Hi, I’m a community college student and I’ve stumbled upon the book 40 colleges that changes lives, and I’m really considering on applying to a few of the schools in the book. Could anybody give me an opinion of these schools for an Economics major?
Marlboro College
Denison University
Austin College
Clark University
I’m unsure whether or not I will apply to graduate school, and if I do-it will be for a PhD in Economics or to law school for patent law.
If anybody is a current student of any one of these schools, I would really appreciate your insights and personal experience with these schools. Also, I currently have a 4.0 GPA, so I shouldn’t have a problem transferring.
For PhD in economics, you may want to look at the course descriptions and schedules. Consider the following courses and how frequently they are offered:
Intermediate microeconomics: Do the math prerequisites include calculus (typical)? Do they include multivariable calculus and/or linear algebra (better)? Some schools have more than one option, of varying math intensity.
Econometrics: See intermediate microeconomics.
Math courses: look for real analysis, proof-based linear algebra, optimization, and other advanced math courses.
Statistics courses (may be in math department): look for calculus-based probability theory, stochastic processes, statistical inference, etc…
As a community college student, you do want to the highest levels of math available there if you want to go on to PhD study in economics.
For pre-law, the main consideration is LSAT and GPA. See http://lawschoolnumbers.com . For patent law, science or engineering undergraduate majors are useful.
Getting into a good economics PhD program from a small LAC is very difficult. As the above post indicates, you need to learn a lot of math to be even considered for admission. I know one Marlboro student who chose to be a visiting student at Harvard for a year to get access to top professors in economics and get their recommendations for grad school.
@international95 Quit the inane posts because you have no idea what you are talking about.
The suggestion that someone that studies Economics at a liberal arts college will have a harder time acheiving a PhD is laughable. Every college I have ever seen has the prerequisite math and economics classes, and then some, for any masters program in economics, uni & multi calculus, linear algebra, topology, proof, analysis.
Vanderbilt did a study and found that 18 of the 25 schools that send the largest percentage of their graduating classes on to earn a PhD in Economics are liberal arts colleges. Time to degree was also shorter for liberal arts grads.
I’m not saying that LAC graduates aren’t capable of doing well in top PhD programs. I’m saying the level of competition is so high that only the finest applicants, who often have letters from distinguished scholars in the field, are able to be accepted to the top 15 programs. Instead of picking a bone with me, I highly recommend you go drink the water from the premier forum for economics PhDs. I doubt CC would let me name it (it sounds like arch) but a quick google search and you are there. Go tell the finest applicants applying to PhD programs in economics that you think liberal arts graduates have a better shot at PhD admission at the top schools, and be prepared to get laughed at. And if you question the judgment of several qualified applicants, including LAC graduates, who have been through the experience, then oh well…
Thought I’d link to the literature on the undergrad origins of PhD economists. LACs are indeed the “cradle” of economists – see Table 4 at the end of this paper where the top 4 or 5 colleges that send students to PhD programs in economists are LACs. You want to look at the results that are normalized by undergrad institution size because of course larger programs will send more students to PhD programs. There is a newer article by these co-authors but it is behind a paywall. http://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/7019858.pdf
“Finally, to illustrate that the prominence of top liberal arts colleges in generating eventual economics Ph.D.s is not limited to simply the handful of outstanding colleges listed in Tables 4 and 5, Table 6 presents overall institution- and economics-program size-normalized Ph.Ds. generated by each of the four categories of undergraduate institution. Although the economics Ph.D.-granting institutions generated more than times as many BA/BS degrees and more than seven times as many economics BA/BS degrees as the top-50 liberal arts colleges did during 1987-1993, the liberal arts colleges generated about three times as many Ph.D.s per BA/BS awarded and more than twice as many Ph.D.s per economics BA/BS awarded. One reason for the disproportionate presence of selective liberal arts college graduates among economics Ph.D.s may be the tendency of individuals to “follow in the footsteps” of their parents (Laband and Lentz, 1985). While fewer than three percent of the nation’s college students attend selective liberal arts colleges, almost half of the children of faculty at selective liberal arts colleges, and about a quarter of the children of faculty at national research universities attend selective liberal arts colleges (Siegfried and Getz, 2006, Table 1). With such a hugely disproportionate presence of “faculty brats” at selective liberal arts colleges, only a modest inter-generational correlation in occupation is necessary for liberal arts colleges to be over-represented among Ph.D. students (in any discipline). Furthermore, undergraduate economics students at liberal arts colleges may receive more attention from faculty that leads them to think about a career as a professional economist. The typical (median) economics graduate of a liberal arts college writes almost twice as many economics term papers as does a graduate of a national research university 4.0 vs. 2.2 papers. Moreover, relatively more economics departments in liberal arts colleges than at national universities report that their students’ written work is published (65 percent vs. 43 percent), and of that published work, relatively more from liberal arts graduates (77 percent) than from national research university graduates (52 percent) is published in professional academic journals (McGoldrick, 2006, Table 5b).”
Lbad96: Is Denison>Clark? @gonfaloniere Yeah. I’m trying to find the school that’s best for me, not what’s best numerically. I don’t scrutinize rankings so much. After all, I’d rather be at podunk U if I jive there better than Harvard-for example.
Rather than bother with arguments about whether LACs as a class are better or worse for pre-PhD preparation in economics, it would be better to evaluate each school (LAC or otherwise) specifically in that respect. Look for the math content in the economics courses and the offerings of math and statistics courses (see reply #1).
I think we should not make the dangerous assumption that elite schools and LACs are mutually exclusive. If you completed undergrad econ at a school like Williams or Amherst, you have much better than chances (keeping ceteris paribus) than students at almost any research university.
It depends on what people call liberal arts colleges as well. I’ve been looking at some schools in the mid-west (keeping my eye on Denison). A lot of people seem to think that a school is only good if their rankings are high, though.
I am just going to address the elephant in the room: rankings.
It seems like the “most popular” source for rankings is US News and World Report. With that assumption, it is important to note that NO LAC is ranked under the “national universities” label, which most people look at to compare colleges. Instead, they have a separate ranking for LACs, and this is where the problem lies in comparing LACs to Research Universities.
Now, let me move onto rankings by subject area. Many rankings by subject area in US News and World Report, as you access them, are actually rankings of GRADUATE not UNDERGRADUATE programs. Although schools with good graduate programs tend to have good undergraduate programs in their respective fields, it is important to take care to search specifically for the undergraduate rankings. Furthermore, it turns out there is a divide in rankings between LACs and Research Universities here also. For example, let’s look at the undergraduate computer engineering rankings. It says the list includes “top undergraduate schools for computer engineering, where the highest engineering degree offered is a doctorate”. LACs often do not offer doctorate programs, disqualifying them form this list. Instead, they are part of a different list of top programs as I understand it, where the highest degree is masters (someone please correct me if I am wrong). Here are two links for the same exact subject (undergraduate computer engineering) with very different names. The first features your Research Universities, the second features LACs and other schools.
Denison would be excellent for economics, Clark would be very good especially for issues linked to development. Other strong colleges on the CTCL list include Reed (superb but very hard to get into), St Olaf (excellent for math so with an eye on a PHD, it’d be worth checking out the possibility of a math/econ double major or concentration), Hendrix for strong academics but easier to get into (most applicants are self-selected so the admission rate is very deceptive), with Centre, Rhodes, Whitman, and Willamette to round it out.
One advantage of LACs is that to get into PhD programs, you need excellent professor recommendations and experience doing research. I find that my undergrad students don’t understand how competitive grad school is, especially liberal arts PhD programs that only take a handful of grad students. So an honors program at a large school could fulfill that need, but otherwise a small college with small classes, at least after Econ 101, taught by professors (rather than adjuncts - in terms of letters of R and research opps) is probably the best. But I suggest that the original poster look up each college individually. If Econ is a popular major, it may suggest strong teaching and collegial relationships with students. You might also want to look at their placement into relevant internships because a lot of grad programs only take a small percentage of students right after college. Also, although I only know a few CTCL’s, I would bet that most Econ profs would be happy to talk to you on the phone (or reply via email - usually found on college website), or in person, if possible, although summer, of course, can be hit and miss.