Harvard Economics or Wharton Undergrad

keepdreaming
Sat, 26 Nov 2005 13:33:29 +0000

well first of all, the issue in question here is which school has a better economics department and is better for undergrad econ. I personally would think Harvard Econ is much better than Penn’s. Harvard has one of the best Econ departments in the nation, and even this year, we have one prof winning a nobel price on his contribution to game theory. but in any case, i think a lot of times people tell themselves going to HYP is just for the name and that’s bad, they’re basically lying to themselves. Why go to an Ivy school afterall if you don’t care about the name? undergrad education is probably best at an LAC. i’m sure you’re going to wharton for the name as well. Name matters and you’re not being unreasonable to say i want to go to this school because it has a better name. and that shouldn’t be your only excuse for not going to HYP, “name doesn’t matter to me, i think their names are overly inflated.”

Personally, harvard or MT can’t go wrong. but the overall undergraduate experience is a lot more important when choosing where to go for undergrad. I think harvard will offer me a much better overall experience than penn. I felt i belong to a part of the class of 09 the second i stepped on campus. all the freshmen lives in the yard, then move into houses with their friends. at penn, the roommates are made randomly where as at harvard, more time is spent on choosing roommates than admitting people. Penn is also a huge school. a big schools are always not as focused as smaller ones. hence caltech and MT are good school and program because they’re small and focused.

Unless you had extensive experience with business related fields in high school, you should not specialize so early. there are other dual degree programs for MBA and MS at other schools where you can get it after undergrad. i personally think a person should explore his options in his undergraducy instead of picking a direction and such a specialized program so early. almost everyone in college change their majors, what makes you think you won’t? but you’ll never know if you went to MT if you could be better off in another field. that’s another reason why i chose harvard. It has one of the bests, if not the best, chem, bio, math, and econ department in the nation and i can explore my options here.