<p>I want to know in what school I can study anything I want,
that means the Ivy school with the least core curriculum. </p>
<li>What Ivy has the best economics program undergrad.?</li>
</ol>
<p>Those 2 questions are all I’m asking, so please help me out here.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Brown has no core curriculum or distribution requirements of any kind.</p></li>
<li><p>Best economics program based on what criteria? They are all very good. There's really no such thing as which one is best without very precise specifications that isn't completely subjective.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>im bumping this, because im looking for the same exact thing</p>
<p>It sounds like all of the ivies could fit either part or all of what your looking for, however I would say that HYP and Penn would be your best bets. Those schools all have top notch Economics, have extremely broad course offerings, and are not known for a harsh core.<br>
Brown has no core but a weaker economics department.
Columbia has a very solid econ department and is in a great location for business but has a very tough core.
Cornell is not known for their strength in economics as most of the other schools are (however they do have a very good ug business program), and there will be a core curriculum which varies by college, however they offer a rediculous breadth of courses and I am sure that you will be able to study an excellent range of subjects there.</p>
<p>I personally am applying to Penn for their Philosophy, Politics and Economics program. Thanks to their new, more open core curriculum you will have the opportunity to chose the core classes and thus will be able to satisfy some pre-reqs for your major as well as being able to dable in other subjects/form a concentration in another subject as a minor. For example, if I were to be accepted I would enroll in the PPE program with an emphasis on economics while also taking a minor concentration in theoretical physics by taking classes in the College, Wharton and the engineering school (you can only take four courses in total at any of the schools that you are not enrolled in which will count towards your major, but you will have the opportunity to enroll in other classes as electives or for your minor).</p>
<p>Why restrict your search to just Ivy League schools...when schools that are similar to Ivy League's and just as good/better in many ways exist including Stanford MIT Duke and NU - all four of which have great undergrad programs for students interested in business/econ</p>
<p>I agree with thoughtprocess.
Anyway, take Harvard off of your list...it has a core curriculum. Yale only has a distributional requirement system, which is a lot different--it means that while you do need to take some classes in every field, those classes can be any classes you choose. There aren't any "required classes" that everyone has to take, most yale people say its really easy to fulfill the distributional requirement and most people could do it without even knowing it... And of course the clear winner in this area is Brown which has no core or system like that at all!</p>
<p>most ivies have outstanding economics...here is a list from an old poster who knew a lot about this:
"if I had to "group" Econ programs, I would go with 5 groups. Even schools in the fifth group have awesome Econ programs mind you.
GROUP I:
Harvard University
Masachusetts Institute of Technology
Princeton University
Stanford University
University of Chicago</p>
<p>GROUP II:
Northwestern University
University of California-Berkeley
University of Pennsylvania
Yale University</p>
<p>GROUP III:
Columbia University
University of California-Los Angeles
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor</p>
<p>GROUP IV:
Brown University
Carnegie Mellon University
Cornell University
Duke University
Johns Hopkins University
New York University
University of Rochester
University of Wisconsin-Madison</p>
<p>GROUP V:
Boston University
University of California-San Diego
University of Maryland-College Park
University of Minnesota
University of Texas-Austin</p>
<p>Although not listed above, many LACs also have excellent Econ departments. Chief among them are:
Amherst College
Carleton College
Claremont McKenna College
Colby College
Dartmouth College (not quite a LAC, but it does not offer graduate degrees in Econ either)
Denison University
Hamilton College
Haverford College
Macalester College
Middlebury College
Oberlin College
Pomona College
Reed College
Swarthmore College
Vassar College
Wesleyan University
Williams College"</p>
<p>Why are you concerned with econ rank? If you want to be a professor or get an awesome job, all of the Ivies (plus Williams, Amherst, Duke, Chicago, Stanford, etc) are top notch and do equally well.</p>
<p>If you don't want to be an econ professor or do think tank research, ignore this. The core curriculum issue is also not addressed.</p>
<p>If you do want to, here is the ranking for the undergraduate programs which best prepare for an econ PhD:</p>
<p>Number of PhDs per 1000 grads </p>
<p>1 Swarthmore College 16
2 Grinnell College 7
3 Williams College 7
4 Carleton College 7
5 Harvard University 6
6 Agnes Scott College 6
7 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 5
8 University of Chicago 5
9 Yale University 5
10 California Institute of Technology 5
11 Princeton University 5
12 Macalester College 5
13 Stanford University 4
14 Pomona College 4
15 Oberlin College 4
16 Wellesley College 4
17 Trinity University 4
18 Bowdoin College 3
19 Earlham College 3
20 Berea College 3
21 Amherst College 3
22 Wabash College 3
23 Bard College 3
24 Rocky Mountain College 3
25 Coe College 3
26 Wesleyan University 3
27 College of William and Mary 3
28 Colby College 3
29 Columbia University in the City of New York 3
30 Hillsdale College 3
31 Franklin and Marshall College 3</p>
<p>Pasted from <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?p=2070739&highlight=econ+reed#post2070739%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?p=2070739&highlight=econ+reed#post2070739</a></p>
<p>i love how people basically make up information on this site about the quality of particular academic areas at particular schools</p>
<p>harvard and princeton (and MIT and stanford) have the best econ departments but both have stringment requirements. this is only important if you are planning to apply to econ grad school and are looking to hook up with a "name" professor to write your rec (pedigree matters a lot for econ). the other ivies also offer outstanding economics educations for undergrads though, and the differences between them are nominal. the ranking of groups that are listed above are ludicrous.</p>
<p>as others have pointed out brown has the least requirements and an open curriculum.</p>
<p>your best bet might be to just look at the department websites at these schools and see if they meet your needs </p>
<p><a href="http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Economics/undergraduate.php%5B/url%5D">http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Economics/undergraduate.php</a>
<a href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/economics/undergraduate/s5_4_1.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.columbia.edu/cu/economics/undergraduate/s5_4_1.html</a>
<a href="http://www.arts.cornell.edu/econ/major.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.arts.cornell.edu/econ/major.html</a>
<a href="http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Eeconomic/Ungrad.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.dartmouth.edu/~economic/Ungrad.htm</a>
<a href="http://www.economics.harvard.edu/undergraduate/%5B/url%5D">http://www.economics.harvard.edu/undergraduate/</a>
<a href="http://www.econ.upenn.edu//Undergraduate/index.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.econ.upenn.edu//Undergraduate/index.htm</a>
<a href="http://www.econ.princeton.edu/undergrad/index.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.econ.princeton.edu/undergrad/index.html</a>
<a href="http://www.econ.yale.edu/undergrad/ugrad.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.econ.yale.edu/undergrad/ugrad.htm</a></p>
<p>Though it's a notch below ivies, University of Rochester has a pretty sweet econ dept. and there is an "open curriculum" that's not very much more structured than brown's.</p>
<p>I never understand the focus of program rank. Unless you want to work at a think tank, you should be focusing on which schools will get you into the top grad schools or get you a great job. Often this is not correlated with the rank of the econ dept at all!!</p>
<p>if you were applying to law school, would the strength of the undergrad econ department matter?</p>
<p>Not nearly as much as the lsat score.</p>
<p>NOT AT ALL!! Look at Chicago vs. Dartmouth/Brown/Williams at Harvard or Yale law, B/D/W are three times more successful. People just don;t get this, program rank is practically irrelevant when it comes to Ivies and top schools. Grad schools and recruiters care about how good the undergrad program is, not your major rank!</p>
<p>"Grad schools and recruiters care about how good the undergrad program is"</p>
<p>That's why the PhD production rate can be important. This is not anybody's ranking; it's just statistical results of undergraduate quality of preparation for PhD and research.</p>
<p>People, calm down. By listing those econ undergrad programs we were just answering the OP's question. By no means did my post imply that the OP should choose the school based on the rankings...as I said in the post, you can find good econ programs in every "tier" and anyway that's not something that should dominate your decision calculus</p>
<p>The thing though is I feel many people tend to focus on program rank not understanding how little it matters when dealing with the top schools.</p>
<p>For undergrad ranking of the program isn't that important...but HYP are the best three in everything usually</p>
<p>If you are talking caliber and are thinking about schools such as Dartmouth and Penn, Duke would be a good fit socially (and of course academically) - I'd say people who like Yale and Columbia would like Stanford also. The point is, don't limit yourself to Ivies when other non-Ivy schools have the same academic strength/reputation.</p>
<p>Columbia has the most demanding core curriculum, so stay away from there. However, its economics department is becoming top notch with many world-class economists. I believe that it has the most nobels in econ on faculty and a professor just won one the other day.</p>