<p>How is the econ department at Duke undergrad? I have heard both good and bad reviews, but none of them were from grads or seemed very familiar with the department.</p>
<p>how would you compare it to the econ departments at yale, princeton, williams, stanford, and columbia?</p>
<p>Is it more qualitative or quanitative in focus?</p>
<p>anyone? 10 char</p>
<p>Lack of Nobel Laureates maybe, but plenty of wonderful teachers from both aspects of the field. See, in HYPS, you have practical leaders of the field teaching you, though I doubt how much they actually “teach”. What you will get at Duke is better teachers, not better superstars of the field. So, you will learn your stuff. You can always work with the heavyweights when you do your own work in the field, but before that you have to learn!</p>
<p>Somebody asked a similar question a while ago…
At an undergrad level econ, the “strength” of the department as shown by the econ rankings and so forth don’t mean anything. I know it’s a little different story with engineering and others, but in econ, the best way to think of an undergrad econ department’s caliber is to think of the caliber of the students themselves. The stuff that you learn in an undergrad econ major is pretty much the same across the board- you will take micro, macro, some more of either of the two, econometrics, and a few electives depending on where your interests lie (finance/accounting related courses, more theory, or public/health/labor economics, for ex). In majors like econ, the vast majority of education takes the form of class learning. And thus, if you are surrounded by “smarter” peers, the stuff you learn will be more in-depth and you will be given more opportunity for intellectual stimulation/ learning.
That being said, if I was to chose between Yale, Stanford, or Princeton and Duke, I’ll probably go with the YSP. Choosing between Columbia, Williams, or Duke, it just comes down to personal preference regarding the institution as a whole, not on individual departments. At an undergrad level, it is pretty much meaningless to look at “econ department rankings” when deciding where to go. If I have done that, I would have probably chosen places like UChicago, UCB, Northwestern, Columbia, or LSE (all of which I got into).
I don’t really get your last question tho… are you asking if the econ curriculum is “quantitative” in focus (involving lots of math/stats)?</p>