<p>I want to double major in Economics and Mathematics and matriculate into a top Ph.D. Economics program. </p>
<p>I recently committed to Johns Hopkins. I will be paying full there. My parents can afford it. I was accepted to the Woodrow Wilson Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program. </p>
<p>At Northeastern, I was awarded a full tuition scholarship as a part of the University Scholars Program. TODAY (5/08) I was notified by postal mail that I was admitted into the PlusOne Accelerated Masters Program as well. </p>
<p>The main reasons I chose Johns Hopkins over Northeastern were because 1. Better graduate school prospects 2. More research opportunities 3. Much more prestigious/well-known/well-recruited and 4. I think I would fit in better. </p>
<p>I have not visited either.</p>
<p>Do Ph.D. admissions care about what undergrad you attended? Northeastern Econ is ranked very low and I'm worried that this will affect my chances. I actually talked to a professor there and he told me that Northeastern in the past has not sent students to top Ph.D. programs and most of them end up working in business. </p>
<p>Would I even be able to change my mind at this point? </p>
<p>Northeastern is offering me so many perks that it is difficult to resist....</p>
<p>Northeastern does emphasize pre-professional preparation with its curriculum built around co-ops. This might not be as optimal for preparing for PhD study as undergraduate research.</p>
<p>PhD programs in economics expect applicants to have strong math and statistics backgrounds. For example, see <a href=“https://www.econ.berkeley.edu/grad/admissions/preparation[/url]”>Preparation | Department of Economics; .</p>
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<p>They do inasmuch as they have to consider how well your undergraduate institution prepared you for graduate studies. If they don’t think that you’ve been adequately prepared, you’ll be rejected from the top PHD programs and you’ll have to attend a masters program. (There were at least two graduate students who had to do this in my department at UCLA.)</p>
<p>Additionally, there was an article by a UCR professor that showed that his students were widely rejected from the top PHD programs even though they had great writing samples and great letters of rec. He noticed that UCB/UCLA students enjoyed a much greater admit to top PHD programs, and concluded that there are biases against non-elite schools like UCR (the article’s since been taken down, but I think this has more to do with pressure from other faculty in his department.)</p>
<p>PhD admissions do care about your undergrad. Given Northeastern’s very pre-professional focus, I think that you would be better off at Johns Hopkins, given that your goal is to go to an Econ PhD program. However, it would be pretty hard to turn down a full tuition scholarship at Northeastern. </p>
<p>As said above, Econ PhD programs really want to see a very strong undergrad math background in undergrad. I don’t think a master’s degree is required - you can go straight from undergrad to a PhD program.</p>