CMU Economics PhD

[vivek31]

I think that overall Illinois is slighly better than Carnegie Mellon. This is also because Carnegie Mellon is quite a small department. But for Macro Carnegie Mellon is certainly better than Illinois.

[EMEQU]

Originally Posted by vivek31

I think that overall Illinois is slighly better than Carnegie Mellon. This is also because Carnegie Mellon is quite a small department. But for Macro Carnegie Mellon is certainly better than Illinois.

Well, I am quite familiar with big schools such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Chicago, UCLA, etc. As a matter of fact, I am visiting CMU next week since I want to know how they deal with few students. There are 4 job market candidates this year. However, this may imply the ratio faculty/grad students is pretty high.

After going to Pitts, I will fly to Champaign.

[Timmy]

Today I had a look around campus. The building which hosts Tepper is pretty fancy, plasma TVs all over the place, nice screens showing stock prices, etc. The lounge for PhD students is huge, clean and tidy. Well, this is the first b-school I know and maybe all b-schools are alike.

So far so good...

[EMEQU]

I visited CMU last week. It is indeed a small program (currently there are 18 econ students, but there will be 11 by july: 4 are graduating, 2 were asked to leave because of prelims and 1 gave up). This year there were 4 students on the job market: 1 is going to the Fed, another one to Notre Dame and the star is going to Northwestern (kellogg). Unfortunately, the fourth guy is still looking for a job and professors say he might be coming back to his country (argentina). According to some profs, there are on average 2 students on the job market each year and placements are very decent. Of course, people from financial econ tend to get better offers than their econ peers.
I am leaning towards macro/monetary/finance. I found out there are at least 5 senior people who are very active in their fields: Prof. Green (who might be heading to Stanford), McCallum, Goodfriend, Zin (yes, the guy who made up the Epstein-Zin utility function), Sleet, and many junior faculty: yeltekin, coen-pirani, kesten, etc.
The program is kind of flexible and by the end of the third semester you have to take 4 prelims. Of course, if your background is strong enough, you may want to take them by the end of the first semester (you have to take them all, you are not allowed to "hand-pick"). Last december 2007, one guy followed this route and failed one prelim. In this case, if you fail at least one of them, you have to wait a year for the retakes.
On the other hand, you get into research very soon, because there is a "first-year" paper due by the end of the first summer. There are many professors to choose from (at least in macro), so finding one may not be a problem.
Overall, the program seems to be strong. Of course, given the small number of grad students, peer-pressure may not be an issue.
Finally, professors say CMU's program is not rigid in the sense that there are no mandatory courses. However, you have to be ready by the end of the third semester to pass prelims. I took a look at them and they seem to be fair. You pass if you get 5 out of 10 points (more than eight means you get a distinction ). People are friendly and, of course, grad students who joined me for lunch were the most energetic (kind of self-selection?). Well, my 2 cents.

[EMEQU]

Originally Posted by AstralTraveller

They have a huge amount of young researchers doing macro at UIUC. There's Makoto Nakajima working on computational macro, Steve Parente working on Macro/Growth, Daniela Puzzello doing Monetary Theory, Rui Zhao working on Business Cycles and Game Theoretical Macro. I may be missing a couple more people as well.

They are all very young, but are doing nice things, and they're getting well published. You would not be out of place at UIUC. Of course, CMU has many many more professors with a really high reputation, but I also feel that their faculty is somewhat "less diverse" than UIUC's. Therefore, while it's highly possible that CMU>UIUC, I'm not quite sure that CMU>>UIUC.

Hope this helps. My 2 cents.

Prof. Rui Zhao is leaving since she didn't get tenured. Furthermore, another macro professor is leaving to the private sector. UIUC is financially tight (as any other state school) and it seems they have a hard time recruiting people.

[AstralTraveller]

Originally Posted by EMEQU

Prof. Rui Zhao is leaving since she didn't get tenured. Furthermore, another macro professor is leaving to the private sector. UIUC is financially tight (as any other state school) and it seems they have a hard time recruiting people.

Wow. It is an unsteady market, isn't it? Probably those people that recommend not to attend a school because of a couple of particular professors are right. CMU has a long tradition of macro, indeed, so I stand corrected about my advise. Apparently, it is actually true that CMU >> UIUC, at least when it comes to macro.

[decision2008]

Roll call on people going to CMU, I think Timmy and EMEQU are in.
I'm going, interested in financial econ(asset pricing + market microstructure), behavioral/decision theory. How about you guys?

[EMEQU]

Yep, I'm in.

Decision2008: Did you apply to fin econ or econ?

[decision2008]

I applied to Econ, but they're flexible as you already know, so it doesn't matter to me right now.