<p>Hi everyone... </p>
<p>I'm a current W student, and I'm interested in applying to another school as a transfer. I want something with a more theoretical basis to economics -- I'm thinking about maybe even getting a Ph.D. in economics eventually -- and so I wanted to see if anyone had (or had any advice on) transferred from W to either H, Y, S, or M?</p>
<p>In another post about transferring I put up, I just mentioned HYP... of course now I realize that P doesn't accept transfers and S/M are also really great for econ (in fact I'm really loving MIT right now... A lot of my favorite professors are there... i.e. Jon Gruber @ MIT)</p>
<p>This is not the time to knock W. I absolutely love Penn and Wharton.... great city, awesome classes, great people.... and if you're reading this and you're a high school student looking for a business school, W is definitely the place to go. I'm just looking for something different (theoretical econ, not business econ) and I wanted to know if transfer is an option. </p>
<p>Thanks for your help guys!</p>
<p>^MIT and Harvard are both great at econ. You should consider whether you want to be in a liberal arts school–it’s a whole different atmosphere.</p>
<p>Also, consider U. of Chicago if you are seriously considering being an economist. My feeling is that the undergraduate education overall may be the best of all schools for economics. It has the rigor of MIT plus the liberal arts atmosphere of Harvard.</p>
<p>One issue with transferring is that you will be subject to the core requirements of the college you transfer to. Chicago’s core is pretty onerous especially for transfer students. Assuming you weren’t taking many difficult science classes because you were in Wharton you would have to take a fair number of science classes at MIT as well. I’m not sure about Harvard but you may have to take many core classes there too. These requirements are obviously not insurmountable but they aren’t totally insignificant either as you will want to take many math and econ classes for econ grad school.</p>
<p>For preparation for econ grad school MIT is excellent as you mention. The faculty at MIT in addition to being top notch scholars also definitely care about undergraduates as well. Because MIT has a business major and MIT’s technical emphasis the econ major tends to attract a more theoretical/mathematically stronger group than at peer schools. At Harvard the econ major is predominantly for students planning to enter finance/consulting and students desiring to go to grad school for econ are encouraged to major in applied math with econ specialization instead. Although Chicago has a very strong reputation in econ its graduate program in econ is definitely not on the level of MIT/Harvard and it’s unclear if it’s undergraduate program is either.</p>
<p>UChicago is probably not the best option for you, but you never know. You can actually waive all of your science, math, and foreign language GE classes with AP credit, though I’m not sure how it works for transfers. (But, you cannot waive any humanities classes with AP credit). </p>
<p>@UMTYMP student: Economics at the undergraduate level for these schools is pretty much the same. They are all at the highest echelon in the world. I’m too lazy to check but I think USNWR has five schools tied for #1 in undergrad economics. Choose based on fit or, more likely in this case, where you can get in. </p>
<p>At the graduate level, I think MIT is definitely doing more of the cutting-edge research. I’m not intending to go on to grad school, but I found econjobrumors to be pretty useful at figuring out where institutions stands relative to each other (feel free to take this with a grain of salt - I urge you to).</p>