DC Programs' Reputations

[Polk011]

Hey everyone,

I've been in DC now for a total of about 5 years and thankfully am going to be staying here for my PhD program (deciding b/w GWU and Gtown). Aside from the rankings that are out there, which I know tend to rank GWU higher than Gtown, I was hoping to get people's thoughts about what the different reputations are of the schools in DC. I ask because I ran into someone who works in for the government on policy issues the other day and when I told them about my PhD options they seemed to have opinions of them that were different from the rankings. Obviously the people they know work on the policy side, speak at various events about town, and may even do some advising/consulting to the USG, but would still be interested to hear what others thought and/or had heard. Especially for those like myself who may be looking to go into research institutes or even policy after we get our PhDs (academia-lite, I know, but options open).

And I should probably also add American, Hopkins-SAIS, and George Mason to the DC list.

Thanks

[secretly_yes]

Hi,

I did my MA at Gtown and I didn't apply there for PhD. I only applied to GWU and I will be going there. I don't think one school's reputation is better that the other one. I think they are both great schools with really amazing faculty. I made my decision to apply to GWU in part based on the rankings, in part because of the interests of the faculty they have there. Gtown has better Middle East people, for example, but GWU has way better Asian people. I would tie them for Latin America (with a policy edge for Gtown because of Valenzuela) and maybe tie them for European (but put SAIS above both for European.)

What do you want to study?

[Polk011]

Hi,

I did my MA at Gtown and I didn't apply there for PhD. I only applied to GWU and I will be going there. I don't think one school's reputation is better that the other one. I think they are both great schools with really amazing faculty. I made my decision to apply to GWU in part based on the rankings, in part because of the interests of the faculty they have there. Gtown has better Middle East people, for example, but GWU has way better Asian people. I would tie them for Latin America (with a policy edge for Gtown because of Valenzuela) and maybe tie them for European (but put SAIS above both for European.)

What do you want to study?

Thanks for the reply! Actually I'm looking to study the ME--with an emphasis on Iran--which is why I'm leaning towards gtown. Although GWU has great faculty like Brown and Lynch. I'll be going to both admit days though so we'll see how I feel after then.

[alphazeta]

Thanks for the reply! Actually I'm looking to study the ME--with an emphasis on Iran--which is why I'm leaning towards gtown. Although GWU has great faculty like Brown and Lynch. I'll be going to both admit days though so we'll see how I feel after then.

Disclosure: I am affiliated with Georgetown

I would go with Georgetown for the Middle East. Also, you indicated above that you're interested in a think thank or policy career. Through the SFS, Georgetown gives you truly incomparable resources for the policy world. In addition to the Middle East people within the department (Brumberg, Heydemann, Stephen King), you'll also have access to a strong cluster of people within the SFS (e.g., Byman), the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (e.g.,Hudson, Seznec, and Shehata). If you're interested in religion, there's also the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding as well as the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. Finally, if you need language training, Georgetown has a very good Persian (Farsi) department and a very good Arabic department. Georgetown has a genuinely enormous number of people across disciplines (including political science, history, anthropology, religious studies, economics) working on the Middle East and Iran, which will be a great resource for you.

There are a few things, though, that should probably concern you. First, Georgetown is relatively weak in methods. Second, while Georgetown has a huge number of people doing the Middle East, internal politics can sometimes make it difficult for students in the Government Department to work with all of the available faculty, especially in the SFS. Georgetown students have also placed pretty well lately (TT placements in CP at UC-Irvine, American, and Ohio State in the last couple of years). Georgetown's overall rankings suffer, in my opinion, from the extreme weakness of its American Politics group, its weak quantitative methods offerings, and its somewhat unorthodox theory. IR and CP are clearly Georgetown's strengths (it's top 15ish in IR and only a little below that in CP).