My dad is moving to Hawai'I in 3 weeks, I live in Michigan with my mom. I go to college in a year, and up til now I've been considering Georgetown, George Washington, American University… I'm interested in Political Science. I looked around in Hawai'I, don't really like what I see(maybe I missed something, are there any real good universities in Hawai'I?). If I'm going to study Political Science, how important is it to go to a big-name school that actually is known for its Poly Sci program?

1. Sadly, you didn't miss anything in your review of Hawaii; there are no extraordinary universities in Hawaii and certainly none for political science. Marine biology and ecology (and other ocean-related fields) are really the only strong points of Hawaiin colleges (both public and private). The weather and atmosphere is obviously very nice but the academics are a bit lacking.

   For undergraduate, your school will matter moderately although a big name never hurts, esp. if you can do well there. Attending the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) probably won't be any worse than George Washington in terms of prestige(Georgetown would be the best for obvious reasons). However, attending a place like Eastern Michigan could end up hurting you a little in the end. The goal is to attend a well-known public or private school and do well for political science majors and there's no one or two schools that dominate the field (unlike MIT in science and technology).

   For graduate school (this is down the road), ranking and name matter a whole lot more and you'd probably want to go to the highest ranked school you get into (unless two schools are within 1-5 spots of each other) unless you truly can't afford the higher-ranked school.

   And don't forget some small liberal arts colleges (Macalester College in MN and Pomona College in CA come to mind) which are "big names" in certain fields (in this case, political science) but small schools in terms of size and overall name recognition outside of the academic world.

   Best of luck.

2. Public policy and political science major at a small liberal arts college who's looking to transfer to a bigger-name school for junior (next) and senior year of undergrad.
3. Hi we moved to WA from Hawaii last year and I tell you there's few good Universities back home. I would highly recommend BYU Hawaii. It is in the northshore area, an hour away from waikiki. I don't know where in Hawaii ur moving to but it's one of the most awesome schools in Hawaii. UH is another good one but I went to school in BYU and its' the best school.

Tags: university of hawaii, kona hawaii