Political Theory heavy masters/PhD program?

[Sandel the Savior]

Was just wondering if anyone knew of any masters/PhD programs that are specifically heavy on political theory/political philosophy. NYU seems to be theory heavy, but I'm struggling to find others. 

[PolPhil]

Princeton has a PhD program in Political Philosophy, which you can enter after having been accepted to their PhD program in either Politics, History, Religious Studies, Classics or Philosophy.

Chicago has the PhD Social Thought program, which is pretty open-ended, i.e. you could tailor it however you want within general social/political theory.

[PolPhil]

I should add that the University of Toronto has a MA Political Science program with a special Theory concentration. You won't have the same requirements as the other Poli Sci students.

[Sandel the Savior]

Thanks so much....will definitely keep these schools in the back of my head, but they are kinda stretches for me at the moment. Are there any "mid-tier" schools you know of that also have good theory departments? 

Edited May 9, 2019 by Sandel the Savior

[PolPhil]

On 5/9/2019 at 6:20 PM, Sandel the Savior said:

Thanks so much....will definitely keep these schools in the back of my head, but they are kinda stretches for me at the moment. Are there any "mid-tier" schools you know of that also have good theory departments? 

If you want my honest opinion, there's no such thing as a "good" mid-tier department for Political Science. Let me be clear, I'm sure that the professors at mid-tier departments are perfectly capable scholars, but PhD programs don't place unless they are top-20. For Theory specifically, it's more like the only programs worth attending are the top-5 (Harvard, Princeton, Chicago, Berkeley, Yale). For the MA, it's less important. Of course it's better to attend a higher-ranked program for the purpose of future PhD admissions (I'm assuming that this is your plan. Otherwise, I envy that you have 1-2 years and tens of thousands of dollars to burn on a terminal MA and nothing more in Political Theory). However, you could easily attend a mid-tier program, do exceptionally well, and get into a top-20 program. In the mid-tier, I wouldn't worry about how "strong" their theorists are (especially at the master's level, since you won't be specializing) as long as they have at least 3 or 4 theorists.