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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Related, or not - I have a very econ-focused son looking at colleges who may well be into academia for the long-haul. (Capitalist, but not an active capitalist.) Can you share more on this - how would one compare, say, a SLAC such as Pomona vs a major econ program such as UChicago?

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous] 10-20% at the top programs push on to academia.  [/quote]
Not a chance in hell this is true.  The biggest producers of Econ PhDs on a per capital basis are LACs.  There is no way that even 10% of my school's Econ majors get PhDs.[/quote][/quote]

I know people from both LACs and the major schools such as the Ivies who went on to receive economic PhDs and are now in academia/research.

What I would do is to look up the economics departments at all the colleges your son is interested in and see where the faculty received all their degrees. I quickly looked at Pomona's and both undergrad and grad are listed. You find a lot of non-Americans too, usually having come to the US for their PhD.

I don't think a school like Pomona or Williams will hurt your son, and may allow him to develop very close relationships with professors in a small department, but I also suspect a big school will provide more resources, with the downsides perhaps more competition among more majors for those resources and especially undergrad research positions. For example, your son may be very bright and if he went to Pomona he could be the star student for the department, but if he went to Chicago, he might be a smaller fish in a bigger pool and will be overlooked by a handful of truly brilliant students dominating most of the faculty's interest.

A great way to demonstrate interest in the economics programs at any school your son is interested is contacting the economics department and asking for information placement of recent grads into PhD programs. They will maintain those records and should be able to provide it to your son. [/quote]

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