My first post! Advice for a new member in regards to the next upcoming months?

To begin with, a little about myself. I am a male attending a protestant, private day school in North Carolina. My school is well accredited and does an alright job in terms of college placement- we send a few to religious schools each year, a few to state schools, a few to our states flagship, and occasionally a few to a good LAC or top 50. I’ve maintained a decent GPA for my four years, somewhere around a 3.5-3.75, however I know I haven’t put in the work that would be required at the colleges I have been accepted into. My studying occurs twice during the school year: midterm exams and final exams. My test scores are somewhat odd, I took the ACT once and my scores were all over the place. A 36 on reading, a 28 on science and english and a 26 on math. I have applied to a somewhat long list of schools, well over 10. I’ve been accepted to each as of yet with exception to Butler’s pre-pharmacy program (I applied two months late, and I’m guessing that would be the reason why I was denied). A few of the schools I’ve been accepted into: Rhodes, Sewanee, Elon, Hobart William Smith, and Centre. I am waiting to hear back from Union College in NY and UNC-CH. Now onto my questions.

Out of each of the colleges listed which would be the most marketable/lucrative in terms of a degree in Finance/Economics?

What is the workload I can expect coming from four years of not studying jumping into the competitive atmosphere of each of the colleges listed?

What can I do during the remaining months of the school year and summer to better prepare myself for college?

Which of the colleges listed have the best alumni network?

How important is name recognition in terms of future job prospects?

Which of the schools listed is the most up and coming?

Any other advice would be most appreciated! Thanks to all of you guys.

Out of all of those I would say that Rhodes and Sewanee have the best reputations and are the better schools overall…

What do you mean by “which would be the most marketable/lucrative in terms of a degree in Finance/Economics?” Are you talking i-banking, accounting, entrepreneurship, an actual Economics major, etc? These are different areas, and the schools have different reputations in each.

From a quick survey of the course catalogues it seems that Rhodes has the most rigorous course of study in economics. If you really want to do econ the best thing you can do to prepare is start practicing your math… have you taken calculus or high-level stats yet? Get yourself some books in those subjects and study study study.

As for general college readiness, try reading some biographies or historical nonfiction over the summer (I can give you some examples of books I actually read in college, if you like), and set a strict deadline! It’ll be somewhat similar in tone/construction/content to the material you’ll be reading in your classes, and getting used to reading by a deadline will help mitigate some of the “culture shock” of moving from high school to college.

By faculty scholarly publishing, HWS would seem to be one of your stronger choices with respect to your interest in economics, appearing 35th below out of 197 liberal arts colleges:

https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.uslacecon.html