Econ PhD Admissions

[Tatonnement]

I've been reading some of the Econ PhD admissions posts and have a couple of things to add/note. (I'm a recent PhD and have some experience now from the other side... Questions welcome...) None of these points are very original, but they bear repeating during admission and decision time.

1. It's trite to say it but admissions is random. The process has a small group of faculty going through hundreds of files. The number of cases which could go either way is quite large, which means idiosyncratic noise plays an unfortunate role.

2. If you're ultimately looking for an academic job, it's always a good idea to go to the top (overall) place you get in. If possible, forgo better funding for a better school. It's possible to place in a higher ranked institution than the one you attended, but the odds are definitely against it.

3. That said, the faculty you work with in your area are definitely the main determinant of how you do and where you end up. So among schools of similar quality, try to go where you best match up. Of course your eventual field may likely change, but you still have to choose the best ex-ante.

Well I thought I had more pearls of wisdom, but maybe somebody has more interesting questions about admission from the other side...

[vagabond_shoes]

Tatonnement very interesting your comment. I have a question if you could answer, in terms of the job market today, how would you compare NYU to UPenn?

[grat]

simal to vagabond shoes:

Northwestern, Boston U, LSE, European University Institute.

Interests: Development and Growth, Political Economy and Macro.

Do you have some suggestions?

Thank you very much

[associate]

Hey, thanks for sharing your experiences. Here's one question to consider: in those rare cases where people do move up to a higher-ranked school to teach, what factors play a role? (eg. innovative research, conferences, publications, past work/interaction with faculty at higher-ranked schools, being super-hardworking, working with advisors who work/interact with faculty at higher-ranked schools, good job placement office, randomness, etc.?)

Oh, and since it looks highly probable that I will be attending UMD, do you have any general thoughts on their dept and/or the faculty/opportunities there. My interests are in growth/development and although I did research them, of the schools to which I applied, UMD is the one about which I know the least.

[Tatonnement]

Originally Posted by vagabond_shoes

Tatonnement very interesting your comment. I have a question if you could answer, in terms of the job market today, how would you compare NYU to UPenn?

That's an interesting comparison. Right now, I'd have to give the edge to Penn. NYU is very much on the rise, a process which started a while back but got a big jump start when Sargent (and several others) went there a couple years ago. Because of this, they've also been successful at recruiting junior faculty recently. But to date, they haven't been as successful in proucing students and probably aren't as broad as Penn. In macro, NYU is comparable (possibly better) and NYU has gotten some good theorists recently, but for econometrics and applied micro Penn is stronger. I expect the placement record of NYU to improve, but this takes time.

[ebtg]

What's your take on Hahn-Negishi? Haha. Ok, just had to ask that because of your user ID.

[notacolour]

I know I've said it before, but I think that it's not extremely accurate to say that admissions is random. From the applicant's perspective, the process is full of randomness, but from what professors who are/have been on adcoms tell me, they generally pick based on perceived differences in applicants. There's just no way to know that NYU will actually read that stellar letter of reference, while MIT will drop you based on that B+ in real analysis, and Berkeley won't like your research interests. It makes sense that the process seems so random, because so many apply, so few are accepted, and adcoms have to come up with these stupid, meaningless ways to separate applicants that are otherwise identical. I'm sure that in the end, none of these differences have any power to predict eventual success.

[Tatonnement]

Originally Posted by grat

simal to vagabond shoes:

Northwestern, Boston U, LSE, European University Institute.

Interests: Development and Growth, Political Economy and Macro.

Do you have some suggestions?

Thank you very much

Of these schools, I think Northwestern is certainly the best overall department. They are very strong in theory, IO, and macro. For development alone, LSE may have an edge, but the overall quality and breadth NWU is far better.

[associate]

Notacolour's comments are quite consistent with everything I've heard from grad students/faculty on adcoms. I'm told that (at two econ depts, anyways) after making the obvious admits, adcoms do end up using arbitrary criteria for choosing some of their students. But even if the criteria is arbitrary, it doesn't make the process random. Although, it can seem random or be as good as random (which is what I think most people mean when they call this a stochastic process) if you don't have extra info on what schools pay attention to what.

[Tatonnement]

Originally Posted by associate

Hey, thanks for sharing your experiences. Here's one question to consider: in those rare cases where people do move up to a higher-ranked school to teach, what factors play a role? (eg. innovative research, conferences, publications, past work/interaction with faculty at higher-ranked schools, being super-hardworking, working with advisors who work/interact with faculty at higher-ranked schools, good job placement office, randomness, etc.?)

Oh, and since it looks highly probable that I will be attending UMD, do you have any general thoughts on their dept and/or the faculty/opportunities there. My interests are in growth/development and although I did research them, of the schools to which I applied, UMD is the one about which I know the least.

When people move up, it's generally the result of a very solid job market paper. As a leading example, there is a student who was on the market this this year from Ohio State who had numerous flyouts and several job offers from top 10 departments. This was largely based on an interesting, thorough, and well-done job paper.

Maryland seems like a reasonably good fit given your interests. Their strengths are probably international econ and applied micro, so there should be several people for you to work with there.

Originally Posted by associate

Notacolour's comments are quite consistent with everything I've heard from grad students/faculty on adcoms. I'm told that (at two econ depts, anyways) after making the obvious admits, adcoms do end up using arbitrary criteria for choosing some of their students. But even if the criteria is arbitrary, it doesn't make the process random. Although, it can seem random or be as good as random (which is what I think most people mean when they call this a stochastic process) if you don't have extra info on what schools pay attention to what.

I did not mean to imply that the committees were actually throwing darts. True, the choices are made on perceived differences but those perceptions vary not only across schools but within committees. So who ends up reading your file may end up mattering. It's up to you whether you want to view this as a random preference shock or a random outcome draw. Many of these idiosyncracies do balance out, but deciding on the last few slots in an admission pool they may matter.