<p>I'm currently a sophomore in undergrad (duke) interested in getting a doctorate in financial economics. Does anyone know what universities are generally considered best in this area?</p>
<p>I'm a econ major/math minor. I estimate a GPA around 3.8 by senior year. What GRE score should I aim for to make me competitive for top schools?</p>
<p>How much/what kind of research experience should I have? Anything else i should know that could help me out?</p>
<p>You’ll want an 800 quant GRE score. The rest of the GRE doesn’t matter. And you’ll want as much math as possible, probably more than is required by your math minor. Work as a research assistant for some professors on projects they are planning on publishing. Tops for research in financial economics would be in the following order (from econphd.net):</p>
<p>1 University of Chicago
2 Harvard
3 University of Pennsylvania
4 NYU
5 MIT
6 Northwestern
7 Stanford
8 UCLA
9 Columbia
10 Princeton
11 Ohio State
12 London School of Economics
13 Duke
14 Toulouse I (France)
15 University of Rochester
16 USC
17 UT Austin
18 UCSD
19 UC Berkeley
20 Yale
21 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
22 UMich Ann Arbor
23 Notre Dame
24 Boston College
25 London Business School</p>
<p>Nauru: If we assume I have around a 3.8 by senior year with an econ major and math/psych minor and a GRE quant score of 800 and decent research experience. Would you think I’ll get accepted to at least one of the following: UChicago, Harvard, NYU, MIT, Stanford, Princeton and Columbia?</p>
<p>It all depends on your letters of recommendation, and to a lesser extent the additional math courses you take beyond the requirements of your program. Even then, probability of being admitted to any of those schools for PhD is very low for everybody. </p>
<p>Also, once you actually do real research on this you will realize that who you are working with is more important than a “brand name”. Your question, intentionally or not, makes you sound juvenile and very much like an undergraduate.</p>