Hej,

I just finished the Mphil in econ at cambridge last year and therefore I maybe of assistance to you.
By an accident of history I also completed the first year of an american top - 20 Ph.D. program and therefore I can compare the two to settle the US vs. UK school debate once for all on this board.

As for getting into the Mphil it seemed to me that most people on the course are motivated and very bright. I am almost certain that the quality of students is higher than other schools in the top-40 range, since the cmabridge name attracts alot of bright people.
So I dont know whether it is easier or harder to go to Cambridge than the LSE, but the I think the application to enrollment ratio at cambridge is 650 to 50 while at LSE 1100 to 110 so it is roughly the same.

The cambrdige degree feeds right into the Ph.D. and if you really want a cambridge Ph.D., then this is the way to get in. It seems to me that you REALLY have to be the top-student out of many in other programs for the faculty to accept you, although if you come from LSE that seems to be an exception.

As for making the mark from Mphil to PhD, about 30 - 40% of the students get a 65 to go on for a PhD each year so it is about the same drop out rate as the qualifiers in the US.


As for comparison UK to US:

In the US the profs teach you hard core math so you can understand the problems the quantitative way. In the UK on the other hand it is more about problem solving. Moreover the training in the UK is much more applied as well and as much as most people on this board will haunt me for saying this, I do think that the UK is ahead of the US in applied econometrics. Just compare the different approaches to VAR's to see what I mean: In the US you can just run a VAR without checking for stationarity, etc. In th UK on the other hand you are expected to do a VECM, explicitly accounting for the dynamics of the underlying time-series in your model.

When it comes to MAcro on the other hand (my field), I do think that the US is ahead, but in micro some people in the UK are just as good as people at top-15 schools in the US. Cambridge had some recent micro & finance placements at Northwestern and U of Toronto.

I hope this helps but please let me know if you have any other questions.

cheers