mathemagician

Hi all, I'm just popping in to say hello. I came across the site again and I'm glad to see that it is still somewhat active. There are still profiles and results being posted every year - although not at the same volume as before. It's nostalgic to see some of the old threads still stickied on the front page. It's now years past my PhD graduation and I'm going up for tenure.

Nope!

I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean international students that did their undergrad in the U.S.? If so, adcoms don't treat them any differently than native students from the same institution. On the other hand, international students from abroad are dealt with differently by different departments. Ideally, the adcom would have someone familiar with European schools and someone else familiar with Asian schools, etc... However, some departments almost specialize in certain countries or regions. If you look at the grad student list of a school, you can often see one country being over-represented. This usually happens when a faculty member has good connections to a certain country and are able to determine who are the best students and ultimately convince them to come.

I'm not sure which school you're talking about (I actually moved in the middle of my PhD studies). However, I imagine you are talking about the first place I was at. I don't know the actual financial condition of any department other my current one. You can ask around during visit day but as I said above, grad students also don't really know what direction of the department will be.

The first year I did masters admissions, the committee ranked the candidates one-by-one (all the committee members were new to masters admissions). This year, we realized that was a waste of time so instead we just eliminated the bottom students who are ill prepared and admitted the rest. So honestly, we don't spend much time on admissions. That being said, I don't think the masters students are much worse than the PhDs (at least where I'm at). We look more for hard skills for masters students and don't really read the recommendation letters. PhD admissions look closer at the letters and intangibles but there is still a lot of noise. Due to revenue sharing, the econ master programs are often very important to the departments money-wise. We usually get no direct money from the undergrads since their tuition goes to the general fund. On the other hand, departments usually can keep a portion of tuition from master students. To get the most out of your education, you can figure out as a group what you want and inform the director of master studies. I think most DMS would be pretty responsive to your needs. However, demanding master students are quite rare.

Hi everyone, Sorry, I haven't been a very good moderator. I thought I would remain active on this site after I became an Assistant Professor but it didn't pan out. Although I am incredibly busy, that isn't really the primary reason I became inactive. I think the overall repetitive nature of the threads and the fact that the concerns on this site became more and more distant to my own pushed me away. Anyways, this will probably be my last burst of activity. I was on the masters admissions committee for the last two years so I know how that works (here at least). Do you guys have any questions? Even though I was not directly involved with PhD admissions, I pretty much know how it's done as well. I will say that I've seen a lot of talk about the financial conditions of various universities discussed Ad nauseam on here. However, I think most people don't know what's actually going on. Even if there are financial difficulties at the university level, the economics department might be fine. It depends on many factors such as the support of the Dean, Provost, and/or President. Grad students and especially undergrads are not really privy to this information.

Of course - it's not as well known as Polytechnique but well known nonetheless. There is usually a faculty member who specializes in European schools.

I think Americans can be particularly myopic in their worldview. Americans make up less than 1/20 of the population of the world. Most people don't go far away for their undergraduate education. American undergraduate education is not vastly superior - there is perhaps the biggest gap in faculty and student ability in U.S. schools. This often doesn't translate to better education. For example, how I can make my class rigorous without suffering terrible teaching reviews if a significant fraction of the class have trouble with exponents? However, Americans do have an advantage in Ph.D. admissions. We will almost always take the student from the U.S. over a foreign country if the profile is similar. There is more or less reverse affirmative action as a whole in Ph.D. admissions. I think the idea is there is less variance associated with taking an American student over a foreign student. Also English ability is a concern. But English education is improving worldwide and at some point won't be as much of an issue.

That is not what people are saying. Don't put words in other people's mouth. There are plenty of people that get into top 5's from all over the world. But do you know how many institutions there are all over the world? Is it unreasonable to suggest that you have to be among the top of your class to have a shot at admission? As an undergrad in an American university, you are competing with top students from Europe, Latin America, Asia. Can you even name the top 3 schools in each country on these continents? There are certainly more potential students than the number of spots at top 5s if we just chose the best student from each university (of course I know not all of them apply). I am a faculty at a top 50 - our graduate students are not the best. They are still vastly better than a top 20%tile student from a school like the University of Michigan. A school like Michigan probably graduates 200+ econ majors a year. There are at least a dozen similar state schools. You do the math. Yes, if the rest of a student's profile is similar to that of a typical top 20%tile Michigan student, then he/she would have no chance at admission even in my LRM institution. We would rather choose a top 5%tile student from a top 5 university in China, South Korea, or Japan. Trust me, there are far more of these guys than you may think and they don't usually post on this site.

I don't think you should have too many safeties. It's better to target more schools in your expected range which is dependent on how well you do on your GRE retake. But you could get in anywhere and be rejected from anywhere ranked 15 to 60 with that profile. However, do you know what George Mason does? George Mason is more of a different career choice than a safety.

That is actually really good placement from a top 5 and an atypical year unless it is MIT. Only MIT consistently places that well - Harvard does it every other year or so. The rest of the top 5 (Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Chicago, Berkeley) would probably place five or less students at top 30s on average.

People are antagonistic towards you publicaffairsny because you express strong opinions on the admissions process without much credibility. chateauheart's rule of thumb is not something I agree with entirely but it is reasonable. A lateral placement into grad school involves competing with students worldwide while the undergrad mostly draws from the state. For comparison, after grad school, a lateral placement would probably be top 5% or less of students on the market from the same school. That is, 1 job candidate out of 20 on average might receive a lateral placement. Finally, for the B+/A argument, it really does depend. Some of my A students have near a 100% average. A top student most times would not even be close to the A/B+ cutoff. B+ students can have a poor understanding of the subject (barely satisfactory understanding to my standards) but most places grade on a curve so these students get B+ as long as they are 25-30%tile or so.

1) Well to start off, you should do well in your field courses. 2) The best thing to do is to focus on a field rather than spend your time equally IMO. Do the minimum amount of work for fields that don't interest you so much and get really good at the stuff that does interest you. Field courses are often set up in a manner that it is nearly impossible to do all the suggested work (reading, problem sets, etc...) for all classes. Professors understand this and like to see several people excel in each field course but won't severely punish people that do the bare minimum.

Well I'm fortunate that my new department has several active seniors working close to my field. My field is actually different from my advisor's though I use similar methodology so I plan to collaborate more with the new folks.

Honestly, it seems that you lack confidence and you are depressed. I don't think either option is worthwhile if you don't get your head on straight. Look at what your upper year classmates are doing and see if that interests you - the first year is a poor indication of what the rest of grad school will be like. Going back to your undergrad institution won't fix anything. You should decide if econ is for you. In the private sector, there isn't much of a difference between having a masters or not. Once you pass prelims, they don't matter anymore. It doesn't preclude you from doing certain types of research. There are plenty of people who failed prelims and decide to do theory or econometrics.

The user name... Anyways, it doesn't sound like you know what a PhD entails at this point. We may as well hypothesize which city you'll be when you are 70 years old. Even if you had some problems to excuse your GPA, the fact remains that the GPA indicates that you did not learn what was necessary in those classes although you're probably a smart guy. Finally, recs from polisci professors won't do much for you.

Honestly, research is not as creative as you might think. Creativity might be just an old idea on a new dataset. Some people are also given ideas by their advisor. I would say that most grad students start their research off being too creative to the point where they can't even solve their models.

For me, it was somewhat idiosyncratic - my advisor told the graduate class he was teaching in the spring of my 4th year that I was going on the market. It was news to me but that signaled that I better have my stuff ready. Also, my JMP is a bit current event related and time sensitive so that I could be scooped if I went a year later or people might lose interest. But overall, I think it is better to go on the market with one great paper vs. two good papers. Most people do go in 6 years now, but often the 6th year doesn't benefit people much unless they really have very little by the summer before 5th year. Job candidates tend to get another level of help from their advisors, committee members, and department so that many candidates' JMP changes a lot from the end of the summer to mid November. If you're a guy staying until 6, you simply won't get this level of help or pressure. Many people don't do much during their 5 year if they don't get on the market and their packet look pretty much the same in their 6th year - you're never going to feel completely ready. If it comes down to it, you can pull out anytime before the packets go out in early October.

Thanks, no problem. I agree with everything you said. There are a lot of questions on here that anyone is free to answer.

1) I honestly thought grad school would be easier... haha. More seriously, unless you are at a top 5, there are only a few advisors that will be able to place you in top institutions. Choose your advisor wisely. 2) I believe it is easy to just not be involved in the department. No one keeps track of you. After the rush of excitement of working on a new research idea, the remaining time to flesh it out will comprise 95-99+% of the total time and it is such a grind. 3) Along the same lines, those who show up nearly everyday to the office tend to have much better placement. This may be a correlation vs. causation issue but not entirely IMO. You will need 3 letters for the market and it is hard to get decent 2nd and 3rd letters if you don't show up. Even if profs don't know your name, just the fact that they see your face will benefit you. Every year, a person or two will appear on the placement list that know one knows and that is not a good sign. It is so easy to just show up once a week in grad school and it will be a detriment if you do so. By the way, I'm not judging those who don't show up. Some may have two body problems in grad school so they aren't even in town most of the semester. But if they don't show up, they are maximizing something other than placement.

Hi everyone, I haven't been very active lately since I was on the job market in the past year. The process was quite long and arduous but I was fortunately able to land an economics assistant professor position at a top 50. I still plan to be somewhat active on this site in the coming years but we'll see. Back when I applied to grad school in 2009, this site was one of the top (if not the top) search result for PhD economics. But nowadays it is not even in the top 100. It seems as if Google no longer loves us and many are only finding their way here by the word of mouth. I still believe this site is a great resource but I don't know how we can stop the steady loss of activity since we have no control over it. There is a lot of information on here about what happens in the first few years of grad school but very little about what happens at the end of it. I think grad students do come in to grad school pretty naive. There might be a perception that the senior members on this site are somewhat harsh but the perspective they bring is mostly accurate. When you look at a grad school's placement record, you should realize that the median placement on the placement list is closer to the top 1/3 or 1/4 of the incoming class. This is due to students dropping out or not going on the official market. Schools will often find someway to omit placements that they don't like and it is not uncommon for departments to post only 10 placements when incoming classes average 20. Also, the two body problem (even if you don't have it now) is very very difficult to solve. For example, no couple out of over a dozen from my department in the last few years were able to immediately solve their two body problem after grad school. In the end, almost no one is completely satisfied with their placement but most are content to be finished with grad school and live their life. People often make choices they would have probably thought to be beneath them when they were first entering grad school. I think most of the judgement of a site like EJMR comes from lower year grad students - people tend to develop a sense of empathy and understanding once they have gone through the job market cycle. With all that being said, I would definitely still make the same choice that I did. Wishing I that I did something different would be wishing to be a different person. But nevertheless, grad school is hard and it is easy to get lost and disillusioned after the second year. Anyways, I'm willing to do an AMA of sorts on this thread as long as answers do not require any identifying information.

I'm too lazy to look at the paper. But at least in econ, you really shouldn't be emailing professors about admissions in the first place =P

So you seem to be saying that sociology is no good. But more seriously, it is very difficult to switch fields even from econ to finance for instance. The intellectual resistance itself can be severe but the clash of political ideology seems to be an unfortunate additional consequence of switching to a field like sociology. In the same way, a well meaning physicist would probably be destroyed in an econ seminar. Thinking about econ as a physical system could possibly lead to better predictions but it won't sit well with economists unless it has "economics."

It was very active when I was applying for grad school. The activity level has definitely decreased (though it was pretty high last year). There are no less econ PhD students from as far as I can tell. I think most of the information is out there now and people got tired of endless profile evaluation threads. Sometimes activity induces activity and a few very active and friendly members can cause a lot lurkers to start posting as well.

The primary benefit for the job market outcome is adviser/committee letters and school reputation. For the argument of going to a lower ranked school, the big fish in a small pond is kind of a myth to be honest. You really have no way of knowing whether you'll be this big fish or not when you enter grad school. The big fish do receive a lot of love and attention from faculty but the market is still very tough. It is much safer to go to a school where the median placement is better.