Clarinda asked:
Any ranking to support your answer will be appreciated. I’m interested in comparative terms, with other liberal arts colleges, such as Claremont McKenna, Williams, and Vassar, who all have really good economics departments. Thanks in advance.
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Any ranking to support your answer will be appreciated. I’m interested in comparative terms, with other liberal arts colleges, such as Claremont McKenna, Williams, and Vassar, who all have really good economics departments. Thanks in advance.
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Economics
Loren Pope’s book, “Colleges That Change Lives” certainly likes Rhodes. He doesn’t mention any specific departments though.
I’ll add another school to your list, all of which are expensive private schools: The University of Chicago is the home of more Nobel prizes in Economics than any other university. No other school is better, or even its equal.
I don’t have a ranking of undergraduate economics departments in liberal arts colleges. You no doubt are already familiar with the controversial USN&WR ranking of liberal arts colleges:
Williams = #1 Claremont McKenna = #11 Vassar = #11(tied) Rhodes = #49 (out of 121) There is an excellent, if a little outdated ranking of graduate economics departments by the National Academy of Sciences. Since this is a ranking of PhD programs in economics, it does not have undergraduate colleges. However, you may find it helpful if you are also looking at universities. I can’t paste in the entire Excel spreadsheet here, so go to the link below. The top programs are:
Chicago Harvard(tied with Chicago) MIT Stanford Princeton Yale UC-Berkeley Penn Northwestern Minnesota UCLA Columbia Michigan Rochester Wisconsin UCSD NYU Cornell CalTech Maryland Going back to Rhodes College, the Princeton Review reports that the most popular majors are: biology, business, and English. Economics wasn’t mentioned, although, if it were a top program, it probably would be fairly popular.
Economics is listed as one of the most popular majors at Williams and at Claremont-McKenna. Vassar’s popular majors are English, political science and psychology.
If you are limited to the colleges you listed, Williams and Claremont-McKenna look like the places to go. If you relax some of the selection criteria, there are a lot more impressive universities on the list I provided you above. Some of them are prohibitively selective to get in. Others have more normal admissions.
Good luck to you wherever you decide to attend!