Summer schools:CREI vs LSE

[israelecon]

if your LOR writers have co-authored with stiglitz (provided their part in the research was significant) and/or they are at the top in the IDEAs rankings i don't think you should have problems being accepted to at least some top schools. BUT!!! it may depend who sits on the admissions committee. they won't ask stiglitz about your recommender necessarily, so if stiglitz is not involved in the admissions process this might not really help you. also about the experimental guy, most adcoms are not made up of experimental economists so even if he is well known in his field, there is no guarantee that say, a micro theory guy would have ever heard about him. my point is just the following, if you have two recommendations from well known guys, then you are likely to get in somewhere in the top schools, because they probably are connected to someone in these schools, but you shouldn't be surprised if these LORs don't hold much water in many schools just because experimental econ is a side field and you recommender may not be well-known in all economics circles.
also, these LORs should explain your MA performance which you indicated was lacking...

[ecpfdq]

Originally Posted by israelecon

about the experimental guy, most adcoms are not made up of experimental economists so even if he is well known in his field, there is no guarantee that say, a micro theory guy would have ever heard about him.

He has a recent text in Intermediate Microeconomics,which is published by McGraw-Hill and has written about 20 books in experimental ,micro and statistics.He was European Vice-President of the Economic Science Association (the association of experimental economists).He is also a Fellow of the European Economic Association.I want to believe some micro guys will know him....at least Peter Hammond does(the only thing it misses here is his name).

[econphilomath]

I think you need to stop asking advice and just sit back and wait for some great admits. Italians this year did great and it probably indicates good past performance of students and good/active connections with top departments.

I'll also warn you of the tendency of some good profile applicants to unintentionally piss everyone off with their "innocent" questions regarding their chances, when they actually know they will do great and just want to show off.

I think you will do fine, and a top ten program will surely be forthcoming, so go the the Gali course and have some fun.

[ecpfdq]

Originally Posted by econphilomath

I think you need to stop asking advice and just sit back and wait for some great admits. Italians this year did great and it probably indicates good past performance of students and good/active connections with top departments.

I'll also warn you of the tendency of some good profile applicants to unintentionally piss everyone off with their "innocent" questions regarding their chances, when they actually know they will do great and just want to show off.

I think you will do fine, and a top ten program will surely be forthcoming, so go the the Gali course and have some fun.

Thanks!Besides learning new things etc would this be useful in terms of profile adjustment(keeping in mind my MA results) and what are my chanches of getting his letter(I already have known him and he said he only wiites LORs for his students)

[italos]

hmmmm..top ten I don't know if you can really get in there..you have some bad MA grades and this should count against...

[econphilomath]

Grades are not as important as LORs. If a respectable economist thinks you have the stuff necessary to make a good economist he will help you get in a top program (top 10 or 20). The reason people don't get in the top twenty is because they don't have a good LOR writer who believes in them. Now its not always trivial to get in touch with such an economist but it dosen't always mean being the best in your class either.

After this admitions process, I have radically changed my opinion regarding the relative role of diffrent aspects of your application. Now I believe the LOR is basically all that matters and everything else is just ways of getting a good LOR (i.e. LOR instruments). A credible LOR is sufficient for a top ten. A not very credible LOR needs to back up form a good CV. A badly credible LOR will ruin you no matter your CV.

The reason I changed my views on the application process was that I saw sufficient variation of applicants (some with good grades/papers/gre and bad LORs and others with bad grades/cv/gre with good LORs ) to be able to determine what is really going on.

So in conclusion, I now think getting into a top PhD program comes down to getting good LORs. How to go about that depends on the LOR writer. For some writers, being a top student is a must while some others it might not be so important and their personal opinion might weigh more (maybe because they think grades are not important etc).

Hopefully for the profession, good LORs will be forthcoming in a way which would be as meritocratic as possible and generate the best incentives for nerds like us who are bent on maximizing their LEAS. Personally I hope to be able to write a LOR or two someday and they will be be for those who work hard, have a talent for research, are very smart and have good ideas. One would expect those attributes to be highly correlated to grades, gre, cv etc. but not entirely so on the margin. (BTW I do weigh passion as important but that is a personal opinion and respect the position of israelecon for example.)

I have written too much. Sorry

[italos]

Originally Posted by econphilomath

Grades are not as important as LORs. If a respectable economist thinks you have the stuff necessary to make a good economist he will help you get in a top program (top 10 or 20). The reason people don't get in the top twenty is because they don't have a good LOR writer who believes in them. Now its not always trivial to get in touch with such an economist but it dosen't always mean being the best in your class either.

After this admitions process, I have radically changed my opinion regarding the relative role of diffrent aspects of your application. Now I believe the LOR is basically all that matters and everything else is just ways of getting a good LOR (i.e. LOR instruments). A credible LOR is sufficient for a top ten. A not very credible LOR needs to back up form a good CV. A badly credible LOR will ruin you no matter your CV.

The reason I changed my views on the application process was that I saw sufficient variation of applicants (some with good grades/papers/gre and bad LORs and others with bad grades/cv/gre with good LORs ) to be able to determine what is really going on.

So in conclusion, I now think getting into a top PhD program comes down to getting good LORs. How to go about that depends on the LOR writer. For some writers, being a top student is a must while some others it might not be so important and their personal opinion might weigh more (maybe because they think grades are not important etc).

Hopefully for the profession, good LORs will be forthcoming in a way which would be as meritocratic as possible and generate the best incentives for nerds like us who are bent on maximizing their LEAS. Personally I hope to be able to write a LOR or two someday and they will be be for those who work hard, have a talent for research, are very smart and have good ideas. One would expect those attributes to be highly correlated to grades, gre, cv etc. but not entirely so on the margin. (BTW I do weigh passion as important but that is a personal opinion and respect the position of israelecon for example.)

I have written too much. Sorry

This is what exactly I am saying in my signature thread.

[bango]

Totally agree with econphilomath, LoRs are all that count. But I disagree about meritocracy... I can personally testify that in some places in Latin America that places very well in top10 in US Schools, a set of new young professors who want to get a higher reputation between students who want to apply for PhD in US is trying to revert the meritocracy process to a "kiss-my-***" process. They completely discredit students who don't love them, but are considered (by grades, among peers and by other professors) to be better than students that kiss *** of these professors. They invent rumours about quality of research of these students who dared not ask them LoRs, trying to punish them not to be well placed in a top US School next year (instead, trying to place their worse students that kiss his *** there). In 2 years, they almost ruined the reputation of this Latin American university, because new students don't know anymore if merit is valid there.

[faulkner]

Originally Posted by bango

Totally agree with econphilomath, LoRs are all that count. But I disagree about meritocracy... I can personally testify that in some places in Latin America that places very well in top10 in US Schools, a set of new young professors who want to get a higher reputation between students who want to apply for PhD in US is trying to revert the meritocracy process to a "kiss-my-***" process. They completely discredit students who don't love them, but are considered (by grades, among peers and by other professors) to be better than students that kiss *** of these professors. They invent rumours about quality of research of these students who dared not ask them LoRs, trying to punish them not to be well placed in a top US School next year (instead, trying to place their worse students that kiss his *** there). In 2 years, they almost ruined the reputation of this Latin American university, because new students don't know anymore if merit is valid there.

That's a strange process and, probably, totally uneffective in the long run for all the actors involved: latin american university looses its reputation, the "new young professors" loose their international credibility as Lor writers, since they give wrong comparisons of their students and send in top programs inadequate students, and US top programs admit students not well prepared while discarding the best students, i.e. they are forced to lower the quality of their phd students. Probably the only individuals benefitting from that "kiss his ***" strategy are the admitted students, conditional to the fact that they have enough talent to finish their programs.