<p>Many ranking (eg US News) says Columbia Economics is about 15th</p>
<p>that's it mok, close those eyes, and follow the rankings</p>
<p>Are you a future grad student or future undergrad? If you're the latter, don't worry. If you're the former, only worry if it has to do with your sub-specialty.</p>
<p>why is everyone so obsessed with rankings?!?! <em>sigh</em></p>
<p>by many rankings, you mean one?</p>
<p>seriously, have you even looked at the methodology usnews uses? This is of course, the same publication that places Penn undergrad above MIT. if you're going to follow rankings blindly, then why even ask? </p>
<p>For the record it IS top 10, still moving up and shooting for top 5. There have been some very high profile faculty hires in the past few years.</p>
<p>And it has about zero effect on undergrad.</p>
<p>Wow you guys are really skilled at jumping to conclusions</p>
<p>"that's it mok, close those eyes, and follow the rankings"</p>
<p>-Open those eyes and read properly because he never stated he's going to follow rankings.</p>
<p>"why is everyone so obsessed with rankings?!?! <em>sigh</em>"</p>
<p>-It seems to me he was just more curious than obssessed.</p>
<p>"if you're going to follow rankings blindly, then why even ask? "</p>
<p>-ummm buddy, Theres no where in the thread that states whether or not he's going to follow rankings</p>
<p>Note::I think some of you need to answer the thread as its asked rather than striving to rebuke someone. SMFH. & To the OP, yes its ranked top 10 because of their NObel prize winning Prof.</p>
<p>Yes, it is top ten. And, as stated, aiming for top five. The Nobel Prize went to an econ prof last year who has spent almost his entire career at Columbia, and several others are mentioned as contenders.</p>
<p>The most significant rankings of departments are done by the National Research Council and come out every ten years. They are due out again this fall. They influence funding, faculty recruitment, and whether a department can draw the top grad students. Beyond that, as also stated above, an individual department ranking in or out of the top ten does not matter for an undergrad. It's the overall quality of the institution and the education it offers that counts. As an example, Harvard's applied math department is ranked around 21st by USNWR, but no one automatically turns up their noses at an application for employment or grad school from a student who majored in applied math at Harvard.</p>
<p>I'd look at the faculty. If you're interested Sachs's work DEFINITELY GO THERE.</p>
<p>Seriously read up on the faculty. If after doing even 30 minutes of research you don't think it's one of the ten best econ departments in the world (if not five best), you probably don't belong there anyway.</p>
<p>Guess what. Good luck actually getting to know them. Once again, totally irrelevant. By the way, I've been a student at Columbia for 3 years of my life. If you focus on irrelevant criteria like this you will miss everything that matters.</p>
<p>The following 10 schools are consistently ranked higher than Columbia Econ.</p>
<p>Harvard
Princeton
Chicago
Berkeley
Yale
Northwestern
MIT
Stanford
UPenn
UCSC</p>
<p>Maybe UCLA Cornell Dartmouth NYU</p>
<p>For undergraduate economics, I'd personally recommend Princeton, Yale, Chicago, MIT, Harvard, Caltech, and Dartmouth as well as certain small LACs (Williams, Wellesley, etc), above Columbia. In other words, though, Columbia has one of the top programs.</p>
<p>rankings take past data, there is a time lag between changes in a dept and rankings change, 4-5 years ago columbia econ wasn't anything extraordinary, things change, things have changed for columbia econ, namely nobel prizes and a large increase in the number of star studded faculty all/most of whom teach undergrad classes. Columbia as directed a huge amount of effort and money to build their econ dept, with research funding, top faculty poached from top schools, and young, desirable, up and coming economists. example: they took jeff sachs from harvard, and put him in charge of his own earth institute, that studies econ development, climate change, the environment, energy, socio economic changes etc. True some of the stars don't make great teachers, but many are phenomenal, their brilliance shows through (sunil gulati, xavier sala-i-martin to name a couple). I dislike the general sentiment on CC that sees a trade off between brilliance and good teaching, if anything there is a positive correlation.</p>
<p>For undergraduate studies the rankings do not matter. There are a lot of good professors on the faculty now to help you navigate any branch of economics you are interested in due to recent hirings. </p>
<p>At the grad level there are no differences between MIT, Chicago, Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, etc. Any student with a good dissertation from any of these schools can get a good academic job if that is what the person want.</p>