friendlyskies

I can assure you that ASU faculty is currently reviewing applications and will be making decisions soon. They're probably a little later than usual this year because faculty recruitment has been busier than usual. In "normal" years we may try to hire 1 or 2 new faculty, but this year the department was trying to hire 7. So there have been job candidates visiting nearly every day for the last 6 weeks, and the faculty/staff have been pretty swamped with that. I know it's a stressful time, and waiting is the worst part. Decisions will come out soon, and there will be a visit day for accepted students in late March (tentatively scheduled for the 30th, I think). Good luck!

Oh, and the AEA maintains a much more comprehensive conference list here: RFE Conference List

Many (though certainly not all) econ conferences are organized now through Conference Maker. You can find a list of upcoming conferences here: Welcome to Conference Maker&reg

HassanNA, I'm not aware of a waitlist at ASU. If you have not heard anything by now, I would recommend contacting the department to check on your status. You're going to get very little information watching this board because many applicants simply do not post here.

You should definitely contact Cornell to clarify whether or not you can get funding at a later point in time. If you have no first-year funding, some universities will help you find funding for later years. Even so, it can be risky to go without funding because attrition rates are fairly high in economics programs in general. You don't want to be sitting on tens of thousands of dollars in student debt after one year with nothing to show for it if you don't pass. I don't mean to be a pessimist, but it does happen. I've had friends in that situation, and it's not fun. Having said all that, I will put in a shameless plug for ASU. We have a really good macro faculty that would fit your interests well, I think. In particular, check out the recent work by Prescott, Herrendorf, Ramondo, Lagakos, and Schoellman. We also have made offers to Andres Rodriguez-Clare (Penn State), Dean Corbae (UT Austin), and Mark Wright (UCLA). If you want to work in macro that's a great faculty roster to work with. Granted, we don't know if they'll accept or not, but I think it shows that the department in general is targeting really high caliber people and committed to maintaining a strong faculty moving forward.

A lot of ASU questions can be answered by checking out the conversation from last year: http://www.www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/116628-asu-academic-social-life.html I discussed ASU placement on page 4 of that thread, but I can give some updates. Last year students accepted positions at Stockholm School of Economics, Carlos III, ITAM, CIDE, and the Indian Statistical Institute. The market obviously hasn't cleared yet this year, but I know of students who have taken jobs at Hofstra University (finance) and ITAM so far. Flyouts this year have also included Stanford (post-doc), U Miami, BEA, OCC, West Virginia, Yeshiva U, and some others that I'm not remembering right now. Also, a faculty update might be in order since that was also discussed in last year's thread and things have changed since then. Rogerson did take a position at Princeton, so he left after the fall semester. ASU did not make any junior faculty offers this year, but we did make 5 senior offers. Gustavo Ventura (currently at Iowa) was one of those, and he has accepted. The other 4 are still pending. Three are macro & international trade, and one environmental. Also, Rajnish Mehra (formerly UCSB) is now here full-time for those interested in financial economics.

I still pop in occasionally to see how things are going with the new recruits. Like to do my part to promote our fine department here! :)

Gustavo Ventura has accepted an offer at ASU. Presumably he will be joining the faculty in the fall. We are also actively pursuing two other senior macro candidates. They have offers on the table and will likely make decisions in the next month or two.

Two things for those of you looking for housing near ASU: 1. Some of you asked about which apartment complexes to avoid due to noise, parties, etc. Well I just ran across this article that lists the top 10 apartment complexes for number of police calls during this school year (Tempe, ASU crack down on underage drinking | eastvalleytribune.com). I don't have any personal experience with any of these places, but I think it's safe to say that these probably shouldn't be at the top of your list. 2. Some of you also talked about possibly renting a house together. For what it's worth, there is a really nice 4 bedroom, 2bath house on College Ave about a half mile from campus that just went up for rent a few days ago. They're asking $1600/month, which is not bad if you split it 4 ways, and the location and house are really great. If you're interested, I can get the phone number for you. Of course, this place may not still be available in August, but there will be plenty of other places that are. If you're looking for houses to share, I would say you can find lots of nice places in the $300-400 range, per person per month.

I'll have to ask her about it, but my thought is this... The last 3 classes have had 6, 8, and 6 people, respectively. It would not surprise me if they were trying a larger class (closer to 12), but I don't think they were trying to get 22. I spoke with the PhD program director about this a few days ago, which is where the information for my earlier post came from. Nonetheless, it is what it is, and you're all qualified and capable or you wouldn't have been admitted in the first place. There's no doubt that the program is growing, and it's an exciting time to be here.

Where is your information from? I'm curious because I understood the target class size was around 10-12 (as has been the case for several years) and that the acceptance was much higher this year.

It's definitely possible. You will have almost a full month off from mid-December to mid-January, and you won't have any assigned work to do during that time. Some people choose to study during the break, but that's up to you. Personally, I did not do any work during the winter break. I went home for the holidays, then took a road trip for a couple weeks.

It's definitely possible to live off-campus without a car. The only time it would really be difficult is when you need to get groceries, but even that is manageable. You can bike or take the bus (or walk if you're close enough). I bike to campus every day (~1.5 miles), even during the summer. The heat is only really bad for a few months, but you'll be spending those days inside studying for qualifying exams anyway!

The two confirmed hires that I know of are Natalia Ramondo and Todd Schoellman, but there may be others pending. Both are "advanced" junior faculty, i.e., they've been out a few years but are still at the assistant prof level. Natalia has been an AP at UT Austin and visiting at Princeton. She does work primarily in international trade. Todd is currently at Clemson, and was a student of Michele Tertilt at Stanford. He does a lot of work in labor/macro. Both are good additions for the department in that they add good up-and-coming junior faculty in areas where we have some strong senior faculty leadership. I know we've also put a priority on hiring at least one more environmental economist this year, but I don't think that's happened yet. I'll let you know if I hear anything about that.

Hey folks, several of you have sent me PMs out of concern about the class size. If it's ok with you guys, I'll just post a few thoughts here rather than reply to those individually. For starters, baj393 pretty much hit the nail on the head. I've spoken with some of the professors, and they said our pool of applicants was bigger and better qualified this year than any in recent memory. ASU doesn't have a waitlist that I'm aware of, so they admit those people they think will succeed, and that's it. They don't want to fill the class with less qualified students just to see those students fail or drop out. You have to remember that high attrition is not in anyone's best interest - not the students, and not the school. The school does not want to put out $30,000+ (tuition, stipend, health insurance, etc) on a student just to have them fail out. It's a huge waste of money, it's a waste of professors' time, and it's a waste of time for the student who could be doing something else with their life. The other thing baj got right is that the class is larger than anticipated. We made about the same number of offers as previous years, but the acceptance rate on those offers doubled. So when Manjira said she was expecting 10-15, she was being honest. But twice as many of you accepted as in the past, so here we are. The good news is that the department has added a lot of new faculty in the last few years, and we have at least a couple more new additions this year. The number of faculty is going to continue to grow to meet the needs of the students, and I don't think the student-faculty interaction will be impacted. One final comment: I should point out that the general feeling around the department regarding the incoming class is excitement. The professors aren't plotting how to get rid of half of you during the first year. Everyone is excited to have a large class of highly qualified students who recognize the improvements the department has made. And frankly, it's up to you all to decide what the culture of your class will be. Just because there are more of you does not necessarily mean you should have to compete with each other to survive. The only person that can determine whether or not you make it through the program is you. Put in the work, and utilize your classmates as resources rather than stepping stones. Then you'll be fine. Those are my personal thoughts, and I hope they help. Like I said before...looking forward to meeting all 22 of you!

Sounds like I'm going to have a lot of new names to learn in the fall, and you all are going to have lots of good study partners. Looking forward to it!

I think the last number I heard for your incoming class was 13, but that was a few days ago and the decision deadline isn't until tomorrow. I'm guessing you might get a few more at the last minute. Looking forward to meeting you all in August!

As much as I get tired of all the rankings talk, I know it's a legitimate concern for any prospective students. I think ASU is probably in top-40 or so overall in the US right now. Of course, there are sub-fields where we are much higher (and those where we're much lower). We all know the short-comings of the Repec rankings, but as an example, the field ranking for dynamic general equilibrium goes Chicago, MIT, NYU, Minnesota, Penn, Northwestern, ASU, Boston U, Harvard, UCLA. Bottom line, with a smaller program like ASU, you can't be good at everything, but you can focus your efforts and be very good at a few things. Now if I get out my crystal ball and try to predict the future, I would say ASU certainly has the potential to be a top-25 school. Word on the street is that the university has committed a lot of money to continue building the program in coming years, and we've hired a lot of good new junior and senior faculty in recent years. Plus, our placements are rapidly improving now that we have students on the market who have been through the entire program under the "new regime" (post-2002/2003-ish). There is certainly a model out there for how to be a highly ranked and well-respected small program (e.g. Carnegie-Mellon, Johns Hopkins) by focusing on what you do well, keeping good faculty, and producing good students. We seem to be following that model, and I think the results will be positive. So those are my (admittedly biased) thoughts. I'd be interested to hear others...

I'm not sure what information you're looking for regarding the SPEAK test, but I think there is information in the phd student handbook on the econ dept. website about what score is needed to pass, when you take it, what happens if you don't pass, etc. Handbook here: http://wpcarey.asu.edu/ecn/upload/GRADUATE-HANDBOOK-2009-10.pdf

If you all find houses or apartments online that you are interested in renting, send me a PM and I'll try to advise about location, cost, etc. I'm currently renting a house near campus, and I've got a pretty good feel for the neighborhood and the rental market.

Even as an ASU student, I would encourage you to go to Pitt if you want to do experimental. There's just no one here that does experimental. We have lots of good micro people, but all the experimental stuff is happening 2 hours down the road at Arizona.

I'll be here, though I don't know what role I'll have in the "festivities". Look forward to meeting you all this weekend!

You should check some cost-of-living calculators online to get a more scientific answer, but here is my experience. For rent, there are plenty of pretty cheap apartments within a mile or two of campus. If you're willing to get a roommate, you can get a 2 bedroom apt. for around $800/month and split it. Utilities are pretty cheap, except air conditioning in the summer can get kind of expensive. But on the flip side, I never once turned on heat this winter. I turned off my AC last September, so my utilities since then have been really low. Transportation around campus is essentially free if you want it to be. A lot of students bike, and there is also a free local bus called the Orbit, which is surprisingly nice, clean, and safe. Of course, if you have a car and drive to campus then things can get more expensive. As for food, I guess that depends on your own preferences. If you eat out a lot, that drives up the costs, but you can make your own meals and it's no more expensive than any other city. There is also a faculty/staff meal plan at ASU which phd students are eligible for, and that will get you $4 meals (all you can eat) at the cafeterias on campus. Bottom line, you can live just fine on the stipend at ASU. If you're relatively frugal, you'll even have cash left over for the occasional weekend trip to Vegas or San Diego.

I don't know of any phd students living on campus, and I personally would not recommend it. You're much better off finding an apartment off campus. If you decide to attend ASU, ask the current phd students for recommendations because we can point you to the apartment complexes that are relatively quieter. Some of the apartments around campus are full of undergrads, so they tend to have a lot of parties, which aren't good when you're trying to study for exams. Regarding houses, the good news for students right now is that the housing crash in Arizona left a lot of empty houses and not too many people willing to buy them. So the owners have resorted to renting their houses out until the market recovers. In short, there are a lot of rental houses now available within biking distance of campus, and if you split the rent with a roommate or two they are as cheap (or cheaper) than comparable apartments.

I haven't heard anything about a target class size, but I would expect it to be similar to the last few years, i.e., 6-10 students.