johng Posted February 2, 2019 Share Posted February 2, 2019 Just a question I've been curious about: when people on this forum (or in academic economics in general) refer to a school's ranking, is there any one source that they are going by? From AEA's website, there are a number of different lists and methodologies behind rankings (American Economic Association), and although we know the likely suspects in the top 5, top 10, maybe even top 20, particularly as you go lower in the rankings it seems there can be a fair amount of variance from list to list. Is there any "gold standard" that economists use to assess a PhD program's position? Or do people just not care about that so much? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EXP Posted February 2, 2019 Share Posted February 2, 2019 I am an applicant for this year. When was looking for schools to apply to, I looked at field rankings on RePEc to find departments/people I was interested in, then ranked those by what I felt was the best fit. I then looked at the USNews, Tilburg, and RePEC department rankings as a whole to get an idea of where they fell and which I could cross off my list because they were either unattainable or nearly unranked. While I applied to schools ranked between 15-60ish, my personal preference is dictated mostly by what I perceive to be a good fit, and "ties" are broken by overall ranking. I'm sure other people have better systems, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tutonic Posted February 2, 2019 Share Posted February 2, 2019 Most people on here base their ranking off of the USNews one. Access Denied edit: weird how the link shows as Access Denied but works just fine if you click it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johng Posted February 3, 2019 Author Share Posted February 3, 2019 I am an applicant for this year. When was looking for schools to apply to, I looked at field rankings on RePEc to find departments/people I was interested in, then ranked those by what I felt was the best fit. I then looked at the USNews, Tilburg, and RePEC department rankings as a whole to get an idea of where they fell and which I could cross off my list because they were either unattainable or nearly unranked. While I applied to schools ranked between 15-60ish, my personal preference is dictated mostly by what I perceive to be a good fit, and "ties" are broken by overall ranking. I'm sure other people have better systems, though. I think that makes good sense. I (also an applicant) tried to take a pretty holistic view, using rePec, US News, etc. I had a difficult time knowing just where I'd be competitive for a number of reasons so I ended up weighting geography pretty heavily, perhaps equally with the fit of the program to my interests, and then trying to apply to a broad range of programs across the top 70 or 80. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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