graduates include:

• Jeffrey Karam (PhD’16), “Missing Revolution: American Intelligence Failure in Iraq.” Winner of Intelligence and National Security prize for best article of 2017.
• Catherine Worsnop (PhD’16), “Domestic Politics and the WHO’s International Health Regulations: Explaining the Use of Trade and Travel Barriers during Disease Outbreaks,” Review of International Organizations (2017).
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• Paul Herron (PhD’14), Framing the Solid South: The State Constitutional Conventions of Secession, Reconstruction, and Redemption (University Press of Kansas. 2017).
• Sarah Feuer (PhD’14), Religion and the State in Postcolonial Morocco and Tunisia (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
• Ryan LaRochelle, (PhD’16) “Reassessing the History of the Community Action Program,” 1963-1967, Journal of Policy History , (2019).
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Professor Catherine Z. Worsnop PhD’16 discusses her ongoing book project looking at the challenges of international cooperation during cross-border disease outbreaks.

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Welcome to the Department of Political Science

UMass Boston's Department of Political Science in the College of Liberal Arts offers majors and minors in political science, international relations, and public policy. Our political science students study political institutions, policies, and problems while working closely with faculty members in seminars and internships to hone their writing and critical thinking skills and advance their understandings of different political cultures, perspectives, and countries.

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Undergraduate programs.

• International Relations BA
• International Relations Minor
• Political Science BA
• Political Science Minor
• Public Policy Minor

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International Relations MA

About Our Department

The Department of Political Science offers a major in political science, a major in international relations, a minor in political science, a minor in international relations, and a minor in public policy. Politics touches on virtually every aspect of a person’s existence – from your local town hall to the United Nations. In Political Science we explore current affairs, historical studies, and theoretical approaches to formulate standards for judging the quality of political life and the performance of institutions. We are concerned with how societies are governed and the consequences for human welfare as they relate to various political structures, processes, and beliefs. We strive to contribute to a just, compassionate, and responsible political order and prepare our graduates for careers in politics and government, business and finance, law, international relations and many other fields.

Statement from the Political Science faculty on the unfolding tragedy in the Middle East:  

As scholars of politics at Boston’s only public, 4-year university, the Political Science department faculty at UMass Boston recognize the urgency of the moment in the Middle East and calls on the international community to ensure that all civilian lives in Israel/Palestine are protected, regardless of race, ethnicity, or religious practice. We condemn the killing of all civilians, the taking of hostages, and the targeting of homes, hospitals, schools, universities, and places of worship.  We call on the international community to stop the war on Gaza and provide a diplomatic and just solution to the ongoing conflict.  All people must be allowed live in peace and security in their homes, as well as have access to the basic necessities of life, including food, water, shelter, medicine, and freedom of movement.

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UMass Boston Community Encouraged to Run in Pursuit of Change

Keynote speaker Massachusetts Secretary of the Executive Office of Education, Patrick Tutwiler, PhD, had one request for students, faculty, and staff at this year’s UMass Boston Fall Convocation: Run.

Political Science or Political Science — Public Service

Which major to pick based on your career goals.

• by Ryleigh J. Praker
• April 24, 2024

If you’re interested in majoring in political science at UC Davis, you may have noticed that the university offers two undergraduate political science majors: political science and political science — public service. 

The difference between these two majors may not be immediately clear, so which one should you pick? If you find yourself facing this dilemma, this article is for you.

Why study political science?

Political science is the study of systems and theories of government. This field encompasses a broad range of topics. At UC Davis, political science courses fall into four different fields: 

• American politics
• Comparative politics
• International relations
• Political theory

Within these categories, you might take courses on voting behavior, national security policy, constitutional law or medieval political philosophy.

Studying political science is a great choice for anyone interested in politics and current events, or planning a career in law, journalism or activism. If you are passionate about championing social justice or giving a legal voice to those in need, a degree in political science will give you the skills and knowledge to use systems of law and government to affect change.

If you’re not certain about those fields, there’s no need to worry. A political science degree comes with a skillset that is broadly applicable to a wide range of careers. You’ll develop proficiency in data analysis, critical thinking, writing, speaking, leadership and teamwork.

Once you’ve decided that political science might be the field for you, you’ll need to pick a major. At UC Davis, that means choosing between political science and political science — public service.

What is the political science major like?

The first available major is the general political science major . It offers a broad range of study. As a political science major, you will choose courses from at least three of the four fields of concentration.

You can pick which fields you would like to weight more heavily to design your own course of study. For example, if you’re interested in law, you could take mostly American politics and political theory courses, with some international relations for variety. Or, if you’re more interested in studying world governments, you can spend most of your time on comparative politics and international relations.

The main appeal of the political science major is its breadth and flexibility. This major allows you to sample from a wide variety of topics and study politics across both borders and centuries. To learn more about the major, consider reading our article “ What Can I Do With My Political Science Major? ”.

What is the political science — public service major like?

The political science — public service major focuses more narrowly on American politics and policy. You will take courses from a core program on institutions and processes of American government. In addition, you’ll choose courses from different areas of concentration — foreign policy, environmental policy and social policy, to name a few. These areas of concentration may allow you to take courses outside the Department of Political Science that will count toward your major.

The political science — public service major also features a required internship and research experience. You can either participate in a quarter away like the UC Davis Washington Program or UC Center Sacramento program , or you can find your own independent internship in public policy. This is a great opportunity to gain some professional experience working in the field. It may also give you a better idea of what you want to do with your degree after you graduate.

To learn more about options for the internship experience, visit the internships page of the UC Davis Department of Political Science .

This major is much narrower in scope, but it allows you to study certain areas of American politics and policy in more depth. If you know your interest lies in American government and law, the political science — public service major can help you develop skills to work with public policy after graduation. This major is especially well-suited for anyone interested in running for office or working in government.

Choose a major based on your career path

The most important question to consider when choosing your major is where you want to go with it. Narrowing down what you’d like to do after graduation will help you pick which political science major best suits your goals.

If you are interested in a career in law, journalism, diplomacy, research or academia, you will want to pick a major that will afford you a broad and diverse range of knowledge and experience. The political science major is a perfect choice for these fields. By building a course of study across all four fields of political science, you can develop a broad and versatile base of knowledge.

If you are more interested in government, campaign or nonprofit work or specific areas of law like environmental and public interest law, the political science — public service major may be the choice for you. This major suits these careers because it gives you a more specialized line of insight into policy-making and policy implementation without requiring a broader knowledge of political theory or international affairs.

The political science — public service major is also ideal for students interested in immediately getting involved in community organizing, state and local government or nonprofit work rather than pursuing a higher-level degree.

Deciding which major to pick based on your desired career path can help you optimize your time in undergrad. However, both majors can give you the skills needed to enter many fields, so don’t panic if you don’t know which one to choose. And remember — you can always switch majors. Some of the coursework for one political science major will be transferable to the other; check with your advisor to see which courses can be applied to both.

Two perspectives from political science majors

R.J. Praker: Political Science A.B.

I started at UC Davis as a declared political science — public service major. Partway through my first year, I decided to switch to the political science major. Why?

Early on in my college career, I realized I didn’t want to work in government. Instead, my interest lay in nonprofit and private law. I was fascinated by constitutional law and legal theory, so I wanted to include political theory courses in my major program. The political science major gave me the breadth I desired to explore the political science field.

My switch in majors also allowed me to incorporate my other interests. In addition to my major, I am minoring in Russian. By choosing the political science major, I was able to count the Russian and Eastern European politics courses I was taking supplementally toward my major.

I love the flexibility my major offers! By choosing political science, I’ve been able to stack my schedule with constitutional law and Slavic politics, which wouldn’t be possible in a different major.

Cynthia Hoang-Duong: Political Science — Public Service A.B.

Cynthia plans to attend law school and become an attorney. She entered UC Davis as a psychology major, but after her first quarter, she decided to switch to political science — public service. When asked why she switched majors, she had three reasons:

Political science — public service has an internship requirement . I felt like I really needed an internship but was scared I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t need to in order to graduate.   Public service has a greater range of fields — like social policy, which I’m interested in. Political science would have allowed me to take pre-law classes, but I preferred to also have the option to take sociology classes.   Being able to take sociology courses like ‘The Criminal Justice System’ and ‘Sociology of Law’ means I’m able to learn more about criminal law , which is what I want to do in my future career.

Cynthia recommends the political science — public service major to students who are interested in an internship in political science but aren’t sure where to start. She also recommends it to students who want to incorporate other fields, like sociology or economics, into their political science major.

Choosing political science at UC Davis

The bottom line is that it’s best to explore your options thoroughly before making a decision. Remember — over half of UC Davis students change their major at some point in their undergraduate career. There’s nothing wrong with experimenting with different programs to see what’s right for you.

If you’re interested in political science but aren’t sure these majors are for you, you should also investigate the international relations major or political science minor .

Now that you understand the difference between UC Davis’ two political science majors, you’ll be better equipped to choose which major suits you better. Take some time to review the requirements for both and to reflect on your interests and career goals.

To learn more and make a concrete plan, explore advising resources at the UC Davis Department of Political Science Advising Center .

View our political science major  

View our political science — public service major

R.J. Praker (she/her) is a third year pursuing a bachelor’s degree in political science with minors in professional writing and Russian . She currently works as a writing intern for UC Davis' Office of Strategic Communications and an academic peer advisor for the Department of Political Science . She also serves as chief copy editor at the Davis Political Review . R.J. is from Placerville, California and loves to hike in the Sierra Nevada with her family’s dogs.

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Nationwide campus protests

What's moving markets today

April 28, 2024 - US university protests

By Dalia Faheid, Nouran Salahieh, Maureen Chowdhury, Antoinette Radford and Elizabeth Wolfe, CNN

Our live coverage of the Pro-Palestinian protests on US campuses has moved  here .

Cal Poly Humboldt urges students occupying buildings to “leave campus peacefully now”

From CNN’s Paradise Afshar

California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, is asking students participating in demonstrations and the occupation of at least two buildings to “leave campus peacefully.”

“The individuals who are occupying Siemens Hall and Nelson Hall East, or illegally camping around those facilities, are urged to leave the campus peacefully now,” the university said in a release Sunday night.

The request comes a day after the university announced it had closed its campus and moved to remote classes and exams until the end of the semester due to the protests.

Administrators have accused protesters of trying to break into locked buildings "with the intention of either locking themselves in, vandalizing, or stealing equipment.” 

If demonstrators leave campus voluntarily, the university said it may consider the choice as a “possible mitigating factor” during conduct proceedings and when deciding what discipline students will face.

“This does not, however, eliminate responsibility for any potential conduct or criminal charges,” the university said. 

Virginia Tech officers tell pro-Palestinian protesters to leave or face arrest

Virginia Tech police have warned pro-Palestinian protesters on campus they will face arrest if they refuse to disperse.

At about 10:15 p.m. on Sunday, university police advised demonstrators to leave within five minutes or be subject to arrest. 

Around the same time, the university warned students to avoid the protest site.

“Heavy police activity around Graduate Life Center. Urgent. Please avoid the area. Call 911 for help,” the university posted on  social media .

Earlier on Sunday, officers had worked to remove demonstrators from an on-campus encampment.

Demonstrators began to occupy the lawn at the university’s Graduate Life Center on Friday, the university said . 

“Through constant dialogue between university officials, the Virginia Tech Police Department, and protest organizers, we were able to maintain a safe and peaceful environment through much of the weekend,” the university said. 

By Sunday, the university said the situation on campus had “progressed” and had the potential to “become unsafe.” 

About 20 protesters remain at George Washington University as street encampment grows

From CNN's Phillip Wang

The number of demonstrators on George Washington University's campus had reduced to about 20 people by Sunday night, but another group erected an encampment of about 20 tents on a nearby public street over the weekend, the school said.

As an encampment grew on campus over the past few days, the university's administration decided students who remained there after being asked to leave would be temporarily suspended and "administratively barred" from school grounds.

"On Friday evening, April 26, demonstrators barred from University Yard established a second encampment in the middle of H Street, beyond the barriers securing GW property. "Currently, we are aware of approximately 20 tents erected in the street by individuals from across the region. This demonstration is on public property and under the jurisdiction of the DC government," the university said.

The university said there had been no incidents of violence during on-campus demonstrations, though it added, “the actions of some protestors have been highly offensive to many members of our community.”

No further details on the alleged actions were provided.

Tufts University says encampment "must end" so the school can "celebrate the class of 2024" 

From CNN's Michelle Watson and John Murphy

The encampment on Tufts University's Medford - Somerville campus in Massachusetts "must end" for commencement proceedings to proceed, university leaders said in a Sunday message . 

"Tufts has a time-honored tradition of civil protest. Consistent with that tradition, and throughout this academic year, we have balanced our students’ right to protest with enforcing our conduct policies," the message reads. "Over the past two weeks, we have respected our community members’ right to advocate for their beliefs through a small camp site on the academic quad on our Medford/Somerville campus."  "We have even delayed some preparations for Commencement as much as possible to allow the protest to resolve peacefully. But now the encampment must end, ideally peacefully and voluntarily, so we can prepare the campus for Commencement."

Student life staff are expected to reach out to protesters Monday, "to plan for the end of the encampment in the next few days," the message says. 

The university went on to say that "recent exchanges have been markedly different as the protesters have sought to escalate and disrupt normal university activity."

The message was signed by university president Sunil Kumar and four other school leaders, including Caroline Attardo Genco, the provost and senior vice president. 

"We are committed to maintaining an environment that will allow our students to finish the academic year strong and for the entire community to celebrate the class of 2024 at Commencement without disruptions," the message says. 

"Our students and their families and friends deserve nothing less. We invite the entire community to join us in this endeavor peacefully and responsibly." 

RFK Jr. defends protesters' rights but opposes calls for ceasefire

From CNN's Aaron Pellish

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr Kennedy told reporters following a campaign rally in Holbrook, New York on Sunday that he supported the rights of pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses but disagreed with their calls for a ceasefire in Gaza.

“First of all, you know, I support free speech. I think speech, even when speech is appalling to me, when it's reprehensible, when it makes no sense, people ought to be able to say, ought to be able to voice their concerns,” Kennedy said. 

But, he said he doesn’t “understand… what the rationale is” behind calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, though he labeled himself as “very pro-Palestinian.” 

“I don't see how people want to have a negotiation,” Kennedy said. “Every ceasefire has been used by Hamas to rearm, to regroup, to raise the banner and do another surprise attack on Israel."

Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed more than 34,000 Palestinians since the start of the war,  according to Gaza’s Health Ministry . CNN cannot independently confirm the numbers due to the lack of international media access to Gaza.

Kennedy also called antisemitic threats against Jewish students on campuses “unacceptable” and urged universities to protect Jewish students. 

“If they're going to protect people who are non-white from abuse because it makes them feel unsafe, they need to do that with Jewish students, too,” he said. 

Screaming and scuffles between opposing protest groups at UCLA after demonstrators cross barrier

From CNN’s Sarah Moon and Camila Bernal at UCLA

Demonstrators on Sunday   breached a security barrier meant to keep opposing protest groups apart on the UCLA campus, and the two sides have come   face-to-face, at times screaming at one another and shoving back and forth.

A CNN team is on the ground watching the crowd, where pro-Palestinian demonstrators have gathered to support an  encampment protesting Israel's military campaign  in Gaza, and a group of counter-protesters draped in Israeli flags has erected a video screen and speaker set-up.

“Very high passions on both sides, and when these two come together we have seen confrontations,” CNN’s Camila Bernal reported from the campus. “People who are screaming at each other, sometimes shoving and pushing, and it does get violent at times.”

Organizers from each group have told Bernal that they are trying to keep the peace.

The CNN team has seen police officers in riot gear standing at a distance   from the crowd, but university officials have said police will not intervene unless they feel students are in harm’s way.

The school’s vice chancellor for strategic communications, Mary Osako, confirmed in a statement that demonstrators had “breached” a barrier between the groups, and that there were “physical altercations” between protesters.

“UCLA has a long history of being a place of peaceful protest, and we are heartbroken about the violence that broke out,” the statement reads.

Information about any potential injuries has not been made available.

Watch Camila Bernal's report from the UCLA campus

This post has been updated with additional reporting from the UCLA campus.

Students remain in encampment blocking a street at George Washington University for 4th day of protests

From CNN’s Avery Lotz

Pro-Palestinian protests continued Sunday on George Washington University’s campus in Washington, DC, where demonstrators have erected an encampment of dozens of tents in a park and on the neighboring street.

A crowd chanted “Free Palestine” to the beat of a drum on H Street NW, some of them wearing traditional keffiyeh and waving Palestinian flags. The street remains blocked by law enforcement, and a number of DC Metropolitan Police officers remain in the area.

Flags, signs and sidewalk chalk decorate the encampment, where protestors say they will stay until the university fulfills their demands, which include disclosing its financial endowments and divesting from Israeli associations — similar to the message of many other college protests nationwide. 

One counter-protester walked through the crowd with an Israeli flag draped around her shoulders. Demonstrators chanted, “Free, free, free Palestine,” at the protester, while one held a sign that read, “Genocide is bad.” 

Sanders says it's not antisemitic to hold Israeli government accountable for its actions in Gaza

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders pushed back on  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim  that protests on US college campuses are driven by antisemitism, telling CNN’s Dana Bash that it’s critical to hold the Israeli government accountable for its actions in Gaza.

In the interview on Sunday morning , Sanders said the “vast majority of the American people are disgusted with Netanyahu’s war machine in Gaza” and do not want more aid sent to Israel.

While Sanders said he acknowledges “antisemitism exists and is growing in the United States,” he said it is not antisemitic for protesters to hold Netanyahu accountable for his actions in Gaza, which he says are “unprecedented in the modern history of warfare.”

Sanders said Israel's widespread destruction of homes and infrastructure in Gaza, and the death toll of more than 30,000 people , according to the enclave's health ministry, is the reason people want the Israeli government held accountable.

Sanders said he condemns Hamas, antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of bigotry, but emphasized again, “We do have to pay attention to the disastrous and unprecedented humanitarian disaster taking place in Gaza right now.”

Watch a clip from the interview below:

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Natural language boosts LLM performance in coding, planning, and robotics

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Large language models (LLMs) are becoming increasingly useful for programming and robotics tasks, but for more complicated reasoning problems, the gap between these systems and humans looms large. Without the ability to learn new concepts like humans do, these systems fail to form good abstractions — essentially, high-level representations of complex concepts that skip less-important details — and thus sputter when asked to do more sophisticated tasks. Luckily, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) researchers have found a treasure trove of abstractions within natural language. In three papers to be presented at the International Conference on Learning Representations this month, the group shows how our everyday words are a rich source of context for language models, helping them build better overarching representations for code synthesis, AI planning, and robotic navigation and manipulation. The three separate frameworks build libraries of abstractions for their given task: LILO (library induction from language observations) can synthesize, compress, and document code; Ada (action domain acquisition) explores sequential decision-making for artificial intelligence agents; and LGA (language-guided abstraction) helps robots better understand their environments to develop more feasible plans. Each system is a neurosymbolic method, a type of AI that blends human-like neural networks and program-like logical components. LILO: A neurosymbolic framework that codes Large language models can be used to quickly write solutions to small-scale coding tasks, but cannot yet architect entire software libraries like the ones written by human software engineers. To take their software development capabilities further, AI models need to refactor (cut down and combine) code into libraries of succinct, readable, and reusable programs. Refactoring tools like the previously developed MIT-led Stitch algorithm can automatically identify abstractions, so, in a nod to the Disney movie “Lilo & Stitch,” CSAIL researchers combined these algorithmic refactoring approaches with LLMs. Their neurosymbolic method LILO uses a standard LLM to write code, then pairs it with Stitch to find abstractions that are comprehensively documented in a library. LILO’s unique emphasis on natural language allows the system to do tasks that require human-like commonsense knowledge, such as identifying and removing all vowels from a string of code and drawing a snowflake. In both cases, the CSAIL system outperformed standalone LLMs, as well as a previous library learning algorithm from MIT called DreamCoder, indicating its ability to build a deeper understanding of the words within prompts. These encouraging results point to how LILO could assist with things like writing programs to manipulate documents like Excel spreadsheets, helping AI answer questions about visuals, and drawing 2D graphics.

“Language models prefer to work with functions that are named in natural language,” says Gabe Grand SM '23, an MIT PhD student in electrical engineering and computer science, CSAIL affiliate, and lead author on the research. “Our work creates more straightforward abstractions for language models and assigns natural language names and documentation to each one, leading to more interpretable code for programmers and improved system performance.”

When prompted on a programming task, LILO first uses an LLM to quickly propose solutions based on data it was trained on, and then the system slowly searches more exhaustively for outside solutions. Next, Stitch efficiently identifies common structures within the code and pulls out useful abstractions. These are then automatically named and documented by LILO, resulting in simplified programs that can be used by the system to solve more complex tasks.

The MIT framework writes programs in domain-specific programming languages, like Logo, a language developed at MIT in the 1970s to teach children about programming. Scaling up automated refactoring algorithms to handle more general programming languages like Python will be a focus for future research. Still, their work represents a step forward for how language models can facilitate increasingly elaborate coding activities. Ada: Natural language guides AI task planning Just like in programming, AI models that automate multi-step tasks in households and command-based video games lack abstractions. Imagine you’re cooking breakfast and ask your roommate to bring a hot egg to the table — they’ll intuitively abstract their background knowledge about cooking in your kitchen into a sequence of actions. In contrast, an LLM trained on similar information will still struggle to reason about what they need to build a flexible plan. Named after the famed mathematician Ada Lovelace, who many consider the world’s first programmer, the CSAIL-led “Ada” framework makes headway on this issue by developing libraries of useful plans for virtual kitchen chores and gaming. The method trains on potential tasks and their natural language descriptions, then a language model proposes action abstractions from this dataset. A human operator scores and filters the best plans into a library, so that the best possible actions can be implemented into hierarchical plans for different tasks. “Traditionally, large language models have struggled with more complex tasks because of problems like reasoning about abstractions,” says Ada lead researcher Lio Wong, an MIT graduate student in brain and cognitive sciences, CSAIL affiliate, and LILO coauthor. “But we can combine the tools that software engineers and roboticists use with LLMs to solve hard problems, such as decision-making in virtual environments.”

When the researchers incorporated the widely-used large language model GPT-4 into Ada, the system completed more tasks in a kitchen simulator and Mini Minecraft than the AI decision-making baseline “Code as Policies.” Ada used the background information hidden within natural language to understand how to place chilled wine in a cabinet and craft a bed. The results indicated a staggering 59 and 89 percent task accuracy improvement, respectively. With this success, the researchers hope to generalize their work to real-world homes, with the hopes that Ada could assist with other household tasks and aid multiple robots in a kitchen. For now, its key limitation is that it uses a generic LLM, so the CSAIL team wants to apply a more powerful, fine-tuned language model that could assist with more extensive planning. Wong and her colleagues are also considering combining Ada with a robotic manipulation framework fresh out of CSAIL: LGA (language-guided abstraction). Language-guided abstraction: Representations for robotic tasks Andi Peng SM ’23, an MIT graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science and CSAIL affiliate, and her coauthors designed a method to help machines interpret their surroundings more like humans, cutting out unnecessary details in a complex environment like a factory or kitchen. Just like LILO and Ada, LGA has a novel focus on how natural language leads us to those better abstractions. In these more unstructured environments, a robot will need some common sense about what it’s tasked with, even with basic training beforehand. Ask a robot to hand you a bowl, for instance, and the machine will need a general understanding of which features are important within its surroundings. From there, it can reason about how to give you the item you want. 

In LGA’s case, humans first provide a pre-trained language model with a general task description using natural language, like “bring me my hat.” Then, the model translates this information into abstractions about the essential elements needed to perform this task. Finally, an imitation policy trained on a few demonstrations can implement these abstractions to guide a robot to grab the desired item. Previous work required a person to take extensive notes on different manipulation tasks to pre-train a robot, which can be expensive. Remarkably, LGA guides language models to produce abstractions similar to those of a human annotator, but in less time. To illustrate this, LGA developed robotic policies to help Boston Dynamics’ Spot quadruped pick up fruits and throw drinks in a recycling bin. These experiments show how the MIT-developed method can scan the world and develop effective plans in unstructured environments, potentially guiding autonomous vehicles on the road and robots working in factories and kitchens.

“In robotics, a truth we often disregard is how much we need to refine our data to make a robot useful in the real world,” says Peng. “Beyond simply memorizing what’s in an image for training robots to perform tasks, we wanted to leverage computer vision and captioning models in conjunction with language. By producing text captions from what a robot sees, we show that language models can essentially build important world knowledge for a robot.” The challenge for LGA is that some behaviors can’t be explained in language, making certain tasks underspecified. To expand how they represent features in an environment, Peng and her colleagues are considering incorporating multimodal visualization interfaces into their work. In the meantime, LGA provides a way for robots to gain a better feel for their surroundings when giving humans a helping hand. 

An “exciting frontier” in AI

“Library learning represents one of the most exciting frontiers in artificial intelligence, offering a path towards discovering and reasoning over compositional abstractions,” says assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Robert Hawkins, who was not involved with the papers. Hawkins notes that previous techniques exploring this subject have been “too computationally expensive to use at scale” and have an issue with the lambdas, or keywords used to describe new functions in many languages, that they generate. “They tend to produce opaque 'lambda salads,' big piles of hard-to-interpret functions. These recent papers demonstrate a compelling way forward by placing large language models in an interactive loop with symbolic search, compression, and planning algorithms. This work enables the rapid acquisition of more interpretable and adaptive libraries for the task at hand.” By building libraries of high-quality code abstractions using natural language, the three neurosymbolic methods make it easier for language models to tackle more elaborate problems and environments in the future. This deeper understanding of the precise keywords within a prompt presents a path forward in developing more human-like AI models. MIT CSAIL members are senior authors for each paper: Joshua Tenenbaum, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences, for both LILO and Ada; Julie Shah, head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, for LGA; and Jacob Andreas, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, for all three. The additional MIT authors are all PhD students: Maddy Bowers and Theo X. Olausson for LILO, Jiayuan Mao and Pratyusha Sharma for Ada, and Belinda Z. Li for LGA. Muxin Liu of Harvey Mudd College was a coauthor on LILO; Zachary Siegel of Princeton University, Jaihai Feng of the University of California at Berkeley, and Noa Korneev of Microsoft were coauthors on Ada; and Ilia Sucholutsky, Theodore R. Sumers, and Thomas L. Griffiths of Princeton were coauthors on LGA.  LILO and Ada were supported, in part, by ​​MIT Quest for Intelligence, the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, Intel, U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the U.S. Office of Naval Research, with the latter project also receiving funding from the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines. LGA received funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, Open Philanthropy, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the U.S. Department of Defense.

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