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I only care about funding, and reputation, not the rank.
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If this is indeed your desire, the way to assemble your list of schools is obvious: pursue schools with a good general reputation but a bad economics one. Since most economics Ph.D applicants are primarily interested in schools' reputations in economics, the difficulty of being admitted roughly matches the economics department rank, leaving a juicy arbitrage opportunity to someone who only cares about broader institutional prestige.
From what I understand of your profile, you are going to have difficulty obtaining funding from any top 50 economics department. If I were you, I'd take a look at a broad range of programs outside the top 50 and decide which names are likely to have the most cachet wherever you plan to be*. There aren't really any super-prestigious schools outside the top 50, but there are some relatively decent state schools like Colorado (borderline top 50), and GWU's location in DC might be helpful. The most "generally prestigious" school with a bad economics department is Notre Dame, which only recently created a mainstream economics department and abandoned its old heterodox one. I'm not sure how much prestige Notre Dame carries abroad, though, since its reputation is tied up in a certain cultural aura of football and american catholicism.
*yes, I know this all sounds cynical, but especially at the international level this can be highly relevant -- who am I to judge?
2009 November 3rd, 06:36 PM
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