<p>What are the best colleges if I want to major in Economics and then attend Law School? I'd like to become a lawyer or politician. So what are the best colleges to go to for an Econ major? I would appreciate it if you could also rank those colleges from best to worst. Thanks.</p>
<p>A simple search of the forums could give you this answer. </p>
<p>Harvard and Chicago are tops</p>
<p>Pick almost any of the top 50 universities in the US and you will be fine. Of course, if you give us more to go on (SAT, class rank, unweighed GPA, AP results, ECs, hobbies, setting preference etc...), maybe we can give you more. In my opinion, Chicago, Harvard, MIT, Princeton and Stanford are tops. Cal, Northwestern, Penn and Yale are also amazing. But there are many other excellent Econ departments. It really depends on what you want to do and on your credentials.</p>
<p>co-sign what Alexandre said....</p>
<p>I'm not looking for information on the Econ departments of each school or anything. I simply want to know, ranking wise, what are the best colleges to attend if I plan on majoring in Economics. Yes, there are plenty of good colleges with good Econ department (I know that already), but I'm looking for the best. Please, don't say anything like any top university or liberal arts college will be alright. That's too broad and it doesn't help me. I want to know like the best 15 colleges for Econ majors and also have them ranked.</p>
<p>In Sheed30's official ranking..</p>
<p>1) Chicago
2) MIT
3) Harvard
4) Stanford
5) Princeton
6) Northwestern
7) Yale
8) Penn</p>
<p>I don't think you understand. There are literally dozens of university that are excellent. How do you leave out Amherst or Bowdoin or Claremont McKenna or Darmouth or Haverford or Middlebury or Pomona or Swarthmore or Wesleyan or Williams out of the equation? None of those will make any Econ ranking anytime soon, but they all offer equally good educations and post-graduation opportunities as say Columbia or Penn. In terms of pure research universities, the top 20 undergraduate Econ departments are the following (in my personal and humble opinion):</p>
<p>GROUP I
Harvard University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Princeton University
Stanford University
University of Chicago</p>
<p>GROUP II
Northwestern University
University of California-Berkeley
University of Pennsylvania
Yale University</p>
<p>GROUP III
Columbia University
University of Califiornia-Los Angeles
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor</p>
<p>GROUPS IV & V
Brown University
Carnegie Mellon University
Cornell University
Duke University
Johns Hopkins University
New York University
University of California-San Diego
University of Rochester
University of Texas-Austin
University of Virginia
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Vanderbilt University
Washington University-St Louis</p>
<p>If you're asking for a school that will get an knee-jerk "oh, top-notch economics" reaction, that's definitely Chicago, but Chicago is a whole lot more of a package deal. If you're interested in Chicago, make sure that you're also interested in wanting a Core Curriculum and that you're looking for an intense academic and intellectual experience.</p>
<p>PM me if you have questions/ want to hear more about Chicago.</p>
<p>^Excatly. but.. honestly if you're that interested in Econ you should have known before you post this thread...</p>
<p>MY ranking was soley based on National Universities...i din't take anything else into account</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard.</li>
<li>Chicago</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>LSE</li>
</ol>
<p>Usually people who want to go to law school and/or into politics choose poli sci as a major, but you can't go wrong with either. </p>
<p>You can certainly get packed lecture halls and inaccessible profs, but you can't go wrong.</p>
<p>P.S. if you want to go into politics, you should do what Bill Clinton did, go to Gtown SFS and network in DC. Plus they do have an international economics major if memory serves.</p>
<p>LSE? First of all, the OP was asking about US departments. Secondly, LSE is not on par with Chicago when it comes to Econ. LSE is excellent, comparable to the likes of Columbia, Penn and other top 10 Econ departments, but it is not quite as highly regarded as Chicago or MIT.</p>
<p>I definitely agree that for students interested in Law school and Politics, Georgetown rocks!</p>
<p>Whoever said most politicians are polisci majors, please provide a link because I am calling BS on that statement.</p>
<p>Actually, I get the impression that the OP is only interested in economics because econ majors are known to score better on the LSAT than almost every other major (on average). If he or she had genuine interest they would have done a couple of hours of research on economics departments before asking such a broad question.</p>
<p>EDIT: Just for kicks i decided to enter economics ranking into google to see what pops up. And lo, there it was. An economics ranking, first hit. According to google the search took 0.06 seconds. Laziness is lame.</p>
<p>yeah, there are quite a few superb ones, but i would say chicago is probably the best/best renowned.</p>
<p>I agree with Alexandre that I think people should give a benefit of doubt about Chicago's undergrad program being the best instead of jumping onto that Nobel wagon so blindly. One thing that made me to have doubt about its program being clear #1 is the fact it got beat 3 times in a row by Northwestern in the College Fed Challenge (they compete in the same regional before going to national). I understand contest like this may (or maybe not) be a very poor guage but it should at the minimum make us to take a harder look and investigate further before jumping into conclusion. That said, there's no question Chicago is the most renowned in the historical development of economics theories.</p>
<p>Chicago is excellent for econ, but it still isn't Harvard. Although an extremely right-wing or extremely libertarian person might be more comfortable with the prevalent ideology in the chicago economics department.</p>
<p>no, Chicago is not Harvard ..... it's better</p>
<p>The Chicago Econ department contains a much broader scope of ideology than far right-wing/libertarian, even though Milton Friedman is one of the most famous Chicago profs:</p>
<p>[url=<a href="http://www.isi.org/college_guide/sample/2005/chic.pdf%5DThis%5B/url">http://www.isi.org/college_guide/sample/2005/chic.pdf]This[/url</a>] is pretty accurate, though biased towards the traditional end of the spectrum:</p>
<p>"...the economics department, which might be expected to lean rightward because of its historic identification with the free-market Chicago School and Milton Friedman, is far from monolithic and includes several left-of-center Keynesians."</p>