So I got accepted into their online MA in Applied Economics. But i want to know how prestigious they are and if it’s worth my time and money. I mentioned the name to a few friends and they’ve never heard of it. I also saw online on U.S. News that their econ program isn’t even ranked. But on another bestschools.org or something it puts their online masters in economics as no.3 behind Johns Hopkins being No.1. Has anyone been through their econ program and especially their masters? If so, how was it?
U.S. News ranks PhD programs, which is why American’s MA program is not there.
The best way to know if it’s worth your time and money is to figure out what your goals are for the program and then find out if the program meets those goals. If your goal is to get employment after the program, contact the program and ask about career placement rates and where graduates typically end up. If your goal is deep education in economics and preparation for a PhD program, then find out how often students go to PhD programs afterwards and where they go.
Don’t rely solely on rankings from the Internet. Even the good ones might not be ranking on criteria that you actually care about (i.e., many programs are rated on the quality of professors’ research and grant output, but if what you really want is a professional program focused on career placement that doesn’t necessarily matter as much to you). Also, some of them are too narrow to give you useful information. A ranking of online applied economics MA programs might be that - it could be that all online applied economics MA programs are not great and you just have a relative ordering, not any indication of how good the programs are at getting you what you want.
And there are many online ranking that simply allow schools to pay to show up there.