<p>As a prospective econ major, I'm wondering how MIT's undergrad econ department stacks up against other top schools (Harvard, Yale, etc.) Does MIT have lots of Nobel Prize winners because the professors research all day and don't interact with students, or do you get constant contact with faculty? Are there many UROPs for econ majors? Is the work just as bad as that of other majors?</p>
<p>I'm interested in Economics too, well more like management science. MIT is one of the only schools in the nation to have Management Science with Information Technology as one of the concentrations available for undergrads. Compared to other schools, I would say that MIT's Economics (or MS programs) programs are not as well known as other schools, but still is one of the best.</p>
<p>If I were you, I would shoot this question over to Mitra at her</a> blog -- she's an econ major and could probably give you all kinds of details about this.</p>
<p>Generally speaking, professors at MIT are very accessible to interested undergrads. I mean, even if professors do research all day (and most of them don't), all you have to do is get a UROP with them, and then you can hang out with them and participate in their amazing, Nobel-prize-worthy research. </p>
<p>The UROP</a> page for econ suggests that most students contact professors directly instead of going through the UROP coordinator. That's how many people get UROPs, and it mostly means that getting a job is up to how tenacious you choose to be.</p>
<p>EDIT: I meant "that's how many people get UROPs in other departments", ie that's a common way for everybody to get UROPs, and suggests that econ has many UROPs like other departments do. Sorry for being unclear.</p>
<p>Most people can get a good Economics education in any of the top universities and colleges in the country.</p>
<p>The few hard-core Economics majors who plan to do significant graduate-level work in their upper years will want to go to institutions with top-rated graduate departments. It is generally acknowledged that the "big five" graduate departments in Economics are, in alphabetic order, Chicago, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, and Stanford.</p>