Penelope Higgins

For Latin America, if you look at where people get job afterwards, it is absolutely dominated by Berkeley grads. They are the #1 department by far in terms of placement for Latin Americanists. UCLA, UCSD, Harvard, and WashU (which seems to fill most of the liberal arts college jobs) trail behind. In terms of money, I don't know much about ND. But I would be careful with expecting to work with some of the people there - Valenzuela is in sociology, O'Donnell doesn't really work with students, etc. It certainly isn't a clear #1, but it seems like a good place to be.

For Latin American politics, I would have to say that Harvard (Dominguez, Levitsky, Robinson) would have to be on the list. Berkeley is probably #1, but UCLA (Geddes) and UCSD (lots of people) are also highly ranked. After these four and maybe Yale, I would look at some of the other schools listed below (where ND and Texas probably rank a bit higher than the other two in my view). A lot depends on your preferences about methods - UCSD and UCLA are quant/formal programs...