None are particularly likely to become top 20 anytime soon, but if I had to guess, the three with the best chances are USC, Georgetown, and Notre Dame.
UT Austin
JHU
UC Davis
Vanderbilt
Georgetown
USC
Notre Dame
Which of these rising LRMs will break into the top 20 first (Econ)?
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Placement wise Georgetown hiring Chambers alone likely lifted them 5-10 steps above their peers (as of pre-Chambers) in terms of rank. Expect Chambers to consistently place his students into MRMs/good LRMs.
Ridiculous
Why ridiculous?
A star: https://www.petercaradonna.com/
An upcoming star: https://sites.google.com/view/christopherturansick/research?authuser=0how does a student with an econ degree from an HRM, Northwestern, get into only a T50 PhD program? Surely could have gotten into a solid T20?
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The ND campus is quite nice and South Bend is not too far from the Lake Michigan beaches. South Bend has some cr1me but is safer than the big cities like Chicago, NYC, Baltimore, or LA and has much cheaper housing.
USC or Notre Dame. The others lack either the money to hire, or the will to improve enough to break into the top 20, or amenities (weather, location, decent stipend).
ND lacks amenities who in their right mind would want to live there
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The ND campus is quite nice and South Bend is not too far from the Lake Michigan beaches. South Bend has some cr1me but is safer than the big cities like Chicago, NYC, Baltimore, or LA and has much cheaper housing.
USC or Notre Dame. The others lack either the money to hire, or the will to improve enough to break into the top 20, or amenities (weather, location, decent stipend).
ND lacks amenities who in their right mind would want to live there
Yeah those are perks but I look at it through the lens of not being able or motivated to do anything from nov-march out of fear that my balls will get frostbite. So I will definitely give advantage to USC or Gtown for breaking into the top 20 because they have the same sort of money but are both in places you can go outside during all of the year
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For any of these to become top 20, some current top 20 school has to drop below them (obviously). Do you really see JHU or Georgetown surpassing bottom top 20 schools like Cornell, BU, Brown or Duke? Because I don't.
First, I wouldn’t call BU a current top 20 school. I would put it just outside that group (but definitely in the top 20 for certain fields). That said, I would say the bottom of the top 20 is approximately Brown, Duke, CMU, so we don’t really disagree much on this point.
Second, although the original post didn’t specify, I was thinking about a 5-10 year time scale, maybe even longer tbh. Do you really think it’s inconceivable that, over the next decade, Georgetown or JHU (or any of the others) could make a wave of great hires and attract good enough students to push them past those marginal top 20 schools? Some of these schools have tons of money to throw around.
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I think the only way for new entrants would be if the Midwest schools continue on a downward trajectory like their states. Minnesota not very long ago was knocking on HRM's door, now it's in the 18th spot, so it's probably the best bet to fall out like Rochester. Mich is still up there but its placements have been quite mediocre the past few years. UW Madison though has been bucking these trends and is still going extremely strong, especially since it has bumped up its stipend.
Can't see Brown, Cornell or Duke falling out due to general prestige and high budgets. UCLA and UCSD are very still going strong and in very attractive locations so they will be fine.
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Placement wise Georgetown hiring Chambers alone likely lifted them 5-10 steps above their peers (as of pre-Chambers) in terms of rank. Expect Chambers to consistently place his students into MRMs/good LRMs.
Ridiculous
Why ridiculous?
A star: https://www.petercaradonna.com/
An upcoming star: https://sites.google.com/view/christopherturansick/research?authuser=0how does a student with an econ degree from an HRM, Northwestern, get into only a T50 PhD program? Surely could have gotten into a solid T20?
According to his Linkedin he had a 3.1 GPA at Northwestern
Which must mean he got Cs/Bs in not only his math classes, but his econ classes (the latter with VERY strong letters could get someone into a T20 from personal experience). However, ex-post it shows that his placement was a misallocation and he truly is the type that "sucks at school and is good at research" -- which does exist. The only problem is econ is terrible at catching people like that in admissions while other fields are far better at it.