<p>How strong is the Economics department at Rice compared to other top privates?</p>
<p>I can’t compare Rice to other top privates, seeing as how I never went to any of them, but I really liked Rice’s econ department.</p>
<p>I’d say that there’s a really big range in the quality and intensity of econ classes (more so than in most departments probably). But with a few exceptions (the intro courses) it’s entirely possible to take only really good, really intense classes. Listen to the advice of advisers and upper classmen when choosing classes and drop a class if you get in it to find that half the class seems to be comprised of the football team.</p>
<p>The department is also fairly bad at presenting its resources to students. They have a lot of opportunities for research/internships (a lot through the Baker Institute), but you’ll have to put some effort into finding out about them (the department is horribly organized, no one seems to even know who else is in the department).</p>