<p>Hi
I'm deciding where to go between Penn (non-Wharton) and Dartmouth for undergrad to double major in Math & Econ.
I hope to get a PhD in economics after college at a top school (aiming for Stanford or Princeton)</p>
<p>I know Penn will be a harder route (I will have a lower GPA and will have to work much harder, simply because of how competitive the students are; realistically I see myself with a 3.6 at Penn and a 3.8 at Dartmouth.)
I was wondering if it will pay off? Penn's Econ & Math departments have famous scholars and they rank top 20 on most lists; meanwhile Dartmouth almost always ranks outside the top 40. </p>
<p>What's going to look better on my grad school app: graduating Penn and doing research with a slightly more famous scholar or having a slightly higher GPA at Dartmouth? </p>
<p>Unless you have specific data about the average GPAs of Math and Econ majors at Penn versus those at Dartmouth, I think you’re jumping to a conclusion and generalization that you shouldn’t. And one that’s certainly not worthy of a future Econ Ph.D. ;)</p>
<p>Given the excellence of BOTH of these schools at the undergraduate level, you should choose the school at which you think you’d be happiest–and would best thrive both academically and socially–given the entire picture (academics, campus and campus life, location, etc.). And don’t kid yourself: students who get into ANY top school, including Dartmouth, are going to be academically competitive. They wouldn’t have been accepted to those schools if they weren’t.</p>
<p>And one other thing about Penn of which you may not be aware: in addition to being able to take courses in Wharton (a nice bonus not available to Econ majors at other stop schools), an Econ major at Penn can actually pursue an Economics major that is specifically targeted at students who plan to go on to graduate school in Economics, called Mathematical Economics:</p>
<p><a href=“http://economics.sas.upenn.edu/undergraduate-program/mathematical-economics-major”>http://economics.sas.upenn.edu/undergraduate-program/mathematical-economics-major</a></p>
<p>But again, all else being equal, I think it’s a bit silly to try to predict the GPA you’d get at one school versus another given that both are highly selective schools full of high academic achievers. And instead, you should focus on where you’d be happiest (and therefore most productive and fulfilled). That’s very much a holistic, impressionistic determination, but one that ultimately will lead to the best results in terms of grad school, and life! :)</p>
<p>thanks for the reply.</p>
<p>here’s the data I have:
Dartmouth Website-- <a href=“Median Grades for Undergraduate Courses”>This page has moved;
What a Penn student told me-- for math courses, a standard curve is 20% of the class gets As, 30% gets Bs, 30% gets Cs, 20% get Ds
Seeing as the lowest median grade at Dartmouth is a B, It seems that Penn is much, much harder.</p>
<p>And about how both schools are great-- this is true, but Penn has (by most measures) a top 10 economics department, while Dartmouth is out of the top 40. I am hoping to find out if Penn perhaps acts as a feeder to the other top ten schools (in which case the lowered GPA really does not matter.)</p>
<p>Again thanks for advice</p>
<p>I wouldn’t judge the relative difficulty of the two schools based on what one Penn student told you about curves in math courses. For one thing, I seriously doubt that such a mandatory curve exists for all math classes at Penn, including smaller, advanced courses taken by majors. Assuming the curve you were told was even accurate, I would bet that it applies to a particular introductory course taken by lots of students (Wharton, pre-med, etc.), and not just math majors. You need to be careful about taking such information, assuming it’s even accurate, out of context. Also, just as top undergraduate schools are generally familiar with the grading standards of the high schools from which they receive applicants and evaluate their GPAs accordingly, the top grad and professional schools are very familiar with the average GPAs and general curves of the undergraduate schools from which they receive applications, and you can be sure that top Econ Ph.D. programs will be quite familiar with the grading practices of both Penn and Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Again, I think you’re being a bit too granular in your analysis. An electron microscope is not what’s called for here. 
Ph.D. students in the top Econ programs come from a variety of undergraduate schools, and I just can’t imagine that being at either Penn or Dartmouth will, in general, be superior to the other in terms of grad school placement. As I said before, it’s much more important that you be at the school at which you’ll be happiest, and therefore thrive the best both academically and socially. There are just too many great undergraduate programs (e.g., the top 20 private universities, the top 20 LACs, the top 10 public universities, plus many other schools) feeding students into top Ph.D. programs to be overly concerned about the relative difficulty and merits of any two of those programs. It’s just common sense. ;)</p>