coolsushicutter

i agree with the groupings, but a lot of investment banking/commerce people i know (one who graduated from princeton with economics degree) agree that northwestern should be in Group I.

TheMK99

thanks for pointing out your friend's credentials. stuff is only true when an ivy league grad says so !

rm1234

is there really that much of a difference between groups 2 and 5? if i want a good economics program but with smaller classes, wouldn't it be better to go to georgetown (where i would like to go) rather than a state school that may be higher ranked?

MuffinKing

I'd like to know what people think about Harvard Econ vs Chicago Econ. I've seen some non-US News rankings that put Harvard on top, but I'm wondering if the level of teaching is better at Chicago or what.

Alexandre

rm, Georgetown isn't known for small classes. It isn't some tiny LAC with fewer than 2,000 students. Georgetown has 15,000 students, 7,000 of which are undergrads. My father and eldest sister both did their graduate studies at Georgetown, so I am quite familiar with the university. It is definitely excellent and if you intend to use your undergraduate degree as a stepping stone to going into Diplomacy, Investment Banking, Law or Politics, Georgetown would be a great choice. However, if you really want to delve deeply into Economics and possibly pursue graduate studies in the field, I don't recommend Georgetown or any other lower ranked Econ department) over a top Econ department.

the_aspirant

yeah, i don't really agree with group 2.

these 4 schools are in a different league compared to the bottom 5:
Northwestern University
University of Pennsylvania
Yale University
Columbia University

University of California-Los Angeles
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
New York University
University of Wisconsin-Madison
University of California-San Diego

Alexandre

The_aspirant, Michigan is on par with Columbia, NU and Penn overall, but its Econ department is slightly weaker than NU's and Penn's and like I said earlier, Columbia's Econ department is hot right now. Had the OP asked about Anthropology, Engineering, History, Math, Political Science, Psychology or Sociology, I would have placed Michigan in the same group at the very least, in some cases higher. Overall, those universities are all definitely top 15 and arguably top 10 in the nation (among research universities).

rm1234

ok, thanks alexandre. i realize now that northwestern might be a better fit for me.

mrxalleycat

how about.....

What are the best undergraduate econ programs in the West Coast??

TheMK99

Stanford
Berkeley
UCLA Biz Econ
Usc

In order

???????????????

UCLAri

With biz econ, it really depends on what you want.

If you're interested in doing academic economic study, then UCLA's biz econ may not be the better choice, and the regular econ major may be better.

I would also put Pomona in there. Probably just above Berkeley.

the_aspirant

all of you forgot cal tech. i'd rank it like:

Stanford
Cal Tech
Pomona
Berkeley
UCLA
USC

cal tech probably isn't very well known for it's economics program, but a degree from cal tech is on par with stanford and looks a lot better than pomona, berkeley, ucla, usc.

UCLAri

I considered including Cal Tech, but they don't have a truly dedicated econ program.

the_aspirant

i'd still go to cal tech just for the name.

and you're interning at LG too? A LOT of my friends are in korea right now interning for LG.. haha. i don't know why they all went there, but i guess they have a good internship program? haha.

southpasdena

we are not forgetting caltech. That should be left out. UCSD is ranked higher than UCLA for economics