Undergrad - UChicago vs. Brown vs. other schools for Economics

I'd go for UChicago if I were you,it has the best econ undegrad program in the world.

U of C... have fun!

Honestly, all of those are exceptional universities. Pretty much every single one of these will get you to S&T. If I were in your shoes, I'd pick the one that I liked the best from an academic and social perspective. 4 years can fly by or pass very slowly. Make sure you actually like wherever you pick.

UChicago is great for Econ and is becoming a strong target for a lot of BBs and EBs, as well as other banks (i.e. BNP, SocGen, Mizuho). I know a number of people who have broken into BB S&T from there. UChicago is becoming more pre-professional and has a lot of good programs to support students interested in banking (i.e. you can take classes at the Booth Business School). UChicago Computer Science is also up and coming and is pretty rigorous from what I've heard. Nice job on the acceptances! Outside of those two, I would consider UMich and Berkeley with their strong finance curriculum and alumni base.

Based on the fact that you are capable of gaining admission to all of these schools I think you are more than capable of landing a job you want out of any of them. I agree with the above poster who said go where you think you'll have the most fun. As someone who loved their college experience and doesn't want it to end I can tell you this is great advice. You're highly intelligent so worry less about the job and more about enjoying college.

Do you like partying? Do you like girls? If the answer to either of these questions is yes, go to Michigan.

I vote for UChicago as well. It's just a powerhouse in finance. Other options I would consider are Cornell and Brown (simply because they're ivies), and Berkeley because it's an awesome school.

Would kill to study economics at Chicago

Go to Cornell or Brown. Latter will be way more fun but the former might be better for recruiting

Chicago is a great school but it has a lot of weird kids, not a ton of fun, and your gpa will get crushed. Plus you don't get the ivy league network

Cornell - ivy ivy ivy. It won't be the best but it still stands out. Also a private school helps Vanderbilt - southern ivy ~Emory. but since you got the others, I dont feel thats so great. UMich - solid school, but a large one. similar thing that you should look into for UC-B & UCLA. But the flip side is that your alum network is bigger, and you have a bigger range of classes you can take. UC Berkeley, UCLA, to me they're similar. I think either school can produce top notch undergrads. Both have access to Cal network. Cities are different of course, but USC is nearby UCLA, and Stanford is near UC-B. Carnegie Mellon- Best school for computer science. Since quanty disciplines now almost always need computing power (unless you do policy side Econ), would be a solid school like the others.

After all you need to 1. think more extra factors (e.g. location, $$$ etc) and 2. you will get into a good school but nobody is perfect. but pick & choose the most important factors and sacrifice others

When I was applying to college I ended up not applying to UChicago because everyone referred to it as the place "where fun goes to die", is this still the case?

EDIT: Don't go to Brown unless you can tolerate hipsters

also, forgot UChicago and Brown..

UChicago is obviously the best for econ/fin departments. It is also very solid. Brown is a bit remote in my eyes, but I know of a valedictorian that went there. not a surprise either.

With all honesty I think all these schools can place a PhD graduate into Harvard/Stanford/you name it (Less Vanderbilt slightly). so the differences are marginal in your brand.

I would pick Cornell over Brown any day of the week, and Chicago over them both ...but those Cali schools are insane with the girls and Michigan has the sports and parties

As a Booth grad just wanted to share my insight for UChicago undergrads. First of all I can attest to how rigorous the undergrads work. Though it's true that the school is becoming more pre-professional in its atmosphere my sense was that even these pre-professional kids were very intense in their academics and job pursuits which I don't think it's necessarily bad in fact given the competitive nature of the financial industry I think the passions the undergrads exhibit make them a great fit which have translated into much stronger job placement over the years... of course there still is a healthy number of students who purse the whole "life of the mind" and are deeply intellectual As for the whole undergrad being separate from grad school, this is entirely false. From my time at booth I saw plenty of undergrads doing RA for booth professors and taking classes across all professional schools at Uchicago. Logically if a school has top grad programs in the world it's in the university's interest to expose the undergrads to such opportunities. It's not like they're going to bar the students from being able to take advantage of such easily accessible resource.