Good colleges for anthropology?

Question

I am a senior in high school and am very interested in studying anthropology in college. I am currently trying to find schools all over the nation that offer good programs for it.

Thank you.

Answer 1

Determine which field of anthropology you'd like to go into: Archaeology, Cultural Anthropology, or Physical Anthropology. Then in those fields there are many different areas.

In archaeology you could be interested in a certain geographic area: Egypt, the American Southwest, etc. Or areas like tool production or agriculture. Or even underwater archaeology.

In cultural anthropology you could be interested in any specific culture in the world, or a general category such as the culture of women in Islam. I focused on the cultural impact of religion and did cross cultural comparisons of religion to prove the similarities of all religions.

In biological anthropology you can focus on evolution, genetics, primatology, etc.

So there are many categories to focus on! A good idea would be to figure out what it is that you'd specifically like to study and pick a school that would be the best fit. If you don't know what you'd like to study, just focus on a school that has an all around great program. If you know that you'd like to specifically do something like Egyptology, find a school that has a program, since not all schools do. Or, if you'd like to do southwestern archaeology, find a school that has a summer field school in that area.

Good Luck!

Answer 2

You're best bet is to write a list of your interests in anthropology, and then go to a local college library and get a copy of the American Anthropological Society's Guide to Anthropology Degree Programs. In this book, you will find a more-or-less complete list of the faculty members at each institution and you can then match these people up with your own interests.

A school's reputation in a given field rarely takes into account the specifics of student and faculty interests. For example, there are several schools I can name which, because of the presence of a single excellent faculty member, allow students to receive great educations in specific aspects of anthropology such as historic archaeology, Asian cultures, or cultural ecology.

Answer 3

It depends on which subdiscipline that you want to study.

Anthropology has four subdisciplines:

1) Cultural Anthropology

2) Physical/Biological Anthropology

3) Archeology

4) Anthropological Linguistics

I would say the "big three" research universities are:

1) University of Pennsylvannia

2) Indiana University

3) University of California at Berkeley

A couple of runners up are

4) Southern Illinois University at Carbondale

5) University of Illinois