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GMU economics Professor Peter Boettke on where to go to grad school if you'd like to study economics. Quotable:

If you want to be a major academic go to the best school you can go to that will pay your full way and hope that means Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, MIT --- the next 5 are good, and the next 10 are ok, and then after that all programs are equally suspect in a certain sense.

.. the key issue isn't whether I go to Clemson or Florida State or Georgia or Claremont McKenna or GMU. The key issue is whether I get into Harvard, MIT, Stanford or Chicago, and if I don't, then what niche market school best fits my needs that will pay the full way for me to go to school.

.. [George Mason University's] strength --- [is simply that it's] the best weird place to study economics in the world. If your interest is in public choice, we are a leading center for that (with a Nobel Prize to prove it and one that should have been given that we are waiting for justice to Tullock -- but not with our breaths held). If you are interested in experimental economics, well we have that too (and a Nobel to prove it). If your interest is in Law and Economics, well our law school program is great (ranked in the top tier of American law schools) and our law and economics program according to one ranking had us in the top 5 programs. And we are now estabilishing a new program in religion and economics, and of course we have the Austrian program as well.

.. the proof of the strength of the GMU program is scene in the placement of our students in good quality jobs. I define a good quality job as a tenure track appointment at a school that requires 3-3 teaching and less, average SATs around 1200, and pay at or above the national average for assistant professors in economics. Our best students consistently beat this standard and usually have multiple offers to consider for university professorships. I believe that outcompete many of our rivals in terms of student placement. There is a simple formula that must be followed to achieve this success:

PhD in hand (or close to it) + refereed publication(s) + good teaching evaluations + you are not a lunch tax == good job

Too often students fail to meet this formula and they cannot get a job and then they complain about the school they went to when in reality it is their inability to meet the standard by which the market judges you.

Bottom line --- got to the best school you can get into that will pay your full way. Getting into a top school where you pay your own way will not pan out (it is like being a walk on at a major college for sports -- sometimes it works, but it is rare. Absent that, think about law school rather than economics. If you still need to get a PhD in economics, got to the school that will pay you that you are more comfortable with and then once there work hard --- you can overachieve (e.g., John List is a great example of an overachiever in the field of experimental economics). Publish, publish, publish, when you teach be responsible and do a high quality job, and when you meet with people be decent and not a jerk. It is pretty much common sense and it works.

I should add that George Mason University has the very best representation of economists in the world who understand Friedrich Hayek, classical liberalism and the economics of the real world. Better than Harvard, better than Stanford, better than the U. of Chicago. Much better, if truth be told.