Golden Rule

A lot of funded offers come attached to TA/RA commitments and winning an outside award leads to a reduction in those commitments. Some schools also reduce funding by less than the amount of the fellowship so you still get some financial reward. And yes, some people have parlayed outside funding into better admission offers.

I thought that comment deserved some clarification. I think this means that, after qualifying exams/certs, it's possible to coast through the program and take a non-academic job with little hassle. It does not mean that certain students early on are designated as non-stars and have no hope for academic placement success. Out of the department's solid U.S. placements this year, there were some who knew their advisors before they came here and did well, but there were also some who emerged later in the program. Some didn't really work with their eventual advisors until third year. Some main advisors didn't even arrive until 3rd or 4th year. I have no idea how this compares to other programs.

I had the same decision years ago. I thought UCSD & Columbia were both improving at the time. I was more confident that Columbia was improving, though it turns out both programs performed as well as I hoped. Columbia was also more appealing to me for personal reasons, though I've visited UCSD and it's a pretty nice place. I don't think you can go wrong. I have some familiarity with people who've been through both programs, so I'll comment briefly on both programs, specific to your interests. Yeon-Koo Che at Columbia has the strongest interest in matching at Columbia, and he's taught a good field course in market design for several years now. I can only recall one student on the market so far who went on the market with a paper on matching & school choice (and his was also empirical). He placed at Toulouse, and I think he could've done better if he were a native English speaker. Looking at micro theory as a whole at Columbia, the field hasn't had the same placement success as some other fields yet. One of the program's best 2010 candidates was in micro theory and had multiple top 10 flyouts, but he ended up at the top school in his home country. In terms of other micro theory faculty, Kartik is a really well-regarded advisor, and pepper123 is right that Columbia GSB has some good micro theorists as well who are active in seminars. Columbia is planning on developing a new experimental lab, but that may be too far out to affect you. Behavioral at UCSD is clearly strong, and I definitely thought it was an appealing option at the time. UCSD had a placement at Stanford in behavioral last year, who graduated in four years no less. He was exceptionally well prepared coming in, with an LSE MSc and a couple years of doing behavioral research at a regional Fed. So UCSD clearly adds value there, though I am cautioning you that you have to be really good already to end up going from UCSD to Stanford in four years ;). I also know UCSD had a good micro theorist on the market this year who worked with Sobel & Watson and placed at Syracuse this year. Good luck with your decision.

The comments from roadvirusss are fair. Other students who have matriculated at Columbia in the past have said that other schools have had better flyouts, though there has been more positive feedback in some years than in other years. I'd agree there has not been a trend improvement in visiting day experience that's commensurate with the improvement in the overall quality of the program. Thanks for the feedback.

Ok, you make some fair points. I do feel I've now laid out some details on Columbia's recent history and improvements, beyond improvement in faculty quality, that can give students some more confidence that this year's placement is a trend change and not a blip. But point well taken on my initial argument.

I also just wanted to detail a few more of the changes in the department beyond the new faculty: Until a couple years ago, most prof offices were on the 10th floor of the building, while student space was all inaccessible on the 5th floor. The dept has since taken over the 11th floor and there is now ample student workspace by faculty offices. These natural interactions from proximity are crucial for avoiding the culture " economists " described. Another big change since 2006 or so was to require students to present once per semester at a student lunch (colloquium, attended by several faculty, mandatory student attendance). There were two lunches back in 2006. Now there are 7. Columbia really used to let students get away with minimal progress years ago. Now that's no longer the case. The newer faculty that came in along with Janet Currie and the leadership at the time have been very committed to improving the quality of advising, and the results are showing.

Ok, but you're approaching this from a position from ignorance and making inferences about your undergrad institution on to Columbia. At the same time you're accusing me of lying to prop of my school which I don't appreciate. As for my credibility, that comes over time, but I feel my credibility here has been built for me trying to give an unbiased impression of my school and make sure everyone gives my school a fair shake. When faculty are not involved in the department, I tell people who they are. And then I give credit where credit is due. Sure, and there's nothing wrong with the OP thinking carefully. As for whether the placements are a result of an improved department, I can point to several things. One is the improvement in the quality of the faculty. Another is the improvement in the student space that improved the quality of student-faculty change. I also think the improvement of the department began when Davis & Weinstein as department chairs brought in Currie & Woodford, and both of them I believe really changed the culture of advising in the program, and both of them won the top advising awards in the program several times (Currie has now left for Princeton). Macro placements weren't as strong as they are now in part because Columbia didn't have enough now depth in senior macro faculty around when Woodford arrived, but that clearly changed in 2008. I have no interest in entering a ranking debate, but I believe most people and rankings would concur that Columbia has clearly been a top 20 econ department in terms of research productivity. Most people would also agree that before this year that Columbia has not placed like a top 20 econ department should. It's also false Columbia has "never" been a top department. Columbia was among the best departments many decades ago. You're right that there are some faculty that aren't involved in seminars and advising and general academic life: but that doesn't mean it's a culture that permeates the whole department. Anyway, I agree that it's fair to question whether Columbia's placement this year is one-year fluke or part of a longer-term trend for improvement. I've given some reason why I think there's a longer-term trend of improvement. It's up to the OP ultimately to do the due diligence and meet the students and faculty and make a decision.

Sure, as I said, Northwestern clearly has much stronger overall placement record than Columbia over the past decade. I would be sure to find out exactly how well Northwestern macro students have placed in the last few years though. Since these new Columbia macro senior hires have only been around for a few years, they're not going to have a long track record of placing people. But their first students have done very well. And keep in mind, all these senior macro faculty weren't here when these students choose Columbia -- Columbia wasn't competing as well for students with other top 10 schools at the time -- so I expect that the macro placement will be even better going forward.

While Northwestern surely has a longer track record of placements overall, Columbia's placements improved a lot this year. The placements are now posted on Columbia's econ site. The macro placements this year were at Maryland, Boston College, and the Board of Governors. The student placing at Maryland also had flyouts at Berkeley and Harvard. I don't know what the recent record of Northwestern macro placements is for comparison. Columbia's improvement in placements is not some one-year fluke. There have been significant changes in the department, especially in macro. The biggest difference is the department hired three seniors, Schmitt-Grohe & Uribe & Reis, in 2008. The impact of their hiring on macro placements finally began to show this year, and I expect it's only going to get better. The department was physically renovated within the last few years, and upper year macro students all have offices right outside the professors'. That makes a huge difference. The department also has two student lunches and one faculty lunch each week devoted to macro, in addition to the usual weekly macro seminar. It's simply a much better place for macro than it was several years ago.

Here are few more: Elly's advice for applicants from LACs (won an NSF, at MIT now) http://www.www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/89215-advice-applicants-lacs.html#post581009 NSF topic choice: http://www.www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/103716-nsf-topic-choice.html NSF 2009 thread: http://www.www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/113601-nsf.html

No, I agree that's a good thing to do. That said, there are plenty of interesting topics that don't get touched by popular literature.

My recommendation is for you to look at a few things --- graduate syllabi in the various fields, the introductions of seminal papers in your field (which will be evident from the syllabi), and look at some recent job market papers in these fields. Skim over research of professors in these fields at your school. Are the questions these fields ask ones that generally interest you? (though the better question is, can you imagine yourself thinking of a question that you can convince others who study this field is of interest?) Will you get good advising at your school for these questions that interest you? Surveys in JEP, JEL, and Annual Reviews can also be good while you're getting started. What second-year field courses you take does not decide your career. You have a lot of flexibility to do what you like. Advising is more the relevant constraint than courses offered. Courses will typically only give you a small introduction to any specific topic you'll study. Now as an asst. prof., you're certainly not bound to do one area. But some factors tend to constrain you in one area. When you're an asst. prof., most of the profession may remember you for your job market paper. You'll likely have a stronger network based on areas you've already worked in. Tenure review will largely be based on recommendations of other experts in your field, so too much breadth can be problematic. That said, some profs definitely like those who at least read in other fields and use those ideas in their own research (I recall reading a Matthew Kahn post to that effect in the last year or two). I actually strongly disagree with this advice. The first year is much more enjoyable if you do it with your future career in mind. If you just focus on coursework, you'll hate grad school. Also, first year of grad school is not all that useful in terms of deciding your field (maybe only between micro & macro). And you might want to get an RA position summer after 1st year, at which point it's good to have some research interests in mind. I think it's a decision you should weight carefully over time, not make at the last possible minute. That said, you shouldn't get stressed over it and you shouldn't be in a rush to decide now, but I'd recommend that you start to think about it, and enjoy it.

Yes. You're forbidden from taking 5 your freshman fall. Thereafter 5 is the usual limit and you need special permission to take 6. i took 5 my freshman spring and took 4 every semester thereafter. I could've taken more courses, but I wanted to devote more time to my extracurricular activities and research activities outside of class.

I know several future Econ PhDs in Boston who have taken Real Analysis at UMass-Boston.

I took a couple years off before grad school and spent a while thinking my life would become much worse upon arriving in grad school, due to all the horror stories. Once I got there, within the first few weeks of math camp, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to devote so much time to a subject I really enjoyed with the rigor that I desired, and I felt foolish for having postponed it for so long. But you'll also have anxiety throughout. If you have one bad day/exam you'll think that you made a mistake coming to grad school, no faculty will ever respect you or want to work with you due to your failure. That's normal. And if you're ultimately successful, you'll look back and laugh at how seriously you took minor slipups that proved to be unimportant. I also dislike focusing on "hours of work" as a measure of a lack of well-being. When I work 80-hour weeks, it's because I'm making good progress. What's frustrating is when I'm not able to work that much.

The idea of ignoring someone's thinking solely because of their "training" is idiotic. There's no good reason to do so, other than people wanting to protect their turf. Judge people by the merits of their ideas. And yes, some people can always write in a field and appeal to masses who haven't studied it. Krugman's written of this often. But I don't blame the people writing outside of their field for this.

I'll add a slightly different twist -- I'd agree by some measures you have smart and dedicated people in any graduate program. One point I'd make though is, being an economist requires a lot of different skill sets and it requires jumping through a lot of different hoops. Students at top programs are more likely to have tolerance for all aspects of being an economist. Another way of stating this --- your success at tolerating all the little & potentially obnoxious tasks necessary to become a top admit is correlated with your success at tolerating all the little & potentially obnoxious tasks necessary to become a successful academic.

Well the first link that jumps out at me is Samuelson = 5, Dornbursch = 6, Krugman= 7. Dornbusch may have a lower number than 6 though.

A few theories: --- MBA programs are larger. It's much easier to summarize MBA placements with statistics like average salary, % going into consulting, etc. I expect due to law of large numbers the variance in average results is much smaller than in econ. Similar to what the OP has said. --- The obvious static information view, if a dept. is consistently placing way below its rank, it'll hold back placements. If a dept. is consistently placing way above, it'll be more inclined to reveal them. Similar to what the OP has said. --- The less obvious dynamic view: placements are a 5-6 year lagging indicator. If a dept. feels it's grad program is improving, it may hesitate to reveal placements publicly. A department in decline might be MORE inclined to make placements very public.

Learning everything that's been done in the last 5 decades is not what makes you a successful PhD student. What makes you successful is getting to the frontier of your field and contributing. Higher-ranked schools on average have more faculty who are closer to the frontier, and are able to help you get there, both through 2nd-year courses and through the advising process (which is more important). Also better schools have more active seminars and better speakers coming to the dept. This also gets you and your peers closer to the frontier, and allows you to better critique each other. You can only do so much in a vacuum. Generally no, for the reason's I listed above. Also famous/respected isn't always correlated with being a good mentor. As others have said, certainly there are people at top programs who are brilliant and have produced good research prior to entering these programs. But having good community is absolutely a necessary condition to succeed.

Your grades are mostly great, I wouldn't worry much about one bad grade. The big questions for me for where you'd end up are: what do your profs think of the independent research you've done? If they think your good enough for some kind of top admit, will anyone believe what they say? Have your letter-writers recommended students to top programs before? Where and how do you compare to them? You seem to have an open dialog with your professors about where they think you'll get in, so it sounds like you could get this information. Sure, people have different opinions about what range to aim for, but the only ones that matter are your letter writers, and you should be able to tell whether anyone will find their opinions to be credible.

I recommend Paul Krugman (the economist, not the blogger/columnist) for a nice discussion of why we make ridiculous assumptions. Here's "How I Work": http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/howiwork.html Here's a more recent address: http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/aag.pdf An excerpt from "How I Work"

Then why do job candidates always dress up?

Purely academic European conferences I've been to have had similar dress to what you described at the CEA. It's not a general European thing. I can't rule out that geography matters since I've never been to that part of Europe. Was there more mixing in the Greek conference with people from govt. or private sectors? That leads to better dress regardless of the venue.

I was just filling out a survey for an NSF award, and it contained this: So it is.