<p>any recommendations? how can we even tell if these departments are strong? thanks in advance!</p>
<p>^^ I’d say look for…</p>
<p>– What percent of students are in the major (econ will be a top choice almost anywhere; English might be more or less popular depending on the school’s culture)
– Depth of departmental offerings and class sizes as a proxy for education quality. For English, don’t count “Intro to Composition” as a real class-- that’s most likely a remedial class.
– In econ, see if the department offers a stand-alone class in game theory. I don’t know tons about econ, but I did a quick survey of “good” departments’ econ offerings and compared them to less-well-known schools’ econ offerings. Almost all the good schools offered game theory as its own elective, while the less-well-known departments covered game theory as part of a course. In English, I would do the same thing for critical theory-- a good department should have a stand-alone course in critical theory, while a lesser department might not even have critical theory. If DS/DD isn’t interested in the high end academic side of things, this might not be as much of an issue.
– Check offerings in related subjects: business, accounting, communications, journalism, creative writing. If the econ program is the accounting program and vice versa, or the communications and English program are the same, I think that’s a sign that the courses might not be as academic.
– What do students have to do to make honors? Is a thesis required?
– Can students take an independent study in the course material for credit?
– If you visit campus, try talking to students and folks in the department. When I was visiting colleges I had a lot of luck tracking down administrators in the fields I was interested in-- I just e-mailed them in advance and let them know I was coming to campus.</p>
<p>My suggestions are a start for things to look out for. Maybe people have other suggestions. Best of luck to you!</p>
<p>Look at the faculty who teach there now, look at the faculty who have taught there in the past. For English, how many alumni have won awards in literature, poetry, journalism, criticism? For Economics, likewise.</p>
<p>Look at Wikipedia articles, “List of Famous Alumni,” “List of Famous Faculty,” “X Prize Winners,” for example.</p>
<p>^^ True, but I think that might say more about the outlier alumni than about the typical student in the typical class. You’re probably aware that “Julie” of “Julie and Julia” is a Lord Jeff :-)</p>
<p>Plus, if you were to tally up the undergraduate degrees of Nobel Prize winners, I bet a ham sandwich that the top gunners would be City University of New York, Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Swarthmore, Yale, and Princeton. Hardly a surprise there ;-)</p>
<p>thanks so much for your suggestions! i have a lot more research to do!</p>