Please help the unfortunate: Washington in St.Louis v.s. Johns Hopkins

[pleaseAcceptMe!!]

This admission cycle has left me in tatters, my ego permanently and irrevocably wounded. Which one of these schools would give me a higher chance of less misery? My current interests are Microeconomics and IO.

[walt526]

Probably JHU. Although I wouldn't really consider either school as "unfortunate."

[dsdoodle]

This admission cycle has left me in tatters, my ego permanently and irrevocably wounded. Which one of these schools would give me a higher chance of less misery? My current interests are Microeconomics and IO.

I hope you are being sarcastic. No one is going to sympathize with you for getting into two top 50 schools. If you were aiming at Harvard and MIT, then at least now you know where you stand. But I have no idea what to say about the question you had except that I've heard WUSTL is a school on the rise with their recent hires.

[Pedxs]

Sorry to hear that you did not get into the school of your choice.

I would go with JHU simply because it is a more reputable school (I never heard of the other one before), which would give you more options if you end up taking a job outside academia.

I also understand that JHU is actually quite selective, despite the relatively low ranking. Between, I will be visiting, so maybe we will meet there.

[walt526]

JHU and WUSTL are both pretty small programs, so they're going to be underrated by any literature-based rankings. Adjusted for size, both are Top 20-40 US programs.

[OogieBoogieMan]

Sorry to hear that you did not get into the school of your choice.

I would go with JHU simply because it is a more reputable school (I never heard of the other one before), which would give you more options if you end up taking a job outside academia.

I also understand that JHU is actually quite selective, despite the relatively low ranking. Between, I will be visiting, so maybe we will meet there.

as the miserable guy's research interests are in micro, dont agree with the above post. i heard about WUSL program a lot previously (if that earns the program some reputation). they have a faculty with a lot of micro people. david levine for instance is a very popular figure amongst them (although some say that he might not be the optimal advisor to work with). so is haluk ergin and others. on the other hand the jhu program also offers very valuable micro people as joe harrington, edi karni, hulya eraslan.

i could not find any placement record of WUSL. for jhu, the academic placements into US universities does not seem abundant. but they seem to be on the rise. for instance in the last two years they had one nyu, and one wusl placement. neither of these in micro issues though.

the location of these schools might also be an important factor. i dont know any about saint louis. but people say that baltimore is a very nice city to live.

you should definitely talk to the grad students in these schools also to get a glimpse of the department's attitude towards students.

in short, i believe that they are overall good unis and either of them, I hope, will get you out of misery.

[pleaseAcceptMe!!]

Thanks for all the imputs! I do agree with the point that Baltimore is a better city than St.Louis, but I would not call it a "very nice city to live". Basically any other city on the east coast is better, NYC, Philly, etc. I also want to make it clear that I DO VERY MUCH WANT A JOB IN ACADEMIA! So the fact that top schools is heavily preferenced toward top schools worries the hell out of me.

[Gecko]

To add on to oogieboogie, Wustl has certain good people in micro, depending on what interests of micro the OP has:

Game theory: Levine.

Labour: Azariadis.

Consumer, IO: Pollack

[airjesse123]

If you are going to be "miserable", why go?

[claphands]

even if you ONLY want academia, having to choose between those two schools is nothing to complain about. there are only so many spots in the top 20 (and both universities are right on the fringe, in some rankings)