He attended graduate school at the University of Rochester, completing an M.A.
Aldrich won the Heinz Eulau Award in 1990 for the best article in the American Political Science Review.
(1995) received the Gladys Kammerer Award from the American Political Science Association for the best book on U.S. national politics.
Aldrich was co-editor of the American Journal of Political Science from 1985 to 1988 and was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001.
He was elected a Member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2024.