Hello, I’m an international (Asian) applicant and I’m confused about the merits of the London School of Economics vs. US liberal arts colleges to study economics. I got my offer from LSE in November to study Government and Economics; I’m still waiting on my US colleges but I’ve mostly applied to top liberal arts colleges like Swarthmore and Williams. I know that LACs give you more attention from your professors and also the opportunity to study more subjects, but I also know that the LSE name and employability with an economics degree are incomparable. Any help with this choice would be appreciated! Thanks!
The big question is: where do you want to work afterwards? If you’re hoping to immigrate to the US long-term, you’d be best served with a degree from an American college. (Though the path to immigration is non-trivial with an undergraduate degree only.) If you’re hoping to settle down in Europe, go to LSE. If you want to go back to Asia, I am not qualified to give you advice.
Re immigrating to the US: you’d essentially have three options.
First, marry a US citizen. You’ll meet many more eligible bachelors and bachelorettes in the US than in the UK, so going to school in the US would be a no-brainer in that circumstance.
Second, work on OPT after college and hope your employer will sponsor you for a work visa afterwards. OPT is only available to students graduating from US colleges. However, there’s a yearly cap on the number of work visas issued, which makes it difficult to get one with an undergraduate degree only. Which brings us to the most popular path among international students hoping to stay in the US.
Third, go to graduate school in the US. An American graduate degree makes it easier to qualify for a work visa for two reasons. First, you qualify for jobs that require expertise, which not many applicants bring. Second, there are additional work visas set aside for foreigners with a graduate degree from an American university, so the yearly visa cap is much less of an issue.
It’s much easier to get admitted to a top US graduate program applying from an American college, because American colleges give you the opportunities that American graduate schools are looking for. For example, letters of recommendations from university faculty are extremely important in the graduate school admission process and many programs also value prior research experience. American liberal arts students can easily get both. British students have trouble with either.
However, an American college degree is not a good option if want to move to Europe afterwards. European employers as well as European universities look down upon an American liberal arts education (which only gives you 3 semesters’ worth of training in your major throughout your 8 semesters of college). Europe favors specialization. If you want to work in Europe, study in Europe.
Thank you so much for such an insightful answer! I’m not sure where I’d like to live, my main contention with a liberal arts degree is that on its own it has very little employability, and I’d like to work some years before going on to get my Masters. I am quite certain, however, that I’d like to get my Masters in the States, so I do see the benefits of a liberal arts education too.
If you can afford a Master’s degree in the US, you’ll be able to get one regardless of where in the world your undergraduate degree is from.
I just wanted to mention that Master’s degrees in economics aren’t super popular among American economics majors. They’d either stop with a Bachelor’s degree, or go straight for the PhD. (PhD programs accept students straight out of college and pay for their tuition and living expenses.) PhD programs are significantly more selective than most Master’s programs and care about things that foreign students have a hard time obtaining (like letters of recommendation and research experience). Going to a small liberal arts college like Williams or Swarthmore would put you into a much better position to apply to American PhD programs if you’re interested in that path. If not, strike that consideration from your list of pros and cons.
If you want to work for a few years before applying to graduate school, do some research on whether you’d be able to work in the UK with a degree from LSE. (Foreign graduates of American colleges can work for 1-2 years after graduation on OPT, which comes with their student visa, before they need to worry about the work visa process.)
A degree from a top LAC, like Williams or Swarthmore, will not, many Americans would say, engender “very little employability” (at least for Americans in the US). Why else do you think those top LACs get as many applicants as they do?