Potica

I'm sure you've noticed this too, but I think it's worth emphasizing how incredibly successful Stanford GSB has been at placing it's graduate students. Their worst placement in the last 8 year is Tufts, their second worst is Iowa, and the third worst is probably UNC (depending on your preferences). Their median placement looks like it's at a top 10 university. (Economic Analysis and Policy Academic Placements: PhD Program: Stanford GSB) Harvard and MIT aren't even close to matching that placement record. It's hard to argue that their placement record is purely due to selection, unless for some reason they are much better than other top schools at identifying and recruiting the most promising prospective graduate students. I think it's a very good signal that the faculty invest heavily in their students. It also looks like although Stanford GSB is fairly theory/IO focused, their job market candidates are doing quite of bit of empirical work and even some non-IO work. Although, the empirical work all sounds pretty structural.

Same thing happened to me last year. I eventually received a letter confirming admission. I don't think we heard anything about the financial package until much later. If I remember correctly, OSU gave out some fellowships, and for people who they admitted but didn't give a fellowship, they would give you a tuition waver if you had another funded offer. They might have some other funding mechanisms for first years, I didn't really follow up with them about it or attend the flyout.

Wharton applied econ is also rumored to be losing two of it's better faculty members: Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson. Wharton also recently lost Joel Waldfogel.

PROFILE: Type of Undergrad: BA econ and psych from top 10 LAC. Post-BA math classes in continuing studies program at top 20 University Undergrad GPA: 3.5 (overall), 3.4 (BA institution), 3.8 (post-BA), 3.6 (econ classes), 3.6 (final two years of UG at LAC) Type of Grad: None Grad GPA: N/A GRE: Q780, V650, AWA 5.0 Math Courses: Calc I-III (C, A, A), Linear Algebra (A), Differential Equations (A-), Game Theory (A-), Probability I-III (A, A, A-), Real Analysis I-III (B+, A, A-), Math Stats I (B-). All but Calc I taken post BA. Econ Courses: Intro Micro (B+), Intro Macro (B+), Intermediate Micro (A-), Intermediate Macro (A), Econometrics (B+), IO (A), Decision Making (A-), IO Seminar (A), Trade (B+), Managerial Econ (A-), Law and Econ (P) Other Courses: lots of psychology courses, a few history classes. Letters of Recommendation: Two young (well known) economists at top 10 econ PhD program for whom I had a 1.5 year RA job. One economist who previously had a senior position at the FTC who supervised me at a consulting firm for 5 years. Letters were clearly strong. Research Experience: Undergrad thesis (both econ and psych), work at econ consulting firm (5 years), full time RA job at top 10 university (1.5 years), co-authored working paper with supervisors at RA job, and a little bit of very preliminary work on a couple of my own ideas Teaching Experience: TA for 2 quarters of intro micro and 2 quarters of intro macro Research Interests: Applied micro (changed the fields a bit from school to school) SOP: Probably strong. Good argument for why I want to study econ and why I am prepared. Wrote extensively about two research ideas. Customization varied from school to school. Concerns: Relatively old, weak undergraduate grades, no grad classes. Other: Presented co-authored paper as a poster at a conference in late March (a mention that the paper was accepted for the conference made it onto about half of my apps) RESULTS Acceptances: UW Madison ($), Cornell ($), UT Austin ($), UVA ($), OSU (unclear), Vanderbilt ($), UC Davis ($), UC Irvine ($), Notre Dame ($) Waitlists: U Chicago Booth econ (accepted), U Michigan Ross econ (accepted), Brown (accepted), U Maryland (accepted, no $), U Michigan (withdrawn, prob could have gotten in at last minute), UNC (withdrawn), U Minnesota (rejected) Rejections: Yale, Harvard PEG, Berkeley ARE, Stanford, Princeton, UPenn, Wharton Applied Econ, U Chicago, Northwestern, Columbia, NYU, CMU, Duke, JHU, Rochester, University of British Columbia, UCSD, Wash U Attending: U Chicago Booth econ What would you have done differently? Not much. Would have changed my mix of schools slightly and not applied to UBC (with its $150 application fee). Obviously I could have done better as an undergrad, but at the time I had no interest in graduate school. I think the RA job was hugely beneficial (for a number of reason). My results would have been much worse without it. The last five months have been very busy and stressful, so I'm happy it's done even, especially given how well it turned out.

Institution: U Chicago Booth Program: Ph.D. Business Economics Decision: Accepted Funding: Full Notification date: April 8 Notified through: E-mail Posted on GC: No Comments: Was waitlisted

Institution: UNC Program: Ph.D. Economics Decision: waitlist Funding: ? Notification date: April 13 Notified through: E-mail Posted on GC: No

Institution: UCSD Program: Ph.D. in Economics Decision: Rejected Funding: NA Notification date: 04/06 Notified through: E-mail Posted on GC: No

Institution: University of British Columbia Program: PhD Economics Decision: Rejected Funding: N/A Notification date: 03/29/2011 Notified through: Email Posted on GradCafe: No Comments: The application fee was steep. Probably should have just skipped this one.

I've been looking for a list of Michigan's placements for the last few years, but I could only find last years placements. Does anyone know if placements for earlier years are available somewhere?

Just as background I'm a fulltime RA and I've been involved with the process of putting together papers, submitting, revising, and re-submitting papers for the professors I work for, but I haven't submitted any of my own work to a journal. I think you are right to think that you can publish on your own. My understanding is that the downside of publishing with faculty members as a grad student is that people reviewing your file when you go on the job market will not give you much credit for the paper. They will assume that the paper was the professors idea. This is much less of a problem if you co-author with fellow students. So if you can get something published on your own or with a fellow graduate student in a good journal, then you should try to go that route rather than attempting to find faculty co-authors. The professors I work for typically send their papers to people at other universities and present at other university's seminars and conferences to get comments from many people before they submit a paper to journal. I think these things are a bit harder to do as grad student than a professor because you don't have a network of people at other universities. But your advisors probably know some people who work on topics related to yours and would be willing to read your paper and give you comments. You can also try emailing your paper to people who work in your area, but the response rate will likely be quite low. I've heard it is also not too difficult to get a presentation slot at regional conferences, so that's an avenue you can try to pursue as well.

JenniferS, I was at the Michigan flyout, is there anything specific you'd like to know? I'll write up some general impressions of the flyouts below. I came away with a positive impression of the program. I had the chance to talk with several faculty members and they were friendly and helpful. The graduate students seemed happy. The program is quite strong in labor and public economics. They've also built up nice IO and development economics groups. They seem relatively weak in econometric and pure micro theory. I didn't pay much attention to the macro and international faculty presentations so I can't comment on them. They wouldn't tell us much about the waitlist. E.g., our probability of being admitted off the waitlist, the number of people admitted, or the number of people waitlisted. They're targeting a class size of ~28-32. There were about 50 people at the flyout and my impression was that well over half of the attendees were wait listed. We asked a few questions about the attrition rate and they indicated the comps failure rate has fallen to 10-15% so they would be targeting slightly smaller class sizes going forward. The faculty indicated that most of the attrition happens after the second year. A grad student who got an AP job at Maryland for next year (I forget her name) claimed that 20 out of 24 people in her cohort were graduating. Even if that attrition rate is accurate, it seems pretty atypical because most years Mich seems to only list about 15 placements. The faculty indicated that most students were taking 6 years to graduate, but that they didn't necessarily like that trend.

Institution: NYU Program: PhD Economics Decision: Rejection Funding: N/A Notification Date: March 22, 2011 Notified through: Official e-mail Posted on GC: Yes Comments: I was looking forward to getting this one after all the waiting.

Institution: Cornell Program: Economics PhD Decision: Accepted Funding: Sage Fellowship: 22.25k stipend +4.7k summer stipend + tuition waiver, health insurance, etc. (required to RA or TA after first year) Notification date: 3/18/11 Notified through: Personalized email Posted on GC: No Comments: A very nice offer...looks like I'll have some decisions to make after all

Institution: Brown Program: Economics PhD Decision: Waitlisted Funding: I think it's yes if admitted Notification date: 3/18/11 Notified through: Email to check Website Posted on GC: no Comments: Waitlist number 6 (this must at least put me in a tie for the most waitlists)

Institution: University of Michigan (Ross) Program: Business PhD (international business and business economics) Decision: Waitlist Notification date: 3/15/11 Notified through: Response to email asking about my status Posted on GC: no

Institution: Maryland Program: Economics PhD Decision: Admitted (off waitlist) Funding: Not currently, but they indicate they may be able to offer me funding Notification date: 3/17/2011 Notified through: email Posted on GC: no Comments: One waitlist down, four to go!

Institution: Johns Hopkins University Program: Economics PhD Decision: Rejected Funding: N/A Notification date: 3/15/11 Notified through: e-mail Posted on GC: no Comments:

Institution: UC Berkeley Program: Agricultural & Resource Economics PhD Decision: Rejected Funding: N/A Notification date: 3/14 Notified through: e-mail to check status Posted on GC: No

Does anyone know if Brown will send a second round of rejections? (It looks like I was passed over by the first round)

Institution: Princeton University Program: PhD Economics Decision: Rejected Funding: N/A Notification date: 3/11/2011 Notified through: Email Posted on GC: No Comments:

Institution: CMU (Tepper) Program: Ph.D. Economics Decision: Rejection Notification Date: 3/10/2011 Notified through: Email Posted on GC: No Comments:

Institution: Columbia University Program: Ph.D. in Economics Decision: Rejection Funding: N/A Notification Date: 3/09/2011 Notified through: email to check website Posted on GC: No Comments:

Institution: Stanford Program: PhD Economics Decision: rejected Funding: N/A Notification date: 3/08/11 Notified through: Mail Posted on GF: No Comments:

Institution: Washington U. in St. Louis Program: Economics PhD Decision: Rejected Funding: N/A Notification date: 3/8/2011 Notified through: Email Posted on GC: No Comments: Somewhat surprised by this rejection. I guess it's evidence of the randomness of the process.

Institution: Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School Program: Economics PhD Decision: Rejected Funding: N/A Notification date: 3/8/2011 Notified through: Checked website Posted on GC: No Comments: