UCSC versus UC-Irvine

[bhws07]

Hi guys, I have offers from UCSC and UC-Irvine for Economics PhD. I am an international applicant and was not able to attend the visit days. My interests are in empirical monetary economics and international finance. While UCSC has faculty doing good work in both, UC-Irvine seems to have people who have been doing good work in metrics as well. I will really appreciate it if I could get some constructive inputs on this.

[omega3]

Check your inbox :D

[2019Fall]

I also have been accepted to both and actually visited both of them.

In my opinion, for empirical stuff, UC-Irvine would be a better choice as, like you said, there are some people doing some cool metrics/stats stuff.

They actually have two professors who are joint professors in the Stats department and have this data science certificate thing.

For International Finance, I think UCSC would be a better choice. Their department is known of International Finance and definitely have more people doing work in the field.

In terms of size, UCSC seemed to be smaller and they emphasized how closely grad students work with professors, but it feels like every department emphasizes that lol.

I don't think there is much of a difference between them in terms of overall reputation, rankings, or stipend.

Then I guess you are really left with the location and atmosphere of the department which are subjective and hard to tell without really visiting them.