<p>I know that Yale has 'Economics and Mathematics' beyond 'Economics' alone as a major. Which is better suited for one who wishes to learn more econ. and finance? And how does Yale's Econ. program compare with that of Harvard?</p>
<p>If your username is any indication, I'm going to presume you harbor some desire to be an Investment Banker. </p>
<p>With that in mind, as much as I think Yale is awesome and would choose it over Harvard anyday, go to Harvard. Harvard/Wharton are unmatched in terms of IB/HF/PE recruiting. Yale is a notch "below". </p>
<p>Traditionally the top economic programs (at the graduate level) have been:</p>
<p>UChicago
Harvard
Princeton
MIT
Berkeley</p>
<p>The next tier includes Yale, Columbia, Penn etc. </p>
<p>WHen it comes to IB Recruiting, Harvard, Wharton PRinceton makes up the top bracket (as in the absolute top), with MIT, Columbia, Stanford, Dartmouth and then Yale coming in the second tier. Yale, for whatever reason, isn't as well known for churning out bankers compared to say (besides the obvious H,Wharton,P) Dartmouth or Columbia. It's more a mecca for premeds and pre-laws although Yale is definitely still highly respected on wall-street.</p>
<p>Haha... it's literally slang --> I be telling (don't ask me where I got this from :D)</p>
<p>I know that by the time I graduate, these jobs such as bankings and hedge funds will only decrease in money, positions, and power, so I'm not quite looking 4 years from now. :D Just a comparison on ECONOMICS, not what the program will afford... :D</p>
<p>read bottom</p>
1 Like
<p>Here's an excerpt from this article: The</a> Freakonomics of Columbia University's Economics Department</p>
<p>Economists like to joke that there are always at least fifteen departments in the top ten. Be that as it may, the consensus is that Columbia’s recent hiring spree legitimately places it in that group. “They can fight with Berkeley and Yale for six, seven, and eight,” says Gene Grossman, Princeton’s outgoing chairman. Much of the buzz at this summer’s annual National Bureau of Economic Research conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was about the remarkable run Columbia had on the job market this year. “The appointments are excellent—just what they need to consolidate their leap forward,” says Daniel McFadden, the Berkeley economist who won the Nobel Prize in 2000.</p>
<p>Beyond the immediate buzz, the beauty of having so many top faculty is that they attract top graduate students, who in turn get top jobs at other schools. These professors then encourage their top undergrads to get their Ph.D.’s at Columbia, which increases the school’s cachet even more. Eventually, everyone wants to be associated with Columbia. “That’s the way it percolates,” says Robert Solow, a Nobel laureate from MIT. </p>
<p>Despite these advantages, cracking the top five is extremely difficult, if not impossible. “Once you get to number seven, it’s hard, hard slogging,” says McFadden’s colleague David Card. In the past three decades, Card points out, there has been almost no turnover in the standing of the MITs, Harvards, and Princetons of the world. One of the last major shifts in the top five was Columbia’s movement out of it in the late sixties.</p>
<p>But Davis believes the brutal logic of rankings gets turned on its head in the case of his department—that it may actually be easier to break into the top five the closer he gets to it. For at least a decade, many of the top economists in the world have wanted to work in New York—particularly those from nearby schools like Princeton (the fourth-ranked department in the country) and Yale (probably number seven). Many faculty at these schools either live in New York and commute to campus, or they live in Princeton and New Haven but have spouses who commute the other way. “That makes sense when you don’t have a good alternative in New York City,” allows Weinstein. “But [the commute] is much harder to sell to your family when you do have an alternative.” It’s a point not lost on Princeton. Grossman, who has already lost two top people to Columbia in the past two years, says he’s watched anxiously as the number of Princeton faculty members living in New York has risen to about 10 percent of the department. “I think that there actually are right now a lot of targets of opportunity because people have spouses who work in New York City,” says Weinstein.</p>
<p>Econ rankings don't matter for finance recruiting and success on wall street. You should be asking what firms do the best with getting people into top econ grad schools or into finance. the answer to that question is:</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard, Princeton, Wharton, Yale</li>
<li>Dartmouth, Columbia, MIT, Stanford</li>
</ol>
<p>I think it would be foolish to leave Chicago, Berkeley, or even Swarthmore off of that list.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Econ rankings don't matter for finance recruiting and success on wall street. You should be asking what firms do the best with getting people into top econ grad schools or into finance. the answer to that question is:</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard, Princeton, Wharton, Yale</li>
<li>Dartmouth, Columbia, MIT, Stanford
[/quote]
Close, but no cigar. (my ranking is only based on job placement, though)
[quote]
1. Wharton, Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, MIT</li>
<li>Stanford, Dartmouth, Claremont Colleges, UCB</li>
<li>Northwestern, Chicago, CMU, Yale
[/quote]
</li>
</ol>
<p>My understanding was always that Yale matched Harvard for Econ, but I am by no means an expert.</p>
<p>Swarthmore is actually pretty weak with finance recruiting, UCB and Chicago are behind as well. These places do well if you want to work at an econ think tank after undergrad, not if you want to go into high finance.</p>
<p>Tetris, I disagree that the claremont colleges are even close to the top for finance placement. UCB is also a couple steps behind in my experience.</p>
<p>I'm not going to disagree that UCB is a couple steps behind, and I was actually thinking of moving Northwestern or CMU to the second tier (CMU's placement for their IS and BBA graduates really, really surprised me. Tepper is on fire over the last few years, and 5 years from now I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they're the top 10 for everything), but from what I know Claremont and Pomona people do very well out of school with the financials that have branches in the area (and there are many).</p>
<ol>
<li> Massachusetts Institute of Technology 5.0
University of Chicago 5.0 </li>
<li> Harvard University (MA) 4.9
Princeton University (NJ) 4.9
Stanford University (CA) 4.9
University of California–Berkeley 4.9 </li>
</ol>
<p>All these 6 institutions are better than Yale for sure. Again, Yale is a top 10, not a top 5.</p>
<p>Princeton, MIT, Yale and Harvard are the top four at the undergraduate level, in terms of placement rates into the top programs, jobs and such. They're all about equal, so pick the one that you like best. Runner-ups would be Wharton and Dartmouth and possibly Chicago. </p>
<p>In terms of economics departments overall, the piece above about Columbia is largely a bunch of hot air -- the top departments are always hiring large numbers of faculty from time to time, and the composition of the departments changes, especially when they are large departments such as econ. Columbia may have committed $10M to hiring faculty, but schools like Harvard & Yale have recently committed many times that.</p>
<p>Datalock those are graduate rankings. Yale's undergrad focus and reputation with recruiters/ grad programs brings it into the top 5, just as those factors elevate Dartmouth to the top level and remove cal.</p>
<p>PosterX is also a huge Yale troll...</p>
<p>"Columbia is largely a bunch of hot air..."</p>
<p>There are currently 27 Columbia MD's at BB firms and 14 Yale MD's.
Goldman SA recently had 8 Columbia hires and only 4 Yalies.</p>
<p>But back to the OP, finance DOES NOT EQUAL economics and the two are distinctly different. If it's Economics you're looking to really get into, it's really the grad school that matters and what grad school you get into is largely a function of your recommendation, research, and GPA.</p>
<p>How would liberal arts colleges compare? Would Econ/Maths from Amherst or Williams get you a decent job?</p>
<p>Datalook, are you just downright stpuid, or can you not distinguish between the words "undergraduate" and "graduate?"</p>
<p>I wouldn't be surprised if this kid has a shrine dedicated to USNews Graduate Rankings.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Princeton, MIT, Yale and Harvard are the top four at the undergraduate level, in terms of placement rates into the top programs, jobs and such. They're all about equal, so pick the one that you like best. Runner-ups would be Wharton and Dartmouth and possibly Chicago.
[/quote]
If you think Yale has better placement rates in the job market than Wharton then I have to question whether or not you're posting to this forum from Earth. Yale is good. Yale has a high-quality economics program. Yale has a strong alumni network. Yale is not Wharton. Yale has nowhere near the placement of Harvard or Princeton in the job market. It's not near Columbia, either. In reality it also lags behind Stern, MIT, Stanford and Northwestern in the job market. Will you get a good job if you go to Yale? Absolutely. But let's not pretend it's one of those schools--it isn't.</p>
<p>datalook using graduate rankings was kind of out of left-field because Chicago's placement from graduate school is generally considered a lot better than their placement from undergrad, which is why the graduate school rankings don't really apply to undergrad. But the general statement that the prestige of the graduate program factors into the undergraduate program is correct.</p>
<p>I'm not sure why, but I get the feeling that tetrishead and datalook are both one and the same...;)
Maybe it's because of their extreme anti-Yale-ridden comments?
When posters are so keen to point out the negatives of a college this much, you really have to question what event took place to make them feel that way, don't you think?</p>
<p>Anyways...</p>
<p>
[quote]
If you think Yale has better placement rates in the job market than Wharton then I have to question whether or not you're posting to this forum from Earth. Yale is good. Yale has a high-quality economics program. Yale has a strong alumni network. Yale is not Wharton. Yale has nowhere near the placement of Harvard or Princeton in the job market. It's not near Columbia, either. In reality it also lags behind Stern, MIT, Stanford and Northwestern in the job market. Will you get a good job if you go to Yale? Absolutely. But let's not pretend it's one of those schools--it isn't.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I vote for the above paragraph to be quoted in the next "1001 dumbest things ever said" book.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice, albeit some were completely off the mark.</p>
<p><em>coughs</em> Anti-Yalies up in here <em>coughs</em></p>