Do top economics PhD programs, such as NYU, Columbia, UChicago, UC Berkeley, MIT, and others care much about which undergraduate school the applicant is applying from, or are they really just interested in the GRE scores, GPA, classes taken, research, etc.? In other words, will such top PhD programs look upon the applicant more negatively if the undergraduate program that is attended is not one of the best?
bump?
Once they narrow down the applicant pool based on GRE, whether you have the appropriate math background, and GPA, then quality of the letter writers and perhaps quality of the undergrad program can come into play.
Econ PhD programs may ‘look down’ upon applicants from lower-ranked undergrad programs insofar as those undergrad programs are suspected of not providing sufficiently rigorous mathematical training for their undergrads, for, whether we like it or not, economics PhD programs do require a rigorous mathematics background. In contrast, somebody who, say, successfully passes Harvard’s infamous Math 55 course is instantly deemed to clearly have sufficient mathematical training for any economics PhD program. {Indeed, I suspect that many currently tenured economics professors at Harvard itself would not have passed Harvard Math 55, but I digress.}
Hence, the best way for a student from a lower-ranked undergrad program to demonstrate sufficient technical competency is probably to take graduate-level math coursework - or better yet - to publish some mathematical research. It doesn’t have to be much, for example, proving a minor lemma or proving a known theorem in a novel manner, and publishing it in an undergrad math journal or even on arXiv might suffice. But the upshot is that you should try to do something.
In general where you go to undergrad matters less than what you do there, but I have heard that economics programs are more discriminating about undergraduate program/department/school than most other fields.
I don’t think it’s that they look upon them more negatively so much as graduates from well-known undergrad econ departments are looked at more positively. (But the range of these programs may be wider than you think and include a lot of good solid LACs and public universities in addition to the elite privates).
If you’re asking if you have to go an HYP-type school to go to a top PhD in economics, the answer is no.