I come from a top econ school and I'll take grad studies in an even more top school, but in stats.
I'll speak as a somewhat knowledgeable person, who sincerely has seen most of it.
100% of econ and finance is watered down, babby shit tier applied math and stats, and most of it is just plainly dishonest (especially the empirical fields). I am not kidding and I am dead serious, and all econ/fin people with a minimum of an ounce of honesty will agree.
A civil engineering undergrad course, which is considered one of the less 'involved' STEM degrees, is leagues above an econ PhD in terms of theoretical depth, overall intelligence of the arguments, and mathematical maturity.
You average econ PhD may take pride in their 'modelling', but the elasticity of their thinking (pun intended) is null. Econ as a field is intellectually sterile and completely useless.
Econ is propped up entirely by the small subset of math it uses: real analysis, probability (the biggest part), measure theory, some differential equations, game theory. That's it. A math major with proper, honest background in these few subjects is on par or above the best econ PhDs from top Ivys and MIT.
Actuarial science, statistics/econometrics and the mathiest parts of finance are the only subfields that have true legitimacy, but their affinity with econ is labile at best, and they stand on their own if coupled with good common sense.
If you are in econ, or thinking about going into econ, think twice and then another time. If you want to create a career in econ for the status, do it, but all you do is a ruse, a farce, and you will know it, but it may make you a lot of money. It all depends on what you want from your life. If you want to do some legit shit, go hard STEM, don't choose econ, fin and the likes, even the 'quantitative' degrees unless they are mostly math and stats.
