<p>1) Claremont McKenna
2) Barnard
3) Swarthmore
4) Haverford
5) Hamilton
6) Bowdoin
7) Macalester
8) Williams
9) Wellesley
10) Wesleyan
11) Pomona
12) Middlebury
13) Amherst
14) Colgate
15) Denison
16) Franklin & Marshall
17) Washington & Lee
18) Lafayette
19) Grinnell
20) Smith</p>
<p>I was always under the impression that Wellesley and Wesleyan were basically at the top for Econ at LACs. But I did find it a bit strange that Claremont McKenna was first in both columns and the list was:</p>
<p>
[quote]
Compiled under the direction of CMC economics professor Marc Weidenmier.
<p>I'm sure all 20 of those schools would be solid places to get a degree in economics, although would think the academic student quality at Colby, Bates, Trinity, Carleton, Bucknell, Oberlin would be a fair bit higher than Denison; however, it seems suspicious that CMC would have such a large lead over ALL the other schools.</p>
<p>^ "although would think the academic student quality at Colby, Bates, Trinity, Carleton, Bucknell, Oberlin would be a fair bit higher than Denison;"</p>
<p>I don't know about all of them, but definitely not so for Oberlin or Bucknell, especially in the econ department.</p>
<p>don't know what this says about the quality of the department...but i thought that this list was interesting. swarthmore is #1 by a long shot as the per capita producer of econ PhDs</p>
<p>Number of PhDs per 1000 grads</p>
<p>Academic field: Economics</p>
<p>PhDs and Doctoral Degrees:
ten years (1994 to 2003) from NSF database</p>
<p>Number of Undergraduates:
ten years (1989 to 1998) from IPEDS database</p>
<p>Note: Does not include colleges with less than 1000 graduates over the ten year period</p>
<p>1 Swarthmore College 16
2 Grinnell College 7
3 Williams College 7
4 Carleton College 7
5 Harvard University 6
6 Agnes Scott College 6
7 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 5
8 University of Chicago 5
9 Yale University 5
10 California Institute of Technology 5
11 Princeton University 5
12 Macalester College 5
13 Stanford University 4
14 Pomona College 4
15 Oberlin College 4
16 Wellesley College 4
17 Trinity University 4
18 Bowdoin College 3
19 Earlham College 3
20 Berea College 3
21 Amherst College 3
22 Wabash College 3
23 Bard College 3
24 Rocky Mountain College 3
25 Coe College 3
26 Wesleyan University 3
27 College of William and Mary 3
28 Colby College 3
29 Columbia University in the City of New York 3
30 Hillsdale College 3
31 Franklin and Marshall College 3</p>
<p>Admittedly, I know little about Denison or specifically its econ dept, but in looking at overall stats for the schools, Oberlin has 1361 avg SAT, 34% acceptance rate, 65% in top 10% and Bucknell has 1310 avg SAT, 33% acceptance rate, 71% in top 10%, while Denison has 1269 avg SAT, 39% acceptance rate, 52% in top 10%, so don't think my above statement is shown to be inaccurate. I can't imagine that the best students are flocking towards econ at Denison and away from it at Bucknell and Oberlin to such an extreme to alter those numbers substantially. The only comment I was trying to make was regarding student academic quality at the schools and nothing to do with the profs in the econ dept. I don't really understand how you could say "definitely not so for Oberlin or Bucknell". Based on what? I've met many more people in the Wall Street jobs I've held from Bucknell or Oberlin than Denison.</p>
<p>does anyone know which lac's are known for sending econ graduates to wall street, etc. vs those that tend to send more to graduate school in econ?</p>
<p>also, does anyone have any information on which departments tend to be more liberal/leftist? more conservative? i'm interested most in departments at williams swarthmore middlebury wesleyan pomona amherst.</p>
<p>I don't think the pages published per professor means all that much in terms of undergrad teaching. You could have good professors who publish a lot, bad professors who publish a lot, good profs who don't publish a lot, and bad professors who don't publish a lot.</p>
<p>An example. Swarthmore's Econ department published a ton because the long-time chairman of the department was a major contributing editor of one of the big Econ journals. He also happened to be one of the school's best teachers. But, he could have just as easily been a mediocre professor.</p>
<p>Williams Econ department publishes an incredible amount on the finances of colleges and universities.</p>
<p>BTW, CMC isn't really a liberal arts college. It is an Econ, Government, History specialty school. Probably half the students major in Econ or Poli Sci and those departments are huge. However, the school doesn't even have its own science departments. No art departments. No music departments.</p>
<p>Reed produces a huge number of PhDs. Overall, for the most recent ten year period, it was essentially tied for third with Swarthmore in per capita PhDs behind CalTech and Harvey Mudd, just ahead of MIT.</p>
<p>However, Reed's PhDs tend to be more from math and sciences. Swarthmore's are fairly balanced across all departments; however, Swarthmore is very strong in social sciences -- the most social science Phds per graduate in Econ, Poli Sci, and social sciences overall. Econ and Poli Sci are two of the three most popular majors at Swarthmore (Bio is the other).</p>
<p>To some degree, high PhD production is a function of the academic orientation of the student body as a whole, the quality of the department, and the percentage of overall students majoring in each department.</p>
<p>"does anyone know which lac's are known for sending econ graduates to wall street, etc. vs those that tend to send more to graduate school in econ?"</p>
<p>From what I've seen, Swarthmore, Oberlin, Carleton, Wesleyan tend to send a disproportionate share to econ grad schools, while Williams, Amherst, Bowdoin, Colgate, Middlebury, Trinity tend to send more to Wall Street type jobs. Someone on one of these threads had the theory that it was the difference between schools with large sports cultures vs ones that don't have large sports cultures, which might not be far off. Take a look at this study (p.41) for a more detailed look.</p>