Also, what do you guys think of Political Science degrees?

As the undergraduate advisor for my department about 1/2 of our students who are getting a CJ degree are planning for a career in LE. Another 1/3 or so are looking at law school and some ended up in our program because they flunked out of business/premed/science. There are a few who are going on to grad school but come to that decision later...

I'll agree with Twoblock on one aspect: your undergraduate major is largely irrelevant if you're going to pursue an LE career but it should be relevant to human services, i.e. sociology, business, political science, public admin, anthropology, psychology, social work or human development will all give you the necessary social science that will help being in law enforcement. If you're planning on forensics, you'll need a hard science degree of some kind, i.e. biology, biochem, physics, chemistry, etc...

The one thing that will set you apart from others is a masters degree be it an MBA, MPA, or MCJ. Most people intent on moving up the corporate ladder to detective, police chief, etc. now have these credentials and they're needed to stand out from the others...

As for specific CJ programs, Northeastern is okay. Maryland, Rutgers, SUNY-Albany, Missouri-St. Louis, Penn State, Florida, Florida State, Washington State, and Cal-Irvine are all top-notch and ranked by US News. West Virginia has an outstanding forensic science program.

But what's more important than where you go to school is what you get out of school, there are idiots at Harvard and geniuses at junior colleges. Regardless of the degree program you settle on there's no replacement for working hard, a good GPA indicates to employers that you'd be a good employee. Make sure you get an internship because not only will it look good on your resume, you'll be able to tell if you like policing or not...

Good luck in whatever field you choose...

Gino,

The same could be said for any undergraduate liberal arts degree be it political science, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, criminal justice, women's studies, american studies, what-have-you...

A good undergraduate education, regardless of major, should develop critical thinking skills, emphasize written and oral communication, and broaden a student's exposure to the world...

Also, don't shortchange what you learned in social science just because you're in a hard science now. One thing you'll hopefully learn is that the hard sciences have it easier as their experiments and research into the physical world are much easier because human behavior is the ultimate random variable and hence the hardest to predict, measure, and contextualize...

I moved in the opposite direction that you're going in, I have a background in biostatistics and epidemiology and now I'm getting a PhD in criminal justice. I enjoy my research much more immensely than I did working in public health. I also had a snobbish view of social science before taking classes but I've found just as high level of academic rigor as I had in my sciences classes...

That being said, I think there is a tremendous difference in CJ programs depending on where you go, just as there is a tremendous difference in any liberal arts program. The undergraduate program where I'm working does not teach you how to be a cop. Instead, we focus on the academics of criminal justice such as structural theories of crime, crime control policies, victimology, penological theory and practice, judicial processes, and research methods and statistics. Most transfer students from community college into our program are dismayed when they don't get any credit for their CJ classes they took in their AA program...

In most AA programs, you're taught basic LE skills but that's not to say those skills aren't important, but they are what you would learn at any police academy and therefore are vocational rather than academic skills...

Anyhow, I do agree with you that CJ is not an appropriate major if you're seeking FBI or intelligence community employment as they are looking for accountants, lawyers, operations research, computer scientists, forensic scientists, language specialists, etc. But CJ is fine for any other form of LE or any position that requires a BA...

As for the top 20 schools, CJ is being done there. Berkeley has a law and social control program, Penn has criminology program and all of the others have soc or public admin programs with CJ focuses. So I wouldn't shortchange CJ as something that only state schools do...

Regards,

digithead

You can always dual major...