Not as much as you think. Of course, if you go to a completely unchallenging school your chance for a top grad school will drop. But grad school committees have pretty good information on their hands when it comes to econ: math grades, math GRE, econ subject GRE. They also have letters of rec. With all that information, it's usually pretty clear who is competitive and who is not and much of that, except letters of rec, you can get from many different schools.
An interesting note is that research on college choice shows that a handful of factors have strong effects on where you go to college: academic ability, price and geography. The number of people who choose colleges for specialized purposes like studying classics or getting into grad school is irrelevant in the big scheme of things. It's smarts+location+price. Fabio > But in terms of getting into a high ranking grad school isn't going to the > right undergraduate institution important? > > Lynn
