<p>Hey CC, im looking for an good undergraduate econ program that will properly prepare me for graduate study. I live in PA and would like to stay close to home and i do need a college that will provide a lot of aid. My ETC is ~1750 and will need a lot of aid to afford college. Also my GPA, SAT, and ACT weren't the best, all though i did take a very good course load. I also have few. extra curriculars and a part time tutoring job.</p>
<p>Scores:</p>
<p>GPA: 3.6</p>
<p>SAT Total: 1840
SAT Critical Reading: 660
SAT Math: 670
SAT Writing: 510</p>
<p>Unfortunately the schools with the best FA are also the ones most competitive to get into. That being said your ACT is pretty high (~2000 for an SAT conversion) and your GPA doesn’t disqualify you from some schools. Go to the financial aid forum and look at the pinned threads there.</p>
<p>For PhD study in economics, you want a school with good math and statistics offerings. A school whose economics department offers math-oriented economics courses (intermediate microeconomics and econometrics, plus electives) is also preferable, although most such schools are highly selective.</p>
<p>Try running the online Net Price Calculators for a few Pennsylvania LACs such as Gettysburg or Dickinson, and for some state schools such as Penn State and Pitt. What is your Expected Family Contribution (EFC) for those schools? Can your family afford to cover those amounts?</p>
<p>Submit your ACT, not your SAT. Rochester and UMinny are definitely respected programs in econ. Some of the toughest/most quantitative, however. Also, UMinny won’t provide enough fin aid.</p>
<p>As @mikemac asked, what type of grad study? What goals do you have in life?</p>
<p>Depending on where you’re coming from in Pennsylvania, these schools will be within a day’s drive of home; about 7 hours or so. A Business or Economics degree from any of them could lead to a interview for a finance job in either Charlotte or Atlanta, two big financial centers. USC’s International Business program has a great reputation, by the way. Each of these schools have been known to offer good financial aid to students that add regional diversity to their campuses.</p>
<p>Wofford College
Furman University
U of South Carolina-Columbia
U of Alabama-Birmingham</p>
<p>I want to pursue a phd in economics, not to teach but rather work for government. Ideally I see myself working as an economist for the IMF. Dream big right?</p>
<p>OP, your math scores on the ACT/SAT and your GPA do not suggest you have the kinds of skills in math to pursue a PhD in economics, which is largely math-based. So you’re going to have to prove in college that you have the math chops for grad school. Having a high GPA will be important to your grad app, but especially high grades in math will be expected if you’re to be competitive. You may be expected to have succeeded in multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and real analysis. In addition, you should have taken Intros to Probability and Statistics.</p>
<p>Take a look at these urls for more info on PhD programs in economics: </p>
<p>As for your app to u/g, having A’s in AP Calc and Stats and 700+ in MathII might help your cause.
Admission to PSU, Pitt, Muhlenberg, Drexel, etc. as an economics major isn’t as difficult as it is for some other majors, but you will want to find an economics major that has a heavy math emphasis or you should just major in math. It is possible to find economics majors that lack this math focus so necessary to grad school, but they will inhibit your app to grad school.</p>
<p>Finally, if you don’t have the chops for a math intensive economics track, you will want to find yourself at a university large enough to offer econ lite or other majors in which you might be interested, such as international relations or communication.</p>
<p>(Franklin & Marshall College, maybe? It offers great aid.)</p>
<p>I second Pittsburgh. I am under the impression that LACs aren’t ideal for getting into top PhD programs in economics, as the competition is intense and comes from places like Cal and Yale where many students apply to PhD programs with extensive research experience under their belts (with profs who are often published in top economics journals supporting their cases). Pitt has a good graduate econ program so if you can do some graduate classes at Pitt and work with some profs it would definitely help your case while applying to PhD programs.</p>
<p>Google for Siegfried and Stock, “Undergraduate Origins of Ph.D. Economists” (2006). See Table 4. “Institution Size Normalized Top American Sources of Eventual Economics”. The top 5 institutions are all LACs. Among the top schools are quite a few other LACs where the OP would have a realistic shot at admissions. Run the online Net Price Calculators to estimate costs at a few of these.</p>
<p>I don’t think the OP’s SAT-M score (670) is a very reliable predictor of his potential for advanced study in economics. It may mean he’ll have to work a little harder than some other econ students in his college math classes. </p>
<p>Competition for PhDs in economics has become intense over the years, so I have to wonder how valid that list is anymore. I did, however, check out the recent PhDs produced by LACs, and Williams, for one, seems to be doing very, very well at producing economics PhDs.</p>
<p>In any case, LACs may be good at producing high percentages of PhDs in economics, but if you check out the CVs of the job market candidates at TOP universities every year, you would find that there are only 1-2 students who went to small LACs. The rest went to big universities in the US or come from outside the US. I’m making an important distinction here, by the way: the “top 10” economics PhD universities, not all economics PhD programs. The most competitive students at the best programs usually come from outside LACs as those students have had significant experience in research and have had access to graduate level courses.</p>
<p>Williams, unlike many other schools, offers some advanced undergraduate level math-oriented economics courses (e.g. 461, 471, 475, although they do not appear to be offered every year). Presumably, the pre-PhD students will take these courses, along with more advanced math and statistics courses (e.g. MATH 150 or 151, 209, 250, 350 and STAT 201, etc).</p>
<p>According to NSF (webcaspar) data for 2008-2012, Williams does appear to be the LAC with the highest absolute number of alumni PhDs earned in economics (with 26 earned doctorates for the 5 year period.) However, Swarthmore (with 15), Wellesley and Macalester (with 14) also out-performed huge research universities such as NYU, Ohio State, and Penn State (11 each) in absolute numbers of earned doctorates (let alone in institution size normalized rates).</p>