Hi. My top choices are UNC and WashU and am torn on which to attend. I am a stats/econ person and plan to attend grad school. My goal in selecting undergrad is to set myself up best to get into grad school. I enjoy the sports that UNC would have to offer but that is not a deciding factor. I am curious about which school offers better grad school opportunities. Any comments are helpful. Thanks.
Annual COA for each school ?
Luckily, not a factor for me.
Both of those can get you into grad school. So don’t worry about that. For grad school admissions you will need a strong GPA, strong statement of purpose (the grad admission “essay”), strong letters of recommendation, a good GRE score (if the places you apply to require that), and (possibly) related work or research experience.
If you have a notion of which areas of economics interest you the most, spend some time with the course catalogues at both universities’ websites, and check out what they offer at both the undergrad and graduate level. Then scroll through the individual webpages of the various faculty members and find out what they have been publishing lately.
Is it wise to attend the school where I could achieve better grades? For example, I read that WashU had higher grade inflation therefore my grades might be better and my gpa.
Better grades are better, but how would you tell if there is real grade inflation? WashU students tend to have better stats coming in, so all else being equal, I would expect higher grades at WashU. But that doesn’t mean you would get better grades.
Again, whether you achieve your goals of grad school is almost completely up to you and your effort and not which of these 2 schools you choose (which I consider peers), so go with the school you feel most comfortable with and who’s student body you like best.
I agree with @PurpleTitan that grad school admissions will largely be up to what you do. Both of these universities that you are choosing between are very good. I agree that this is not an easy choice, but assuming that you can afford them without taking on debt there is no bad choice between these two schools.
Though I will say that WashU’s campus looks like a country club, their food service actually gets rave reviews and students seem to love it there.
WashU definitely spends more per capita on undergrads than UNC does.
Are you out of state for UNC? I read an article a while back on the freshman retention rate of the already small contingent of out of state admits and I don’t recall the specific number but it was low enough to warrant a whole article on it. Might be something to look into…
Not enough information on which to base a recommendation as both offer outstanding educational opportunities.
In this analysis, WUStL and UNC place 40th and 72nd, respectively, based on faculty publishing in economics: https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.usecondept.html.
^ Pretty much irrelevant for undergraduate education.