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argmax · 06-12-2008, 09:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by teardrop

In what sense is LSE better option for the US? Strength of program? Repuation? I have a feeling LSE has a better rep in the Us while Oxford has a better one in the rest of the world.
Or do you mean that LSE has better profs and courses are stronger?

I meant for the reputation of LSE in the US. But if your interests are in developement you should seriously consider Oxford. Is a tough decision.

Lombardo · 06-13-2008, 11:30 AM

Having almost finished (? exam results are announced in two weeks' time

) my first year at Oxford there are so many things I want to write here so probably I'll only be able to write something on some of them. Of course the disclaimer is: you are reading the post of a frustrated student, so take my words with a pinch of salt.

Some people mentioned one's preferences on where to live is really important. So Oxford and London are on the opposite ends of a stick: London is big and really expensive, but then Oxford is really a small town and I'd say accommodation costs are not as expensive as in London. If I had to choose I'd choose London in this regard, because I'm more of a big-city-person. On the other hand, you can walk from one end of Oxford to the other end within 20-25 minutes (as far as the city centre is concerned) and sometimes it really made me low to see the same stuff every day, use the same road to school every day etc. Of course the same goes for any place because you will mostly travel between department/library and home.

As far as the professors' attention goes, it is a bit controversial. My own experience was actually very good. I approached three faculty members for my dissertation - one of them was an old teacher of mine - and all of them were really quick to respond to my emails and weren't reluctant to arrange a meeting. However, (and I believe this hold everywhere, on average), some professors have a reputation for not being that close to students - like the one who replied to a friend's email with a couple of weeks' delay. I have mentioned it on this forum time and again (because it really made me angry) that in some cases professors implicitly discouraged us from contacting them with questions about the lecture material - this doesn't concern the dissertation of course. At LSE, maybe some teachers will turn out to be very unhelpful, but at least you will have office hours. Of course, as I said it depends on the teacher. For example, I remember approaching my first semester econometrics teacher at the LSE for the econometrics course, and s/he wasn't really that enthusiastic about giving some advice to another MSc student. But then the micro professor was the opposite. So it really depends.

Again, another thing I wrote about so many times, the course here is extremely badly structured. Micro is taught by 11 different teachers who are researching in the areas they teach. This sounds terrific at first. However, after a while it becomes really confusing and I think they also prepare the reading lists etc without considering that we are not only studying for their part. You might say that when in grad-school one shouldn't complain about the how much one has to learn, and I totally accept that. However, the bigger problem here is that nobody draws a line: you get your reading list with all sorts of books from very technical to very superficial and most of the time the book that the teacher advises you to read is not the best choice to do well in the exams (for example, Osborne and Rubinstein in game theory was recommended for a "3-week" game theory course but at the end many ended up reading the new book from Osborne which is actually an advanced undergrad-1st year post-grad book). The bigger problem is, you don't really know how much to read. Again for the game theory case, almost all chapters from the O&R was listed as main readings. I think Karina once mentioned that professors here have a notion of leaving you in the middle of an ocean (or let' be more realistic and say lake) and then wait to see whether you'll manage to swim back to the shore. This sounds very dodgy to me

.

On the other hand, if you go to the MSc then your exposure to grad-level work will be minimum I think - though I might be wrong. Clearly, the MPhil programme is tougher than the MSc at the LSE (but the LSE MRes is probably around the same level as the MPhil at Oxford). However, a relatively less burdensome first year at the LSE may help you to find a dissertation topic more easily in your second year. The emphasis on thesis here is clearly very big. Some faculty mentioned that sometimes there are dissertations, worthy of being published in a journal (not first-tier or probably second tier of course

) but I like to take such statements with a pinch of salt - of course one professor who mentioned this was a serious researcher himself (Klemperer). You must also keep in mind that if you go to LSE and continue there, you will have write a substantial piece of academic work during your MRes, but I don't know how important it is.

Reputation-wise, people mostly think LSE is the better choice, and I would probably go to LSE if I were not rejected

But then thinking about it again, I want to do financial econometrics, and this is a better place for that I think - of course as someone else mentioned before, there are some really good econometricians in LSE too, such as Linton or Hajivassiliou. It again boils down to the situation that some schools have good people in any area whereas some schools concentrate on a few areas. I guess LSE may dominate in this sense - macro is very weak imho here at Oxford, for one thing. However, development economics is one of the main strengths of Oxford from what I hear.

One of the previous posts mentions competition and the ease of approaching professors. I think that's a very important concern. LSE MSc's class size is around 100-120 if I'm not badly mistaken. However, probably only a bunch of these students are interested in an academic career. Here the class size is around 60 I think. Normally it used to be around 40-50 but this year was an outlier. Again I haven't seen many people who were really determined about a career in academia, but this is not unusual since coming straight from undergrad, it's sometimes difficult to know that. Though there are some people who already have master's degrees in economics and who are really good students. So the competition thing is a bit mixed here. I have never felt a harsh competition atmosphere since people were always ready to share notes, answer each other's questions etc. Also, theoretically, people pick their advisors before the exam so there's not much competition there either. However, I guess the same would go for LSE too.

To summarise this very unorganised post, I think the Oxford programme is more rigorous but badly structured. On the other hand, the MSc is less technical compared to Oxford, but you will have a worst-case option of continuing on to the PhD at the LSE (same at Oxford as well of course). I agree that getting distinction at the LSE is tough since there are so many students. Here, the condition for progressing to DPhil is getting at least 64 on average from all papers and having at least 64 on dissertation but I really hope that a good dissertation can redeem bad exam scores (after this week's exams

). So getting that 64 is not easy either and maybe more difficult. But I think you really have a good chance of doing well at either place because adcoms don't give scholarships to overseas students for simple reasons

.

Hope this helps... feel free to contact me for any question, I'd be happy to help!

rcwlhk · 06-14-2008, 03:59 AM

You are being too humble by saying this is a "very unorganised post" ---- I find it to be very informative and insightful on the compare and contrast of LSE versus Oxford! Excellent post!

Lombardo · 06-14-2008, 12:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rcwlhk

You are being too humble by saying this is a "very unorganised post" ---- I find it to be very informative and insightful on the compare and contrast of LSE versus Oxford! Excellent post!

Thanks! It's a pleasure to be of some help

teardrop · 06-15-2008, 10:19 PM

Thanks to all the nice replies here especially to Lombardo!

Why don't we try to compare job placements? I can't find any info on Oxford's site so it would be helpful if someone insider would comment on that. LSE has some info but most PhD students placed either at economic instituions or universities in their home countries. Seems like both PhD programs don't have very strong academic placements.

Do we know of anyone distinguished who has attended either one of these at the PhD or Masters level?

OneMoreEcon · 06-15-2008, 11:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by teardrop

T

Do we know of anyone distinguished who has attended either one of these at the PhD or Masters level?

This guy seemed to do pretty well coming out of LSE. I've heard the MSc was EME. But for what it's worth, he finished up about 16 years ago, so that's not a good indication of current placements.

Karina 07 · 06-16-2008, 12:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by teardrop

Thanks to all the nice replies here especially to Lombardo!

Why don't we try to compare job placements? I can't find any info on Oxford's site so it would be helpful if someone insider would comment on that. LSE has some info but most PhD students placed either at economic instituions or universities in their home countries. Seems like both PhD programs don't have very strong academic placements.

Do we know of anyone distinguished who has attended either one of these at the PhD or Masters level?

IIRC, Oxford has some partial info regarding DPhil placements on their website but it's neither complete nor recent (unless something has changed). I would agree that I think a lot of people who stay for a PhD in the UK are doing that because they want to work there later or have other strong ties to Europe which would make them take what people in the US would consider worse placements... also, doing a post-doc in the UK doesn't have the stigma it does in the US. Teaching in the UK is much more teaching than research, for most people, so a post-doc is a way to get more research in before having to slog away at teaching students, over there.

For a master's, both are good. I'm sure Lombardo will have more info, but I know that in the classes at Berkeley there's about one a year from a UK school (only Oxbridge and LSE, as far as I know), and I'd imagine more get in but go elsewhere, so really the sky is the limit at either. I'd again recommend, when you get there, wherever you go, making sure to get good recommendation letters, because there's a lot of competition and it's hard to get particularly noteworthy marks when everyone around you is good and a hard worker.

Lombardo · 06-24-2008, 02:21 AM

The placements at Oxford are a bit interesting. I think I have mentioned earlier on this forum that most of the best graduates decide to stay here. This is mostly based on observation of course because I remember checking the CVs of some of our younger teachers and they are all from Oxford and are amongst the best of their respective years.

Then there are, of course, post-docs who come from very good institutions such as Chicago, LSE etc. Unfortunately, as far as I know, most of the best placements in the past were from the ranks of post-docs and not DPhil graduates. However, as Karina mentioned as well, there may be a bias effect here, where graduates get their DPhils at Oxford since they want to stay in Europe, in the first place.

You can see some placements here: Placements

I think and hope that the department is now putting more effort to prepare students for the American job market; however this is very likely to be wishful thinking on my part

asianeconomist · 06-24-2008, 03:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OneMoreEcon

This guy seemed to do pretty well coming out of LSE.

That guy is The Daron Acemoglu. One in a million.

Lokayot · 06-24-2008, 04:24 AM

I have a question. Are the top UK universities like LSE, Oxford always late in confirming scholarships? By late I mean past 15th April.

06-13-2008, 11:30 AM	#22 (permalink)
Lombardo Within my grasp! Join Date: Sep 2006 Posts: 134	Having almost finished (? exam results are announced in two weeks' time ) my first year at Oxford there are so many things I want to write here so probably I'll only be able to write something on some of them. Of course the disclaimer is: you are reading the post of a frustrated student, so take my words with a pinch of salt. Some people mentioned one's preferences on where to live is really important. So Oxford and London are on the opposite ends of a stick: London is big and really expensive, but then Oxford is really a small town and I'd say accommodation costs are not as expensive as in London. If I had to choose I'd choose London in this regard, because I'm more of a big-city-person. On the other hand, you can walk from one end of Oxford to the other end within 20-25 minutes (as far as the city centre is concerned) and sometimes it really made me low to see the same stuff every day, use the same road to school every day etc. Of course the same goes for any place because you will mostly travel between department/library and home. As far as the professors' attention goes, it is a bit controversial. My own experience was actually very good. I approached three faculty members for my dissertation - one of them was an old teacher of mine - and all of them were really quick to respond to my emails and weren't reluctant to arrange a meeting. However, (and I believe this hold everywhere, on average), some professors have a reputation for not being that close to students - like the one who replied to a friend's email with a couple of weeks' delay. I have mentioned it on this forum time and again (because it really made me angry) that in some cases professors implicitly discouraged us from contacting them with questions about the lecture material - this doesn't concern the dissertation of course. At LSE, maybe some teachers will turn out to be very unhelpful, but at least you will have office hours. Of course, as I said it depends on the teacher. For example, I remember approaching my first semester econometrics teacher at the LSE for the econometrics course, and s/he wasn't really that enthusiastic about giving some advice to another MSc student. But then the micro professor was the opposite. So it really depends. Again, another thing I wrote about so many times, the course here is extremely badly structured. Micro is taught by 11 different teachers who are researching in the areas they teach. This sounds terrific at first. However, after a while it becomes really confusing and I think they also prepare the reading lists etc without considering that we are not only studying for their part. You might say that when in grad-school one shouldn't complain about the how much one has to learn, and I totally accept that. However, the bigger problem here is that nobody draws a line: you get your reading list with all sorts of books from very technical to very superficial and most of the time the book that the teacher advises you to read is not the best choice to do well in the exams (for example, Osborne and Rubinstein in game theory was recommended for a "3-week" game theory course but at the end many ended up reading the new book from Osborne which is actually an advanced undergrad-1st year post-grad book). The bigger problem is, you don't really know how much to read. Again for the game theory case, almost all chapters from the O&R was listed as main readings. I think Karina once mentioned that professors here have a notion of leaving you in the middle of an ocean (or let' be more realistic and say lake) and then wait to see whether you'll manage to swim back to the shore. This sounds very dodgy to me . On the other hand, if you go to the MSc then your exposure to grad-level work will be minimum I think - though I might be wrong. Clearly, the MPhil programme is tougher than the MSc at the LSE (but the LSE MRes is probably around the same level as the MPhil at Oxford). However, a relatively less burdensome first year at the LSE may help you to find a dissertation topic more easily in your second year. The emphasis on thesis here is clearly very big. Some faculty mentioned that sometimes there are dissertations, worthy of being published in a journal (not first-tier or probably second tier of course ) but I like to take such statements with a pinch of salt - of course one professor who mentioned this was a serious researcher himself (Klemperer). You must also keep in mind that if you go to LSE and continue there, you will have write a substantial piece of academic work during your MRes, but I don't know how important it is. Reputation-wise, people mostly think LSE is the better choice, and I would probably go to LSE if I were not rejected But then thinking about it again, I want to do financial econometrics, and this is a better place for that I think - of course as someone else mentioned before, there are some really good econometricians in LSE too, such as Linton or Hajivassiliou. It again boils down to the situation that some schools have good people in any area whereas some schools concentrate on a few areas. I guess LSE may dominate in this sense - macro is very weak imho here at Oxford, for one thing. However, development economics is one of the main strengths of Oxford from what I hear. One of the previous posts mentions competition and the ease of approaching professors. I think that's a very important concern. LSE MSc's class size is around 100-120 if I'm not badly mistaken. However, probably only a bunch of these students are interested in an academic career. Here the class size is around 60 I think. Normally it used to be around 40-50 but this year was an outlier. Again I haven't seen many people who were really determined about a career in academia, but this is not unusual since coming straight from undergrad, it's sometimes difficult to know that. Though there are some people who already have master's degrees in economics and who are really good students. So the competition thing is a bit mixed here. I have never felt a harsh competition atmosphere since people were always ready to share notes, answer each other's questions etc. Also, theoretically, people pick their advisors before the exam so there's not much competition there either. However, I guess the same would go for LSE too. To summarise this very unorganised post, I think the Oxford programme is more rigorous but badly structured. On the other hand, the MSc is less technical compared to Oxford, but you will have a worst-case option of continuing on to the PhD at the LSE (same at Oxford as well of course). I agree that getting distinction at the LSE is tough since there are so many students. Here, the condition for progressing to DPhil is getting at least 64 on average from all papers and having at least 64 on dissertation but I really hope that a good dissertation can redeem bad exam scores (after this week's exams ). So getting that 64 is not easy either and maybe more difficult. But I think you really have a good chance of doing well at either place because adcoms don't give scholarships to overseas students for simple reasons . Hope this helps... feel free to contact me for any question, I'd be happy to help! Last edited by Lombardo : 06-14-2008 at 12:57 PM. Reason: Grammar, typos etc.

06-14-2008, 03:59 AM	#23 (permalink)
rcwlhk Within my grasp! Join Date: Oct 2007 Posts: 204	You are being too humble by saying this is a "very unorganised post" ---- I find it to be very informative and insightful on the compare and contrast of LSE versus Oxford! Excellent post! Last edited by reactor : 06-14-2008 at 05:00 PM.

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06-15-2008, 10:19 PM	#25 (permalink)
teardrop Within my grasp! Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 111	Thanks to all the nice replies here especially to Lombardo! Why don't we try to compare job placements? I can't find any info on Oxford's site so it would be helpful if someone insider would comment on that. LSE has some info but most PhD students placed either at economic instituions or universities in their home countries. Seems like both PhD programs don't have very strong academic placements. Do we know of anyone distinguished who has attended either one of these at the PhD or Masters level?

06-24-2008, 02:21 AM	#28 (permalink)
Lombardo Within my grasp! Join Date: Sep 2006 Posts: 134	The placements at Oxford are a bit interesting. I think I have mentioned earlier on this forum that most of the best graduates decide to stay here. This is mostly based on observation of course because I remember checking the CVs of some of our younger teachers and they are all from Oxford and are amongst the best of their respective years. Then there are, of course, post-docs who come from very good institutions such as Chicago, LSE etc. Unfortunately, as far as I know, most of the best placements in the past were from the ranks of post-docs and not DPhil graduates. However, as Karina mentioned as well, there may be a bias effect here, where graduates get their DPhils at Oxford since they want to stay in Europe, in the first place. You can see some placements here: Placements I think and hope that the department is now putting more effort to prepare students for the American job market; however this is very likely to be wishful thinking on my part

06-24-2008, 04:24 AM	#30 (permalink)
Lokayot http://www.phdcomics.com/ Join Date: May 2008 Location: Vancouver Posts: 69	I have a question. Are the top UK universities like LSE, Oxford always late in confirming scholarships? By late I mean past 15th April.

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