studentecon

Assistant Prof at lower ranked places start at 60-70k per year. At research universities, 80-90k. At top 50 places, 100-110k. At Bus schools you can easily get more than 130k base salary. 70k per year already puts you like in the top 30% of the gross income distribution in the US. 100k is like top 10%.

Look, there are no free lunches. Stanford GSB and Harvard PEG are at least as tough to get as Harvard and MIT Econ. The placement from these programs, especially Stanford GSB, the Pol Econ program, are amazing. Same goes for Harvard BusEc and Chicago GSB. Harvard Public Policy, Health, Chicago Harris etc. are easier to get into, but also their placements are less stelar. With a PhD in Public Policy you are likely to be more successful in the Pol Sc market. Easier to get, I agree, but Pol Sc PhDs are paid less than normal Econ PhDs, have less portable skills, and much tougher time to survive the Econ Job Market.

A quick comment that hopefully will clarify a common misconception: Most of the schools accept a higher number of applicants with the expectation that some of the them will decline the offer. So, for instance, Harvard accepts around 35-40 people to target an entering class of about 25 students. Chicago and Wisconsin admit like 60-80 people for an entering class with 20-30 students. This means that chances are that your are not going to be admitted if some people decline offers quickly. Obviously, this comment does not apply for people on the waiting list. This is a tough year for everyone, applicants to grad schools and job market candidates. The number of applications has increased a lot, especially in highly ranked schools. Good luck to everyone!

I meant representative as far as the top schools are concerned. Specifically, with the notable exception of NYU, I don't see much difference between this year's outcomes and past placements (the 5 year average). I mostly agree, that's why I said top 10ish and not top 10. (As we all know top10ish includes 15+ schools, plus some special cases e.g. micro at CIT or Toulouse, applied at UCL, macro at UMN etc). If you go to the job market placement page of the schools you list on average at most 2-3 people find great jobs, which I wouldn't call ''plenty'' with an entering class of about 15-20 persons.

Some quick comments. 1) These tables are quite representative of what happens in a typical year. 2) My reading of the job market is that if you want a prestigious academic job (i.e. top 30) or top industry job, don't start a PhD in a school below the top10ish. If you want a solid academic job (i.e. top 100 US, plus top LACs, solid European or LA schools) or a job in the Feds, and other good gov positions, don't start a PhD in a school outside the top 30. Chances are that you are not gonna get your dream job, and you may have to settle for a low paying job (e.g some LACs or non PhD granting departments can even pay around 50-60k per year). Yes, I know there are exceptions (e.g. John List), but chances are you are not one of them. 4) You may now think that job placement does not matter that much and ''all I want to do is a PhD because I love economics'', but trust me you will not feel like that in 6 years. If you place a decent weight on money, PhD in a non top school is not the road for you. 5) That being said, I would put a huge weight (close to 1) on the recent placement when deciding between schools. For example, in the past 5 years, NWU, Michigan and Duke have produced very good outcomes. Chicago and Columbia, are not doing well (relative to their perceived ranking).

My first time was a pain, but the second time things were much better. Having accent can create problems, but in my experience the best way to handle it is to show that you are a friendly person, encourage students to come in office hours and make sure you are available through emails.

I would say it's nearly impossible. Moving from Fed's to research/teaching positions is not unheard of (conditional on a very active publication record), but why would a university want to hire someone from the private sector to teach economics? Grad students are probably more familiar with latest research and definitely cheaper to hire. As a professional in the private sector, you may have the chance to teach in schools of professional studies or MBAs in low ranked schools.

I sincerely apologize for making my point by quoting you. That your first reaction to the OP's question was ''what are your maths?'' instead of ''what were your adv econ textbooks?'' or ''what is your class rank?' is, in my humble opinion, representative of the tendency of this forum (and by all means, not your's only) to overemphasize some requirements for admission. Sometimes reading this forum makes me think that even a PhD in Econ with some publications is not good enough for admission if you don't have real analysis :D. As I have said in the past, real analysis is good, but many people pick up things along the way and this is sufficient for the majority of fields in economics.

Why should this matter? Being able to read Stokey and Lucas should be a sufficient statistic for math preparation. If the OP has performed well in advanced economic theory courses, I really don't see why an adcom should care how he got there, except perhaps if the intended field of study in grad school is theory. Of course the issue is how advanced courses at the master's level are, but the point I am trying to raise is that sometimes people here go mad with the math requirements. This seems to contradict my (admitedly limited) understanding of how things work in my department and also my reading of JList's posts.

1) you should be able to find other papers in the field by looking at past issues of the JIE and other journals that publish international econ stuff and look the sources that they cite 2) definitely will help at any top university - don't forget to mention the R&R in the cover letter / Statement / CV

I would strongly advice against using such a recommendation. A letter that hints you are no good for Harvard can not help you at any top 10 (at least).

It's close to impossible to imagine a busy adcom making the connection from your failed prelim to your research interest. The reason is that as long as you don't say you like space economics, adcom's are in general not interested in what you declare as your major field of interest-this will likely change/narrow down once you are in grad school. So most of the adcoms dont even pay attention to your intended field of study at the time you apply. In most schools the prelims serve the purpose of guaranteeing a minimum level of competence in ''economic theory'' (i.e. micro AND macro), so I wouldn't even think that such an argument has merits-except perhaps in business of public policy programs.

I haven't heard of anyone not being fully funded (tuition+health+stipend, sometimes +summer support)

[personal comment removed] An honest advice: be careful with naming people because this cannot end up well for you... I know of one other case who took up the same fight and also made unsubstantiated allegations against (very big name) econ profs - that person is now denied entry in the US and faces severe court orders.

Sure it can substitute, but you ll never get one...or two papers published in one year (except in a newspaper or a student journal or something). If you aren't already working on a well defined project, you should aim to publish in a decent place at best in 4-5 years.

1. I don't have data from other schools to compare. Some think it could be better. Faculty members do not care about first year courses, but things improve substantially when you enter the research stage. Many students start research during their first year. Some students have publications in top journal, usually co-authored with profs, when they go to the job market. 2. Very close to 0. I haven't heard of someone being asked to leave the program. 3. I think yes.

Yes, but how can you base your ranking on this year's placement only? Based on placement records in the last 3-4 years, I would say that Harvard and MIT are the most successful programs, then followed by Stanford (esp. the Pol.Econ program), Yale and maybe Princeton. Yale and MIT are just having one bad year. NW has an exceptionally good year, and it is in general a very strong program to consider, probably the strongest after what this board calls the ''top 7'' . NYU appears on the rise, but they haven't produced good students at a consistent rate, which seems odd given their faculty's reputation.

Yes, you are right. I remembered that some of my friends took the 2020 sequence instead of the two API courses.

As someone already said the program is geared for professionals. The coursework is good. Especially the micro sequence (2020) is just a notch below the PhD micro sequence at the Econ department (2010), and is the official PhD/MA sequence for everyone at Harvard (Public Health, Public Policy etc) except for the Econ students. You will never get permission from the Econ profs to enroll at the first year PhD courses at the Econ department. Danny Rodrik teaches a policy oriented advanced international trade and development course which from what I hear is excellent even for second year Econ students. The downside is that you really have to impress people to get a good letter, and given the amount of competition that you face from the PhD Students it is not obviously easy to stand out from your peers. But it is not impossible and some great students have made it from there to other top schools. From the people that I know, a decent GPA (>3.7) will get you into a top 20 PhD, but in general don't expect to be admitted at the Econ department even with perfect scores.

Stop provoking me to tell things about Chicago that I don't believe. You seem to be the problematic person, and not me! I ll try and boost your ego and admit publicly that Chicago is an extremely influential and reputed center of economics research, and I often go back and read influential papers of Becker and Lucas for my own research. The issue however here is not whether ''to Chicago'' or ''not to Chicago'', but rather you misleading people with your totalistic views about Harvard, LSE and who knows what other school. PEOPLE: don't listen to zsla when it comes to advice about applying to schools :)

Of course you have, or more accurately you have it as much as other schools. The difference is that you just call it ''price theory'', ''theory of income'' and ''quantitative methods''...

zsla: You seem to confuse economics with Heckonomics. Just because you like what Heckman does at Chicago, this does not mean that everyone likes or even cares. You base your whole ''rankings'' perception on how good a school is in YOUR narrow field of interest. This is the best strategy when selecting where to get your PhD or look for a job, but when giving general advice or making general comments about the quality of a program, your views can only be misleading. Your totalistic attitude reveals that you don't know much about economics outside your field of interest. Harvard is a top school and LSE is better than UCL, and this is true regardless on how good they are at the kind of econometrics you like. This is the common consensus, and look at the job market outcomes to convince your self. These outcomes maybe the effect of a million things, but it is the reality.

I agree (and I am more of a macro than micro-person). In my opinion, the fundamental skills that one needs from the first year are basic micro (choice theory, game theory, GE, informational economics), certainly statistics, many applied and some theoretical econometrics, dynamic programming, and some working knowledge of STATA, MATLAB or other softwares. Dynamic programming could be taught as part of a one semester course called ''math econ'' or something like that. Useful models in macro such as the infinite horizon stochastic model and A-D prices could be taught in the micro sequence, mainly as part of the GE part or even in a separate module. The great diversity across schools in the first year material of the macro sequence reveals that there are so many different sub-fields within macro, and each is important in some respect (monetary economics, growth, information, fiscal policy, search and labor, political economics, international finance, asset pricing, etc). It might be better if these topics are taught in specialized courses in the second year.

If you are referring to Stokey and Lucas's (1989) textbook, then you don't need a whole course in measure theory to understand it. Chapter 7 of their book provides an introduction to measure theory and includes the prerequisites for the rest of chapters.

Oh my god! Just because YOU were not admitted at any top school and because YOU were told that real analysis is a strict prerequisite by some fancy-math professor of economics, it doesn't mean that it is true in general... Myths: -You definitely need real analysis to pass the first year courses -You cannot be admitted at a top 5 university without RA -You don't have a future in the profession if you haven't taken RA Reality: -A lot of people that don't have real analysis do well in their comps, research and eventually the job market -You can pick up the basic tools in the first year and pass the comps -RA is certainly desirable and very very helpful. I would prefer a B+ in real analysis than not taking it at all. I could tell a dozen of counterexamples that contradict your math-madness statement, but I ll stop it here. (For the record, I had RA when I applied but a fair number of people in my program did not have and are doing just fine.)