collegehelp

Gourman Report undergrad economics ranking:

Gourman Report undergrad
MIT
Chicago
Stanford
Princeton
Harvard
Yale
U Minnesota
U Penn
U Wisc Madison
UC Berkeley
Northwestern
U Rochester
Columbia
UCLA
U Michigan Ann Arbor
Johns Hopkins
Carnegie Mellon
Brown
UC San Diego
Duke
Cornell
NYU
UVA
UC Davis
U Washington
U Maryland College Park
Michigan State
UNC Chapel Hill
U Illinois Urbana Champaign
Texas A&M
Boston U
Washington U St Louis
Purdue West Lafayette
USC
U Texas Austin
Vanderbilt
Ohio State
Iowa State
SUNY Stony Brook
U Iowa
U Mass Amherst
UC Santa Barbara
U Pittsburgh
Virginia Tech
Claremont McKenna
Rutgers New Brunswick

posterX

Chicago, Yale, Princeton and Wellesley, and maybe MIT, have the strongest undergrad econ programs. Dartmouth, Wesleyan, Reed, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Claremont McKenna and Oberlin are great too.

SebmaFSX_53

"I'm not sure what numbers are for going into top grad Econ programs from each school, do they even exist

Same Question as thoughtprocess

Sam Lee

Well, Northwestern undergrad team has been the national champion of College Fed Challenge two years in a row. In the midwest regional, they beat Chicago (and others in that region). So having Nobel winners as professors doesn't necessarily mean you'll learn more.

raggu

jeez...winning a competition has nothing with economics education, especially the Fed Challenge where judging factors in other components

mam1959

My brother is an econ PhD. He would remind young people truly interested in pursuing economics at the graduate level to look at majoring in mathematics or statistics as an alternative to econ. That's what he did - and he certainly buzzed through a high quality Phd program. From this perspective, most all of the top undergrad schools people have listed have strong math programs - most particularly MIT and Chicago. This is a different way to look at this decision.

barrons

The Fed competition--not great--

http://www.chicagofed.org/education_..._champions.cfm

Sam Lee

raggu,

"nothing"? If it got absolutely nothing to do with it, then how come all the participants major in Economics, not English/History...etc.? I am not saying it's a correct measure but it's the only head to head competition that I am aware of. You can discredit it all you want; I just think people overexaggerate the differences between the top-15 programs. If Chicago's undergrad program is sooo much better, shouldn't the students win easily regardless of the formats and components?

barrons,
Schools like Harvard, Wisconsin, Columbia, and Cornell...etc also participated.
http://www.northwestern.edu/observer...challenge.html

Not quite old

Depends on what you want from an econ program. Alexandre mentioned that Caltech's undergrad program is not that strong. But that is purely a function of the small size of the faculty.

If you ask: How good is the program from the standpoint of getting you into a top grad school, Caltech does very well indeed. Why? Because PhD programs care overwhelmingly more about how much rigorous math you've taken and whether you've done research as an undergrad. The math is rigorous and required for all majors. Research opportunities are easier than at almost any other school except for MIT and one or two others.

To illustrate -- a professor in the UC system who'd been on the PhD admissions committee of his school told me that he would almost certainly take a strong Caltech undergrad over a student with a comparable or slightly superior record from any top state school unless that student had really exerted himself to take lots of math. At Caltech, an undergrad in Chemistry who only did the minimum required math courses would end up with better prep for grad school than an econ major at many top 25 programs who only did the minimum math required to get an Econ degree.

I don't know the details for all departments, but you can pick a random undergrad program and verify this yourself. Look up the requirements for an econ degree at any college then compare the math required (compare textbooks) with the standard Math1/Math2 sequence at Caltech which even Lit majors have to take.

However, if you plan to do an MBA or Law Degree not a doctorate, you're probably better off going to the most famous school where you can get high grades regardless of how tough the courses are. But then, the reputation of your econ school will also not matter a whole lot.

thethoughtprocess

Yeah, there is a difference between what sort of thing you plan on doing with Econ...going into business/finance work right away vs grad programs

Not quite old

I would add that programs such as MMSS at Northwestern are also better for getting students into top grad schools than getting a generic Econ degree from lots of top 10 undergrad programs.

Ben Golub

Hmm... I don't know what this business is about Caltech not being good for undergrad econ.

It's not that unusual at Caltech for undergrads to coauthor papers with faculty and publish them to top journals in economic thoery... just as one example, a gentleman I know (who is going to the amazingly good Stanford GSB for a Ph.D. in econ) has several papers under review now at really excellent publications.

The quality of the faculty at Caltech, especially in theoretical economics as well as cutting edge fields like behavioral and experimental economics, is incredibly strong. The school takes a hit in some rankings because its faculty in econ is relatively small, but pound for pound it's amazingly high-quality. And the respect you get as an undergrad -- being taught serious economics with real math, the way it's taught to grad students -- is unmatched. Mostly because all the profs can assume students have been through the rigorous core curriculum and are fairly proficient with the analysis that makes econ so dreadful for other people.

Anyway, I don't recommend coming to Caltech if you've already decided you want to be an economist. Typically, people who fit that mold wouldn't enjoy the hardcore math and physics here. But if you can handle it, I don't think there's a school in the country that sets you up better for entry into the top graduate programs.

MonsieurSatran

I'd also like to add that Columbia's economics department has seen a huge boost in recent years. The dean, Glenn Hubbard, has made a real push to improve the quality of the faculty in that department, and has succeeded marvelously. He has recruited some of the economists in the country, including Joseph Stiglitz, one of the contemporary titans and the 2001 Nobel laureate. Although Columbia has for a long time been a laggard in this field, they've made a real turnaround and are now hot on the heels of traditional powerhouse MIT, Princeton, Harvard, Chicago and Stanford.

jhk43

where the heck are you people getting your (subjective) information on "best undergraduate economics programs"?

are any of you actually qualified to answer this question?

thethoughtprocess

With fields like econ and polisci, where undergrad is broad and teaches similar concepts, I would go with the overall school quality rather than a specific ranking...so HYPSM, Dartmouth, Columbia, Brown, NU, Chicago, Williams, Amherst, Duke, Cornell would all fall on the list of schools to look at