Top econ programs
Looking to major in econ or econ + math and trying to get a good idea of school rankings. I'm assuming t10/15 schools all do well, but outside of that what other schools are considered top programs? I'm not trying to get my rankings from USnews or other websites with somewhat arbitrary rankings so I'm curious what you guys think. Are there any with relatively great programs considering the competitiveness to get accepted? Any and all info will help, thanks
University of Chicago is pretty famous for their Econ program. Outside the top 15 schools I'd probably say UCLA or USC for west coast, Boston University or Boston College for east coast.
It honestly depends on what you are looking for.
Standard economics (aka neoclassical economics and its derivatives) is not particularly descriptively accurate. A lot of what gets taught is really just special cases that people dishonestly frame as being generally true. If you want to be an economist whose education helps you to actually explain the way the actual economy works, you won't get that at basically any school. There are no full bachelor's degrees teaches solely complexity economics. So, in a certain way, any "good" econ program is basically the same in that they all teach relatively the same thing, and it is all relatively worthless. It is pretty much all a good starting point, but you'll pretty much be taught a bunch of special cases yet what most economists care about are situations outside of those special cases. And what you learn about those special cases are generally NOT applicable to the situations an actual economist trying to descript the real economy cares about. If you want to merely know what standard economics says, or if you are "just" looking to get a good job after school, any of those top programs are fine. They are all largely interchangeable with the differences mainly being in terms of type of opportunity verse the quality of the opportunity.
In terms of bachelor's degrees in complexity economics, I am unaware of any. I know many schools will have a small number of classes on topics like agent-based modeling, chaos theory, nonlinear dynamics, etc. While they are generally NOT economics-focused classes, those types of courses will get you exposure to the tools and ideas that are useful in complexity economics. That are useful in actually describing the way the real economy actually works. There are a small number of schools that have any kind of complexity science program (the larger study of complexity in which complexity economics is just one subset of) at the graduate school or minors. For example, the University of Michigan has a pretty solid minor in Complex Systems. While not really an economics program, combining this with a Michigan economics degree gets you about as close as you can get at the undergraduate level.
This is a long way of saying most econ programs are problematic, especially in terms of but that it is the best you can do unless you are a psychopath.
I guess I just have a narrow-minded viewpoint but I was more asking what schools employers would put more weight on as far as perceived "goodness" or in a better sense traditional prestige. I'm mainly looking into global macro trading and it seems to me that some of the best degrees I can get are econ and mathematics, but math/stem schools have a much more clear ranking to me outside of t15. I was wondering if there are any standout econ programs that would make a noticeable difference when it comes to recruiting, or if it really just comes down to the best school I can for traditional/finance prestige.
Oh that's totally fine. There is nothing wrong with that. I tried to indicate as such in what I originally said, but I have a feeling I was not as clear as I should have been.
It really is pretty standard fare for econ programs, especially in regards to getting finance/finance adjacent jobs. Any school that sends a lot of students to banks every year will have an econ program that will work for your purposes.
Preciate it thanks bud
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