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Old 2006 March 15th, 06:55 AM   #29 (permalink)
Econ2006
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Join Date: Jan 2006
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Quote:
Originally Posted by asianecon
hmm...just a speculation: what if ad coms nowadays are dominated by junior faculty that needs to publish a lot to get tenure and what if they dont really care about the research potential of the student but only his/her potential as a research assistant? this makes sense: you don't want a co-author but you want a brilliant kid who can solve your problems and prove your propositions/theorems. can the trend of wanting more math from applicants be due to this shift of the preference of ad coms and their private benefits?
I think you may have a point here. Though I think if adcoms are dominated by junior faculty, they are that much closer to the grad school experience, and are still focused on the level of math they needed/used to succeed. I would guess that if ad coms were made up of mostly senior faculty, math ability beyond a certain level (say, analysis), wouldn't be as highly prized (and research ability might be more valued), especially when evaluating applicants who don't intend to do theoretical work.
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