178 Pre-Law & Political Science Schools with Swim Teams, Ranked
Updated July 2026 · 2025-26 season data
By Kevin Tu · Swim parent and founder, On The Board
Yes. Political science usually bends around a travel schedule, and for law school, GPA and LSAT matter more than the specific major. Here, 178 schools field both a swim team and a pre-law or political-science program, ranked by graduate earnings and selectivity.
The coursework is not the obstacle here. Political science classes bend around a travel schedule and law-school admissions care more about GPA and LSAT than they care about where the GPA was earned. The LSAT is the obstacle. Most pre-law candidates sit for it in the spring of junior year, which is exactly when the NCAA short-course championship season runs, and the test rewards months of dedicated prep the same months the training block is peaking. Northeastern leads this list at first, driven by Boston co-op placements in law firms and government offices. No Ivy League school appears in the top 50. The formula weights undergraduate earnings, and Ivy political science majors tend to enter law school directly rather than jobs.
Two Olympic medalists whose political science degrees anchored what came next, Nancy Hogshead-Makar at Duke and Emma Weyant at Florida, are further down the page.
Amherst, a Division III liberal arts college, ranks #3 for pre-law and political science, ahead of Northwestern and Tulane.
178 schools · Rankings use College Scorecard field-of-study outcomes, school selectivity, and swim program data from the 2025-26 season.
Start your swimmer’s list from this Pre-Law & Political Science ranking.
You’re looking at 178 pre-law & political science schools with swim teams. Save the ones worth a look, or add your swimmer’s times to see which belong on the list.
A school can rank high here and still be wrong for your swimmer. It may be too fast, too selective, too expensive, or missing the right academic path. On The Board helps narrow this list around the swimmer, not just the major.
All 178 Pre-Law & Political Science schools with swim teams
| Rank | School | Division | Earnings | Accept |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Northeastern Private · $31K net price · 17,300 students |
D1 | $42,363 | 5% |
| 2 | California Public · $13K net price · 33,100 students |
D1 | $45,500 | 11% |
| 3 | Amherst Private · $23K net price · 1,900 students |
D3 | $37,208 | 9% |
| 4 | Northwestern Private · $29K net price · 9,200 students |
D1 | $35,416 | 8% |
| 5 | Tulane Private · $40K net price · 7,800 students |
D1 | $46,790 | 14% |
| 6 | Barry University Private · $23K net price · 2,200 students |
D2 | $103,746 | 77% |
| 7 | George Washington Private · $37K net price · 11,200 students |
D1 | $52,107 | 47% |
| 8 | Florida State Public · $11K net price · 32,200 students |
D1 | $31,993 | 24% |
| 9 | Miami Private · $37K net price · 12,900 students |
D1 | $25,967 | 19% |
| 10 | Georgia Public · $14K net price · 32,100 students |
D1 | $35,416 | 38% |
| 11 | TCU Private · $37K net price · 11,000 students |
D1 | $44,021 | 45% |
| 12 | Wisconsin Public · $17K net price · 36,900 students |
D1 | $39,909 | 45% |
| 13 | Colorado State Public · $21K net price · 25,500 students |
D1 | $81,333 | 89% |
| 14 | Howard Private · $51K net price · 10,100 students |
D1 | $35,518 | 41% |
| 15 | Penn State Public · $33K net price · 42,300 students |
D1 | $45,500 | 61% |
| 16 | Texas A&M Public · $21K net price · 59,600 students |
D1 | $42,682 | 57% |
| 17 | San Diego State Public · $15K net price · 35,400 students |
D1 | $27,860 | 36% |
| 18 | American Private · $42K net price · 7,300 students |
D1 | $45,175 | 62% |
| 19 | FIU Public · $9K net price · 39,500 students |
D1 | $33,680 | 55% |
| 20 | Rutgers Public · $24K net price · 37,800 students |
D1 | $32,925 | 58% |
| 21 | UMass Public · $22K net price · 23,700 students |
D1 | $35,772 | 60% |
| 22 | Grand Canyon Private · $22K net price · 73,400 students |
D1 | $60,082 | 79% |
| 23 | Pittsburgh Public · $30K net price · 20,400 students |
D1 | $32,925 | 58% |
| 24 | South Carolina Public · $23K net price · 29,800 students |
D1 | $33,373 | 60% |
| 25 | Akron Public · $14K net price · 9,100 students |
D1 | $36,094 | 60% |
Most families keep all this in a spreadsheet.
Here, you save a school and the roster times, standards, and academics come filled in.
See how the recruiting list works →Two swimmers who chose this path
Nancy Hogshead-Makar won three gold medals and one silver at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, including a 100-meter freestyle gold tied with Carrie Steinseifer. She had already accepted Duke's first-ever swimming scholarship; after the Games she returned to Duke and finished a bachelor's in political science and gender studies in 1986. She then earned a JD from Georgetown University Law Center and built a career in civil rights law focused on women and girls in sport. She founded Champion Women, an advocacy organization, and in 2007 co-edited the book Equal Play; Title IX and Social Change with economist Andrew Zimbalist. The political science and gender studies combination she chose at Duke forty years ago is the same combination she has been litigating on since.
Emma Weyant won silver in the 400-meter individual medley at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and bronze in the same event at the 2024 Paris Games. Her NCAA career includes a 2024 800-yard freestyle relay national title, NCAA silver in the 500-yard freestyle and the 400-yard individual medley, and two SEC team championships. She swam her first two NCAA seasons at Virginia before transferring to Florida for 2022-23. She graduated from Florida in May 2024 with a bachelor's degree in political science and a 3.60 GPA that earned her Academic All-America honors. She continues to train and compete.
Swimmers who studied pre-law & political science
Real college swimmers named to the CSCAA Scholar All-America team — a 3.5+ GPA and a swim at nationals — who majored in pre-law & political science.
Calysta Bartlett
UNLV · Political Science
Scholar All-America · 4 seasons
Carson Tyler
Indiana · Political Science
Scholar All-America · 4 seasons
Katherine Helms
NC State · Political Science
Scholar All-America · 4 seasons
Sarah Evans
Florida State · Criminology
Scholar All-America · 4 seasons
Micah McRea
Lenoir-Rhyne University · Politics & Law, Sociology
Scholar All-America · 4 seasons
Jade Matthias
Hamilton · Government
Scholar All-America · 4 seasons
Alivia Lindorfer
Wisconsin · Political Science
Scholar All-America · 3 seasons
Anna Moore
Florida · Political Science
Scholar All-America · 3 seasons
Named to the CSCAA Scholar All-America team, 2019–20 through 2025–26.
View the honorees ↗Rankings are a starting point. The list your family actually works from is shorter, built around your swimmer's times.
Start your swimmer's list →How the divisions compare
Division I
Thirty of the top fifty are Division I. Northeastern leads at first, California second, Northwestern fourth, Tulane fifth. George Washington at seventh, Florida State eighth, Miami ninth, and Georgia (SEC) tenth fill out the D1 top ten. California, Florida State, and Miami are the three ACC schools in that group. No Ivy League school appears anywhere in the top 50. Not Harvard, not Yale, not Princeton, not Penn, not Columbia, not Cornell, not Brown, not Dartmouth. The ranking formula weights undergraduate field-of-study earnings, and Ivy political science graduates tend to enter law school or graduate school directly, depressing the undergraduate-career earnings figure the ranking measures.
Division II
Seven Division II programs land in the top fifty for Pre-Law and Political Science, the most D2 representation of any category on this site. Barry University sits at sixth with $103,746 median earnings, a data outlier driven by a small South Florida legal-services cohort rather than a large pre-law pipeline. Southwest Minnesota State at thirtieth, Minnesota State Moorhead at thirty-second, West Florida, Lynn University, Nova Southeastern, and Adelphi University fill out the rest. For a swimmer whose times fit D2 and whose target is law school, the LSAT prep resources at the home school and the placement record of the pre-law advising office matter more than a national rank at this level.
Division III
Eleven Division III programs land in the top fifty. Amherst leads the D3 field at third, the only D3 NESCAC finisher in the top ten and the only selective liberal-arts college in the group. Sewanee at twenty-eighth, TCNJ at thirty-fifth, Widener at thirty-sixth, RIT at forty-second, and Norwich at fiftieth fill out the D3 presence, along with John Jay (a CUNY D3 school at twenty-seventh) and SUNY Brockport at twenty-ninth. For a swimmer whose times fit D3 and whose plan involves law school, the data anchor on this page is Amherst.
Frequently asked questions
Can you realistically swim and study pre-law or political science?
Yes. Political science is one of the most popular pre-law majors in the country, and the coursework bends around a competitive training schedule in a way that most pre-professional tracks do not. The challenge is not the classroom. The challenge is the LSAT and the law-school application calendar, both of which run in windows that collide with the NCAA season. Swimmers who land at top law schools tend to arrive at college with a three-year plan for LSAT prep (sophomore summer study, junior spring test window, senior fall applications) that works backward from the training block instead of around it.
What is the specific scheduling conflict between pre-law and swimming?
The LSAT falls in the spring of junior year, which overlaps the NCAA short-course championship season. Most swimmers aim for a June or August test date during training breaks to avoid the conference-champs-to-NCAAs-to-US-nationals stretch. The law-school application process runs September through January of senior year, which overlaps the short-course season and the early dual-meet schedule. Recommendation letters from professors and research advisors have to be collected during senior year, during dual-meet weekends, which is harder than it sounds when the swimmer is traveling every other Friday.
Which programs handle that conflict best and why?
Northeastern, California, Northwestern, George Washington, and Amherst all have decades of experience placing political science and pre-law students into law school, and each has pre-law advising offices that have scheduled LSAT prep around the athlete calendar before. Northeastern's co-op model is unusual for pre-law specifically: a swimmer doing a six-month co-op in a Boston-area legal setting gets the clinical legal exposure most pre-law candidates do not find until 1L summer. George Washington's Washington, D.C. location gives the same advantage for federal-agency and Congressional placements. Berkeley's public-university pipeline into California state government and Bay Area law firms is its own category of advantage.
Is D3 a better fit for swimmers in pre-law and political science?
For a pre-law candidate specifically, D3 is worth serious weight because of Amherst. Amherst sits at third on the page, the only top-10 school outside the D1 and D2 tiers, and NESCAC pre-law advising has a strong placement record at T14 law schools. The rest of the D3 field on this page ranks on earnings rather than law-school placement, so Amherst is the D3 destination to target if law school is the goal. The tradeoff at a D3 program is lighter recruiting visibility and a smaller team, which helps a student who prioritizes LSAT prep time and hurts a student who wants the D1 training environment.
What does admission actually require at the top programs?
The top ten on this list admit applicants at rates between 5.2% (Northeastern) and 77.2% (Barry University, the D2 earnings outlier). Setting Barry University aside, the selective end of the list sits between 5.2% and 14% (Northeastern, California, Amherst, Northwestern, Tulane). The academic profile that clears the bar at Northeastern, California, Amherst, and Northwestern is a high school transcript with strong English, social studies, and history grades across all four years, AP U.S. History or AP Government where the high school offers it, and a writing portfolio or debate or Model UN record. Recruit status helps at these schools. It does not waive the bar for the political science department or for law-school admissions three or four years later. The LSAT and the undergraduate GPA are the two numbers that matter for the law-school decision.
What do people who swam and studied pre-law and political science say about it?
Nancy Hogshead-Makar won four Olympic medals in 1984 and finished a bachelor's in political science and gender studies at Duke in 1986, then went to Georgetown Law and spent the next four decades as a civil rights attorney focused on women and girls in sport. She has litigated Title IX cases, founded Champion Women, and co-authored a book on Title IX policy. The political science and gender studies degree was not incidental to her career; it was the foundation. Emma Weyant finished her political science degree at Florida in May 2024 alongside a Paris Olympic bronze medal, a 3.60 GPA, and Academic All-America honors. Whether she takes the LSAT and goes to law school or builds a different path with the same degree is the open question in her career right now.
Rankings are based on field-of-study median earnings and institutional selectivity, with a bonus for nationally ranked universities. Data from College Scorecard. Learn how we rank programs →