To be included in the Top 25, a university needs to be ranked in the Top 40 of at least three of the following lists: Top Universities, Appily, Niche, and College Vine. I then created a power score that divides the school’s rank into 50. Creating a scoring system: 1:20, 2:10, 3:6.7, 4:5, 5:4, … 20:1. I added all these values up for each ranking site to give a composite score.
TOP 25
| Rank | School | Score | MIN | 2024 | DIFF |
| 1 | Harvard | 70.00 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2 | Princeton | 29.52 | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| 3 | Georgetown | 27.86 | 1 | 5 | 2 |
| 4 | Stanford | 22.33 | 3 | 4 | 0 |
| 5 | Yale | 22.07 | 2 | 3 | -2 |
| 6 | MIT | 9.17 | 6 | 10 | 4 |
| 7 | UChicago | 9.01 | 7 | 6 | -1 |
| 8 | Columbia | 8.35 | 6 | 11 | 3 |
| 9 | UCLA | 8.23 | 4 | 12 | 3 |
| 10 | Brown | 8.11 | 5 | 9 | -1 |
| 11 | UPenn | 7.56 | 9 | 8 | -3 |
| 12 | Dartmouth | 7.37 | 6 | 7 | -5 |
| 13 | Pomona | 7.01 | 4 | 15 | 2 |
| 14 | UCB | 6.12 | 5 | 17 | 3 |
| 15 | Northwestern | 4.92 | 11 | 13 | -2 |
| 16 | Michigan | 4.83 | 11 | 14 | -2 |
| 17 | Duke | 4.69 | 11 | 16 | -1 |
| 18 | Williams | 4.30 | 8 | NR | NR |
| 19 | Rice | 3.77 | 11 | 20 | 1 |
| 20 | Johns Hopkins | 3.47 | 16 | NR | NR |
| 21 | Vanderbilt | 3.43 | 13 | 19 | -2 |
| 22 | Swarthmore | 3.40 | 12 | NR | NR |
| 23 | Amherst | 3.20 | 12 | NR | NR |
| 24 | WashU | 3.00 | 17 | 23 | -1 |
| 25 | NYU | 2.95 | 14 | 22 | -3 |
Tiers
Tier 1: Harvard
Harvard was #1 in three lists and #2 in the fourth. It’s clear, if you want a career in Political Science, Harvard should be your top choice.
Tier 2: Princeton, Georgetown, Stanford, Yale
These all consistently appear in the Top 5 of rankings, and could be the second-best option after Harvard.
Tier 3: MIT, UChicago, Columbia, UCLA, Brown, UPenn, Dartmouth, Pomona, UCB
These schools most likely have at least one top-5 and multiple top-10s.
Tier 4: Northwestern, Michigan, Duke
Highly respected schools showing up on all four lists.
Tier 5: The Rest
From Williams to NYU, you have schools that received Top-20 votes repeatedly.
