elcapitano

FWIW in my UBC cohort, the 'average' average among Canadian students was in the high 80's (albeit from a limited, but I have no particular reason to suspect wildly unrepresentative, sample). This was a couple of years ago, but an average in the low 80's would potentially make you a marginal candidate. This chimes with the previous posters experience.

I see no reason why they wouldn't. This person on the job market does. A different question is why would you want to do the MPhil if you already have a masters from LSE? If you want to do a DPhil/Phd there, you are probably better off applying as a probational research student. If you don't, then the MPhil is not significantly more prestigious than an LSE MSc; if you fancy going to Oxford then you could do diploma or another masters in a different subject rather than doing a whole bunch of rather similar coursework.

MRes courses are 1 unit.

MRes isn't the research track of LSE's masters program, the MSc (res) is. The MRes is the first year (or two) of LSE's PhD program, 90% of entrants to the MRes have already completed a masters. I agree, EME students face a challenging course load though.

A few points: - LSE have a similar progression requirement from their MSc, you would require a distinction, this is a slightly lower bar than a 70% average but the difficulty of the courses and hardness of marking could be different, so it's probably similar. On LSE's website they say around 25% of students achieve this, UCL and other british universities have similar progression requirements. - Canadian universities with formal masters don't have formal progression requirements (not sure about doctoral scheme at UoT) but you have to apply to their PhD programs so they most likely have informal ones. I have heard that the rough requirement for admission at UBC is a solid A average in first semester courses, this isn't written down. - It's not clear to me which regime you are better off under. - At none* of these schools is the coursework in the masters supposed to stand in for PhD level coursework, at UCL and LSE after the masters you have to do their MRes' at cambridge you do the CGPS, at UBC and at Canadian universities you do the first year of the PhD same as everyone else, all of which involve another full year of courses in Micro, Macro and Metrics. - Most UK universities have research track and non-research tracks. I believe the main purpose of this is so that students can receive government funding the British government funds (some) British students doing masters who plan on doing a PhD. Note that the coursework is very similar (although cambridge has some extra requirements). - If you are sure you want to do a PhD, then you may be better off picking a direct entry PhD program, except, a good performance in a masters could get you into a higher ranked program, the masters' are easier to get into than similarly ranked programs (especially LSE, maybe less so Cambridge) - If you're serious about doing a PhD, you should be able to be in the top quarter of the class in these programs anyway. You should have more motivation, and with this motivation, if you can't make the top quarter then you'll most likely find the first year of a straight PhD program difficult.

I wonder how many people have clicked on this thread because the "scare" quotes made them think it was about something else. While on the topic of cost of living, I think its worth keeping in mind that the reason expensive cities are expensive is because a lot of people want to live there, despite the expense. These cities are in general great places to live, so on average you don't need to fully compensate people to the higher costs of living. I tried out the cost of living thing above and it said I'd need 33k in New Haven to be equivalent to 50k New York, but you'd have to give me (way) more than 33k to make that switch.

You might be right, as I eluded to, I'm a believer in lcoational preferences explaining the characteristics of LSE's students and their placements (lack of placements 20-100 US relative to reference schools - Penn, Columbia, NYU, Minnesota etc). For sure, for an product of the American education system there are plenty of reasons why Americans would end up at those schools while similarly, Europeans might prefer LSE. I still think it notable that pretty much all the products of four year undergrad admitted to LSE have offers that in general dominate, the ones from past years so as well if I recall, but you are right that these can be marginal. If the criteria were the same though, you'd think there'd be the occasional student for whom LSE was their lucky break. Regardless, given the application fee I don't think there's enough evidence to put anyone off. I think you're right about masters degrees as well; they're unlucky to help you into the top ten unless you've nailed undergrad at a lesser ranked school if you're from the US. For someone who did decently but not amazingly at undergrad then they'll help but not that much. On the quality of education systems, I think North American schools do provide the options to allow good students to distinguish themselves by taking hard courses outside their major that you might not get in Europe. In my undergrad I took only one course outside the economics department.

Not chisquared, but I think you have it right. I believe five is the median, and six years are more common than four. As I understand it a couple of years ago a hard cap of six years was added for incoming students. Presumably because they were getting worried about completion times. A couple of posts back people were talking about admission to the MRes without a masters in something, while it's possible, very few people actually do matriculate without some sort of masters, even for track 1 (about one person a year comes straight from LSE undergrad). As the two people who have both done it on here ended up with NSF and accepted at MIT, the bar for students with no masters' might be pretty high. The European skew of their students probably explains a bit too as Europeans attend to apply with masters', and if you had a preference for Europe you' probably pick LSE over the rest of the bottom of the 'top ten'

Indeed, who'd want to live in a place with great transit, free healthcare and high taxes when they're a student and not earning much! :p This is not intended as a swipe at College Station or any other non 'uber-liberal big government city'. Nor is it intended to reopen the tedious US vs. Europe debate.

I think LSE dominates in your case. The overall fees will be lower. A distinction at LSE guarantees entry to LSE. Even if you don't apply until the year after, at LSE you'd be applying with Masters grades in hand, wheras at Cambridge you'd only have the equivalent (hard) undergraduate grades to show. You can spend the 'year off' doing RA work or making money, either way you'd get paid. In general, although LSE clearly dominates Cambridge for it's PhD program, I don't think in general there's much to choose between the MSc and the MPhil, especially for a terminal degree. I should think most people will have a better time in Cambridge as a student, and it's quite a lot cheaper and job prospects are going to be pretty similar.

You should ask but I think almost everyone gets at a tuition waiver after the first year (if you fail everything then perhaps not). You can teach and stuff as well, but if you got no 'proper' scholarships you'd be unlikely to pull in much more than 8 thousand british over twelve months - although there are probably more lucrative summer options than LSE based work.

If the funding is ESRC it is tax free and comes without any work attached so you'd be able to pick up another £4-7k on top without impinging on time too much. This would put you on about £2k or so a month after tax - about the same as someone earning £35k after tax. If you want your own apartment figure £1000 a month plus utilities. If the funding is taxable and comes with a work requirement I think it'll be tough to support two people even though apart from rent and transport London isn't that expensive.

I don't think it'll make much difference at all. FWIW, for undergraduate degrees I think LSE Econ and Cambridge Econ have, respectively, the first and second highest average starting salaries of all UK undergraduate degrees (and it's close, I should think LSE being in London can account for the difference).

This would be more accurate without the word not. Once you are past the MRes stage many (most?) people who want them are able to get Teaching fellowships - LSE need a lot of teaching fellows as they teach all their MSc students with them. These pay £18.5k over 9 months (taxable), so enough to live off reasonably comfortably if you supplement your income over the summer, for 3 or 4 hour long classes per week. If you're in the two year MRes pretty much everyone gets a tuition waiver in the second year. Term time teaching at standard rates will net you around £4-5k a year and you can probably earn a similar amount over the holidays without having to work too many hours. This won't be enough to live on unless you are EXTREMELY frugal but it's not nothing. You can teach from year one if you ask, LSE has a shortage of teachers.

Cambridge and Oxford are quite rich: FT.com / UK / Business - Cambridge tops university rich list it is said that you can walk from Cambridge to Oxford without stepping off university land.

These are the schools that I'd think someone with a preference for Europe would not consider if the alternative was a good European program. The universities themselves tend to be less prestigious and the towns are not that exciting in many cases*. Plus, I think salaries tail of substantially as you move down the distribution in the US so the difference will be less. I'm not sure why Canadian departments wouldn't have an anti-europe bias as well, but I'll take your word for it. I wouldn't be at all surprised if flyout costs didn't play some role. We're probably barking up the wrong tree looking at LSE's placements anyway as they're the most american of the european departments. But I really see the anti-europe thing more as unspecific advise against the general quality of European departments. I just want to reiterate I'm not arguing that there is no bias, just that a decent part of the percieved difference could easily come from selection effects. *the two Canadian schools are in cool places but there aren't that many mid-ranked US schools that are, plus wages are flatter across universities in Canada so I imagine SFU and UMontreal pay well.

In response to Nanashi: I wouldn't be surprised that the different contact networks made it somewhat more difficult to go to North America post PhD from Europe however it's not really true that LSE don't place at all to non-top US schools, in the last couple of years they have Brown, SFU, CMU (x2), and Montreal (I realise that two of these are Canadian). It's true that they have a lower propensity to place in lesser ranked schools but where you see a huge bias against European schools I see a large selection effect. If you have a preference for Europe it's not clear to me that a 20-60 ish US school dominates a top European school. Especially as top European schools tend to be in cities that are quite desirable to live in. Also, your hypothesis of only stars going to the US would seem to require the job market to be more efficient at the top, while I can think of plausible mechanisms for this, I think it's just as plausible to think of the lack of substitutes for top US schools in Europe being a driver of the differential. Having said all this, if one is considering a European PhD, you need to consider that a lot of the departments are not as good as US departments (this will seem obvious to many but is worth stating). And that some programs are not structured in a way conducive to producing academics, I have Oxbridge* in mind as I've been warned off them by alot of people, but there may be others. All non-LSE british universities follow the same structure and probably ought to carry the same warning but UCL may be an exception.

I think the above is worth highlighting. FWIW, if you compare LSE's placements to those of comparably ranked US schools I don't see too much of a difference. LSE: PhD Job Candidates Penn: Placement Information | UPenn Economics Department Minnesota: University of Minnesota Department of Economics (Note, I think LSE only provide placement information for students who choose to go on the academic job market). The other schools that I'd guess you might want to compare LSE to are NYU and Columbia but I couldn't find their placement records. Given that most schools outside the top 30-40 have pretty weak academic placements, and most European schools are outside the top 30, I think that once you control for European students likely preference for European schools, placements are going to be fairly comparable.

In our year at UBC MA at least, the atmosphere amongst students was good; not at all zero-sum game like. That being said; the classes for core courses are quite large so one doesn't feel a great deal of institutional support in the first semester.

Agreed.

For general purpose masters more weight needs to be placed on institutional reputation so my UK ranking would be something like LSE(MSc)=Oxford>Cambridge>=UCL>Warwick For a PhD LSE>UCL>Oxford>Warwick>Cambridge If you think you might continue to do a PhD after you Masters at the place you go that should obviously be taken into account. In terms of difficulty to get into the Masters programs my sence is [harder] Cambridge>=LSE(MSc)>UCL>Warwick [easier] but this is based on friends admission experiences a few years back (I don't know enough people who applied to Oxford but I suspect it's the most difficult).

Our year at UBC didn't do too badly. Of the half of the class I know about (c. 30 people, and I have no reason to think that we were the smarter half - if anything I'd say stupider) we had, as destinations, (2) UBC - I don't think either applied anywhere else (1) NYU (1) LSE (1) Maryland (1) Montreal - restricted locational choice for personal reasons I think that only 6 of us applied to PhD programs. I heard that one guy in the other half of the year got accepted pretty much everywhere but I can't confirm where he ended up.

Probably not, LSE require a distinction and they probably go easier on their own students than other similarly ranked schools. I believe a Merit can cover quite a range of performance. If you just missed out on a distinction then schools in the mid-teens might be possible. If you just scraped a Merit then schools around 30 might be where you want to look. You should ask someone at LSE with experience of these things...

If I recall correctly, in 2008 and 2009, it looked like Cornell started their 'rejection season' by rejecting previous applicants*. This is not to say that all previous applicants were rejected, or even that there chances are worse, but this does imply that they may treat previous applicants differently. *Cornell do rejections first.

No. The programs are totally separate.