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Is Johns Hopkins worthwhile to go?


jollydog

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Not mean to offend people who have been there and actually I didn't apply for JHU. Just curious about the feeling of you guys on this university. On the one hand, it seems that most of the people on this board only care about the top 15, where JHU is not in and rarely mentioned. On the other hand, JHU perhaps has the most confusing ranking compared to others. So, how do you feel about it? Is it in top 30 or even top 50? Is it a place worthwhile to go? Can somebody having the same curiosity as me help me make a poll? I tried but it seems doesn't' work.
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It's definitely in the top 50, maybe in top 30. I think they have some very talented people, but their department is veeeeeeery small (10-15 people). So I would only advise you to go there if it's a good fit for your interests. I considered applying there this cycle, but decided against it because my interests aren't well suited for the department.
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its definitely a place worthwhile going to. the question is what are your options. if by taking more courses you have a very good chance to get into a top ten next year, i would say wait a year. if not going to JHU means giving up on academia, then obviously go to JHU and don't give up on academia.
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what are you talking about? there is nothing arrogant about this. a question was being asked about the worth of a program, i simply answered that it depends on what the other options are. maybe you need to go back and review what alternative cost is.
if your option is giving up on academia' date=' then obviously go to JHU.[/quote']

View that "if you are not from top (20, 10 or 5?) school your cannot do science" is (in my view) arrogant and it's not true.

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I interpreted israelecon's comment as "If you can wait one year and go to a top 10 school, that is better than going to JHU this year. However, if you are choosing between JHU and no PhD at all, then go to JHU." I think that's reasonable advice for someone who wants to go into academia.
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View that "if you are not from top (20, 10 or 5?) school your cannot do science" is (in my view) arrogant and it's not true.

ok, filroz, theree seems to be some kind of misunderstanding. so i will try to be clearer this time. i did not say that if you are not from a top school you can't do science. the guy who asked the question wanted to know whether it was worthwhile to go to JHU. clearly, i answered that it was worthwhile. i clearly told him that if he thinks that there is no point in going to JHU because of its supposedly lower rank then he would be making a mistake.

nowhere did I say or imply that "if you are not from top (20, 10 or 5?) school your cannot do science", so i am not sure how you understood this from what i said. i actually implied quite the opposite.

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View that "if you are not from top (20, 10 or 5?) school your cannot do science" is (in my view) arrogant and it's not true.

 

filroz, I'm sure israelecon was not being arrogant. It's just a known fact that all three of the Washington Schools (GWU, Georgetown, JHU) are much better suited for policy than academia.

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filroz, I'm sure israelecon was not being arrogant. It's just a known fact that all three of the Washington Schools (GWU, Georgetown, JHU) are much better suited for policy than academia.

 

American University and Howard University are also in DC, and have econ PhD programs.

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It seems to me that very often econphd rankings are out of line when it comes to schools in the 20-60 range. see wustl for example

i have a lot of problem with econphd.net rankings. i'll give you an example. in some of the micro theory fields NWU and tel-aviv university are both up there in the top 2 or 3. but, both tzachi gilboa and eddie dekel were teaching in both those places, so some articles count twice which may be misleading. secondly, tel-aviv is a small department. as eddie dekel told me, there is more hebrew speaking faculty in the NWU department than in the tel-aviv department, so i don't think size of department is well enough accounted for. so the ranking may give you the average value of a prof in the department, but not the value of the department as a whole. (i am not really sure how he accounts for dept. size, so i say this even though i may be completely wrong.) those are just the examples i know because i am from tel-aviv, but i am sure that there are many flaws in the rankings, as there are with all ranking systems.

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israelecon:ok, maybe I was too fast and maybe even aggressive, sorry. I am a bit exhausted from this topX or placement debates. I really believe that any talent will show up in longer run. At top schools it is easier, but that does not make it impossible at top50 school. And don't tell me that you cannot learn from people like this. And JHU about its the rankings.
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A note on the Chronicle of Higher Education rankings: they weight books at 5 times journal articles. That may be appropriate for some disciplines, but I don't think it is correct for economics. Further, they place more weight on grants than I think makes sense in economics.

 

All rankings have flaws, but I think the Chronicle ranking, which is prominent in on JHU's rankings page, is particularly poor for economics.

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israelecon:ok, maybe I was too fast and maybe even aggressive, sorry. I am a bit exhausted from this topX or placement debates. I really believe that any talent will show up in longer run. At top schools it is easier, but that does not make it impossible at top50 school. And don't tell me that you cannot learn from people like this. And JHU about its the rankings.

ok, as i am thinking about this more i think i understand why you misunderstood me. I said "if your other option is to give up on academia then go to JHU". apparently, i was understood to mean that if you go to JHU you will be giving up on academia.

what i actually intended (and i think this is what my words mean) is that if NOT going to JHU (because you think it not good enough) means giving up on academia, then you should go to JHU and not give up on academia (because it is good).

 

although i think its funny how a sentence can be understood to mean two entirely opposite things.

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Let me jump to the rescue of JHU a little bit here.

 

First, our placements are skewed towards policy institutes and the like, but most of our candidates taking these jobs had academic offers and chose to go to a Fed Bank, or IMF, or WB, ect. I do agree that if you want to be at a policy institute, JHU is a good place for you, but if you want to be in academia (I do) JHU does not deter you from this path.

 

This year we had 4 students on the market, all took academic jobs. One of them received a top-10 placement, I don't know if this is "public" info yet, so I will hold off on the name of the university until a future date. We were all very excited about it though - definitely the best placement we've had in 25 years.

 

Aside from placement, we also fund every student at a minimum of 80% tuition waiver. While it is not "full" funding, ther are plenty of programs that do not offer students any funding, so this is something to consider.

 

Edit for additional info: Our current full-time faculty number 16 (13 of which have tenure) and we are adding upwards of 4 new full-time faculty (I believe 3 at the tenure level) next year. We are also looking to add a few more over the next few years as well, which will mean we are growing by about 30% over the next 3 years or so. We will still be small though, but for a program with entering classes of only 10-15 students, 22 full-time faculty members is probably about right.

 

Finally I will say that I do not believe Hopkins is top 20, but do believe it is top 25. If not, certainly top 30. It will be interesting to see where we end up in the NRC rankings that should come out sometime in the next half-century.

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