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Is there a rank for graduate programs in academic placement?


Jayd

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I am wondering if there exists a rank for Econ graduate programs in academic placement?

Currently I only know USNEWS and Ideas, but they don't have this specific rank.

Can I assume: Programs with higher ranks in USNEWS will also have better academic placement? (Any outliers in the placement rank?)

Look for more information and insight.

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I believe Ideas is the only reliable ranking system that truly measures the level of graduate studies in economics. I recommend you not to look at other rankings as they can depend heavily on non relevant factors such as the university student size and employer feedback. These things might heavily matter for undergraduate studies but graduate studies quality is determined by the research output by the department or institution.

https://ideas.repec.org/top/

Under the special ranking, there is one for the "success" of graduate students. This measures the research output by the current researchers and ranking based on their institution that they received phD degrees from.

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Also, I want to inform you that

https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.inst.all10.html

 

This is the ranking of institutions by research output (only research output) in the past 10 years. When choosing your graduate program, this might be the most useful source instead of looking for graduate academic placements, since if the research is good, then placement is something that just follows.

Edited by dregon03
wrong address
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I absolutely disagree with this. How can you like this ranking? How in the world does this rating put places like boston college and USC ahead of cornell duke maryland toronto and minnesota? How is monash university's research output (or placement) better than maryland minnesota toronto stern nyu?? Utter rubbish. If you like research output go see Tilburg, sort by top 10 journals and then see.

I believe Ideas is the only reliable ranking system that truly measures the level of graduate studies in economics. I recommend you not to look at other rankings as they can depend heavily on non relevant factors such as the university student size and employer feedback. These things might heavily matter for undergraduate studies but graduate studies quality is determined by the research output by the department or institution.

https://ideas.repec.org/top/

Under the special ranking, there is one for the "success" of graduate students. This measures the research output by the current researchers and ranking based on their institution that they received phD degrees from.

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I think Colorado and UCSB are known to place a lot better (read: more towards academia) than their ranking suggests.

 

You asked about outliers, so there are two.

 

I also think Cornell is known to place noticeably worse than similarly ranked programs.

 

This is just from reading threads on here, really.

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Thank you about the special rank. I never paid attention to them before.

Also, I want to inform you that

https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.inst.all10.html

 

This is the ranking of institutions by research output (only research output) in the past 10 years. When choosing your graduate program, this might be the most useful source instead of looking for graduate academic placements, since if the research is good, then placement is something that just follows.

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Do you know why Colorado and UCSB have better placement? I am purely curious.

I think Colorado and UCSB are known to place a lot better (read: more towards academia) than their ranking suggests.

 

You asked about outliers, so there are two.

 

I also think Cornell is known to place noticeably worse than similarly ranked programs.

 

This is just from reading threads on here, really.

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Can you elaborate more about the comparison between USNEWS and Ideas? In my opinion, professors tend to look at Ideas.
Ignore the guy that says to rank graduate program by Ideas. USNews is better, but by no means perfect.
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US News is a reputation ranking of graduate programs. It is constructed by asking people which programs are good. Therefore it is going to seem subjectively reasonable to most economists. The only downside is that it is only a ranking of US programs.

 

The IDEAS rankings are quite unreliable. For example, the ranking of graduates places Queen's above Stanford GSB, which exactly zero people who are not the biological mothers of Queen's affiliates think is reasonable. Part of this unreliability is because lots of people don't have RePEc profiles. Part of it is because IDEAS doesn't account for department size. Part of it is because it is difficult to come up with simple metrics that encompass what people think of as quality. The point is, you should treat the IDEAS rankings as only the roughest of guidelines to which departments are good.

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I didn't claim that one ranking system is perfect and the other is not. Among economists ideas ranking system is most widely used.

If Queen's University graduates rank higher than Stanford GSB, it makes sense. GSB is a business school and Queen's is an economics school. Business schools tend to have harder time placing graduates in economics, but this shouldn't come to you as a surprise. Business schools and economics schools teach different material. If these were rankings purely on employer satisfaction, then yes, Stanford SGB would place at a much higher level than Queen's graduate.

It's highly likely that an economics student gets an employment at a Business school, but not the other way around.

I don't want anyone to be misinformed and think that USNews ranking is a better measure than Ideas just because StanfordGSB ranks lower, but again, this is a Business school. Queen's University currently produces second most cited research in Canada after University of British Columbia. Queen's is a very good school. Some think that University of Toronto is the best school in economics. It might well be given heavier percentage of their professors hold ivy league degrees than both University of British Columbia and Queen's University combined, but clearly the research output says otherwise. I encourage you to read some of the faculty's papers before comparing schools, or at the very least look at professors' Curriculum Vitae.

 

The biggest bias of USnews ranking system is that it over-ranks the American schools. Among top 20 schools according to US news, 17 out of 20 universities are American. Even surprising fact is that 2 of them are Netherland's Universities. It's not to say that the two Dutch schools and American schools are not excellent, but they just don't compare with some of top European institutes such as PSE, Bocconi, CEMFI. US news might be taken seriously by non economists, business majors, and non-researchers, but not among economists.

Ideas is the only ranking that economics researchers should take seriously and ask your professors which ranking they use as an indicator of strong performance in research. I have done this, and 9 out of 10 will say Ideas.

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US News asks around people which schools are good and you are saying this is a reasonable ranking system?...

That is disappointing if you are an economist even more so.

Ideas ranks schools based on research output.

https://ideas.repec.org/t/ranking.html

I encourage you to read the methodology they use to compute the economics rankings and compare it to simply "asking around people..."

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Still disagree. What methodology places monash ahead of minnesota and duke? As has been argued earlier, many don't even have repec accounts. An obvious flaw in the method.

Also, it is quite reasonable why Queen's ranks higher than Stanford SGB. I am very familiar with its reputation that it's a business school on par with U chicago Booth and Harvard Business school and such. However, these are business schools. And you are wondering why business school is ranked lower than an economics school in research output?

To support my argument further, look at the rankings of Chicago Booth to Chicago economics department. Both are fascinating departments but they really shouldn't compete against each other in economics. Which one of the two are better business and economics research output combined? I don't know.

 

I hope my answers clarified your understanding. I wish you all the best choosing the right graduate school because ranking at the end of the day shouldn't be your only factor for graduate admissions.

At the graduate level, having the right supervisor will matter most heavily.

 

Good luck!

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US News asks around people which schools are good and you are saying this is a reasonable ranking system?...

That is disappointing if you are an economist even more so.

Ideas ranks schools based on research output.

https://ideas.repec.org/t/ranking.html

I encourage you to read the methodology they use to compute the economics rankings and compare it to simply "asking around people..."

If the people who are polled by US News can read the IDEAS rankings, then yes, the US News rankings contain strictly more information than the IDEAS rankings.

 

I hope my answers clarified your understanding. I wish you all the best choosing the right graduate school because ranking at the end of the day shouldn't be your only factor for graduate admissions.

At the graduate level, having the right supervisor will matter most heavily.

 

Good luck!

I am a professor at a research university. But good luck to you as you embark on your M.A. program this fall.

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Also, it is quite reasonable why Queen's ranks higher than Stanford SGB. I am very familiar with its reputation that it's a business school on par with U chicago Booth and Harvard Business school and such. However, these are business schools. And you are wondering why business school is ranked lower than an economics school in research output?

To support my argument further, look at the rankings of Chicago Booth to Chicago economics department. Both are fascinating departments but they really shouldn't compete against each other in economics. Which one of the two are better business and economics research output combined? I don't know.

 

I hope my answers clarified your understanding. I wish you all the best choosing the right graduate school because ranking at the end of the day shouldn't be your only factor for graduate school decision.

At the graduate level, having the right supervisor will matter most heavily.

 

Good luck!

 

This thread is about academic placement, not simply research output (which Ideas doesn't necessarily give a great proxy of anyways).

 

So regardless of whether or not you think Stanford GSB has more "research output" than Queen's, Stanford GSB DEFINITELY has better placement than Queen's. In the last five years Stanford GSB has placed people at Harvard, NYU, and Chicago Booth. I guess I couldn't find anything on Queen's placement after a quick search, but I find it implausible that the placement of the two compare.

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If the people who are polled by US News can read the IDEAS rankings, then yes, the US News rankings contain strictly more information than the IDEAS rankings.

 

 

I am a professor at a research university. But good luck to you as you embark on your M.A. program this fall.

 

My words were directed to the person who started this thread. It's great that you are already employed. Congratulations.

US news ranking has many flaws. Without going into the details of their methodology, US news ranking claims that out of top 10 economics departments 9 are located in US. The only one exception being LSE.

According to US news ranking, out of top 20 economics departments 17 are located in US. 1 is LSE and 2 are Dutch schools. Only the "mother of biological affiliates" as you put it of these two Dutch schools would consider themselves to have better overall research outcomes than Oxford, PSE, UBonn, UBoconni, which are the top European economics schools that Dutch schools can directly compare to.The ranking over represents US economics departments and heavily underestimates + misrepresent non-American institutes. In addition, economics departments should be compared with national institutes such as NBER or Bank of Canada since these government/financial institutes have departments that do pure research and shouldn't be forgetten in graduate rankings.

 

If you are purely concerned about how people think about each schools, then yes. I think you "can" consider US news ranking, but if you are a serious economist, I urge you to consider Ideas rankings most seriously.

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I agree with you. As I said, I acknowledge the reputation of Stanford GSB in Business. If you are careful with their placements, majority of their graduates do business, not necessarily economics. Doing research in Economics means a lot different than landing a position in Business department.

Economics phD's are likely to place in both Business and Economics departments, but the other way around doesn't usually happen. (happens only in rare occasion). Business degrees tend to be a lot more career focused and "money making" focused, whereas economics is a field of social science concerned with research.

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I am glad that you are a professor, congratulations, but I hope you aren't misinforming your students to believe that US news ranking is a good ranking system.

 

Without going into the details of US news ranking system methodology, we can see it's flaws. Out of top 10, according to US news, 9 are located in US. Out of top 20, 17 are located in US. Three outliers are LSE and two schools in Netherlands.

As you put it, "only the biological mother of these Netherlands schools" would think that the Dutch schools are better than Oxford, PSE, UBoconni, Ubonn, which are top European economics schools that the Dutch schools can directly compare to.

It is not to say that US schools aren't excellent. They are just overly represented in US news ranking.

 

Good luck with your research, whichever department you are in. Hopefully not economics.

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The US News rankings are reputational based specifically on the quality of the PhD program. The votes are by department chairs and directors of graduate studies in PhD-granting economics departments. The rankings only apply to U.S. economics programs. They are hardly perfect, but within the limit of what they rank most people agree they are pretty good.
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The US News rankings are reputational based specifically on the quality of the PhD program. The votes are by department chairs and directors of graduate studies in PhD-granting economics departments. The rankings only apply to U.S. economics programs. They are hardly perfect, but within the limit of what they rank most people agree they are pretty good.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/economics-business

it's a world ranking and it very misrepresent the rankings outside US.

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https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/economics-business

it's a world ranking and it very misrepresent the rankings outside US.

Please do not post about topics that you do not know about. This board is used to help people who are interested in graduate school. Ill-informed comments presented with great confidence are much more harmful than not commenting at all.

 

In case you were not trolling and simply unaware, the ranking you linked is NOT what people mean when they refer to the US News ranking. They mean the ranking of economics graduate programs:

https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-humanities-schools/economics-rankings

 

And Stanford GSB's economics program does place people into top econ departments:

https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/programs/phd/placement/academic-placements#academic-area-10006

 

Please do not continue to make other posters incur the cost of correcting your statements.

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Please do not post about topics that you do not know about. This board is used to help people who are interested in graduate school. Ill-informed comments presented with great confidence are much more harmful than not commenting at all.

 

In case you were not trolling and simply unaware, the ranking you linked is NOT what people mean when they refer to the US News ranking. They mean the ranking of economics graduate programs:

https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-humanities-schools/economics-rankings

 

And Stanford GSB's economics program does place people into top econ departments:

https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/programs/phd/placement/academic-placements#academic-area-10006

 

Please do not continue to make other posters incur the cost of correcting your statements.

 

If you are a professor, then perhaps you should stop your stubborn comment about economics ranking system.

Thank you for pointing out that we were talking about US school rankings. I simply didn't assume that since I am not American.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/economics-business

This was the site I was referring to.

 

I simply said that Stanford SGB is a business school and it's natural that it places low on the economics ranking scale. Business schools generally have many research areas and economics is only a subset of their research at Stanford SGB. I'm very aware that Stanford SGB places their graduates at top economics schools occasionally, but most of them are placed at Business graduate schools, which makes sense. Compare Stanford Economics Department to Stanford SGB, and would you still argue that Stanfrod SGB is a better Economics school than Stanford Economics department? You are fooling yourself with the term "reputation" if this is the case.

 

In fact, you should take a look at this since I think other people have sacrificed precious time to criticize the ridiculous US news ranking of the world universities. I decline to spend any more time explaining why USnews ranking system is flawed, and unless you are working for US news ranking system, I urge you to rethink about your favorability of US news ranking.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/09/your-annual-reminder-to-ignore-the-em-us-news-world-report-em-college-rankings/279103/

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