Top Public Affairs Schools in the U.S.

Interested in a graduate degree in Public Affairs from a top program within the United States? We offer rankings of best U.S. Public Affairs graduate programs. Review the following schools to see requirements for Master and Doctoral degrees in the area of Public Affairs.

  • AbbreviationFinder: Browse our list of all acronyms and abbreviations related to Public Affairs with their full meanings and definitions. Sorted by popularity and categorized within Public Affairs.

What are Social Sciences?

The social sciences are the set of disciplines that are responsible for studying, systematically, social and cultural processes that result from the activity of the human being and its relationship with society.

The objectives of the social sciences are, fundamentally, to interpret, understand and explain the social phenomena and the manifestations of the human being as a social subject.

The concept of ‘social sciences’, on the other hand, is broad and, depending on the criteria to which it is submitted, it is possible to determine which discipline can be considered as social.

Some of the sciences that are usually considered social are History, Geography, Anthropology, Sociology, Politology and Economics.

Branches of social sciences

The branches of the social sciences are the different groups into which the disciplines of the social sciences can be classified. In this sense, there are different forms of classification. For example, depending on the object of study, two branches can be identified within the social sciences: the general social sciences and the particular social sciences.

The general social sciences are focused on the activities of social groups, such as History and Ethnography. While within the particular social sciences, one can distinguish those disciplines that study social groups and their internal structure, such as Economics and Sociology, as well as those that focus on their external structure, such as Geography and Demography.

Another form of classification distinguishes between descriptive social sciences, such as Anthropology and Sociology, and analytical social sciences, such as economics and law.

Social sciences and humanities

There are different epistemological positions that classify a science or a discipline within the category of the social sciences or the humanities . Due to the relationship between the two concepts, on many occasions they appear united, for example, to name a faculty or an academic unit.

In general, the humanities are considered to be the set of disciplines that study the human being, such as Pedagogy or Philosophy. Some studies consider the social sciences a broader concept, which would include humanistic disciplines.

Social sciences and natural sciences

In some curricula of the first levels of education, the social sciences appear together with the so-called natural sciences, under the generic name of “Knowledge of the natural, social and cultural environment”. However, the natural sciences focus on the study of nature through experimental scientific methods and the use of formal sciences. Some of them are Chemistry, Biology and Physics.

Top Public Affairs Schools

The following is a list of top colleges and in public affairs in the U.S. Please follow the links below to get schools in your areas.

  • Alabama (6)
  • Alaska (2)
  • Arizona (2)
  • Arkansas (4)
  • California (27)
  • Colorado (1)
  • Connecticut (2)
  • Delaware (1)
  • Florida (10)
  • Georgia (13)
  • Hawaii (1)
  • Idaho (2)
  • Illinois (9)
  • Indiana (7)
  • Iowa (3)
  • Kansas (3)
  • Kentucky (7)
  • Louisiana (4)
  • Maine (3)
  • Maryland (4)
  • Massachusetts (8)
  • Michigan (9)
  • Minnesota (3)
  • Mississippi (3)
  • Missouri (6)
  • Montana (0)
  • Nebraska (1)
  • Nevada (1)
  • New Hampshire (1)
  • New Jersey (7)
  • New Mexico (2)
  • New York (16)
  • North Carolina (11)
  • North Dakota (1)
  • Ohio (9)
  • Oklahoma (1)
  • Oregon (3)
  • Pennsylvania (9)
  • Rhode Island (2)
  • South Carolina (3)
  • South Dakota (1)
  • Tennessee (5)
  • Texas (19)
  • Utah (1)
  • Vermont (1)
  • Virginia (7)
  • Washington (5)
  • Washington DC (6)
  • West Virginia (2)
  • Wisconsin (3)
  • Wyoming (1)

Top 10 Public Affairs in the United States

Rank College Name Location
1 Stanford University Stanford, CA
2 Harvard University Boston, MA
3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA
4 University of California–Berkeley Berkeley, CA
5 California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA
6 Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD
7 Princeton University Princeton, NJ
8 Scripps Research Institute La Jolla, CA
9 University of California–San Francisco San Francisco, CA
10 Yale University New Haven, CT

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