corolla09

This program has some very prominent economics (both Gneezy's) faculty on it, and a few people doing new interesting work in behavioral finance. They have a giant brand new building on campus, a new behavioral lab, and have made really good hires lately. I assume phd econ students can also work with the econ faculty over there. Plus, SD is a great place to live. As with most business schools they probably accept a small class each year.

If your profile isn't suited for top-10 then I would say: Ohio State, Brown, Cornell, Maryland (auctions only really), Virginia (though they only really have Holt), Berkeley (esp. for behavioral but Rabin may be moving...? not sure), UCLA is closing their lab, CalTech (though this is a very unique program but has some great faculty and good placements), Arizona and Pittsburgh. Lower ranked schools to look at: Purdue, Texas A&M, Georgia State, Florida State, GMU (Houser is their only senior faculty doing experiments) There are bunch of european programs who have labs, fyi.

There aren't many American Master's programs in economics, I would talk with your professors. The good Canadian ones come to mind for Master's PhD preparation: Queens, UT, UBC. Tufts may be a decent option as well. Given career ambitions a Master's in Stats, etc. may also be worth looking into if you don't want to do research in economics (i.e. public policy).

Utah is a heterodox (radical political economy, etc) program and WVU is mainstream but has (or did until recently) some Austrian leaning faculty. WVU seems to offer more mainstream fields as well and their placements are ok considering their rank. Attending Utah might constrain getting a job outside of the heterodox world.

Whether it's worth it is of course subjective. But if you want to go to academia without a rigorous 2-year master's at LSE for example, or an excellent industry placement than it may be worth it. Much of the first-year coursework will be similar (although macro and game theory rigor can vary) miserable to Top 30-50 schools and so will prelims. The biggest different is a wider variance, and lower student ability, not as well known faculty, and the possibility your interest don't math any research interest within the department. Most of these programs are able to specialize in a few fields but not all, so look at their faculty research and placements. Some not-top 50 examples that get cited here from time to time other than Missouri and Clemson are: Kentucky, Georgia State, Florida State, Stony Brook, Wyoming, Binghamton, Georgia, etc.

Clemson is probably definitely the better program. Look at their recent placements, many are industry, TT positions, and some visiting, and seem to be better than Missouri's. However, I don't think either program compete with places like TAMU, Colorado, etc. You can always try contacting the DGS on placements.

If your interest is micro then Kentucky clearly dominates, especially if you're looking to get a job in academia. They have also done some good hiring recently.

I think the placement is appropriate for their rank given the market the last few years. A&M is quite good in a few areas so if you want to study something they don't specialize in it could be tricky. If you are doing experimental i would say that Pitt >= A&M, (conditional on funding at both places) but not by much if any.

Are you sure the Iowa State Master's admit isn't just a formality for acceptance into the PhD program (especially since you are are waitlisted for funding)? I know my program formally admits you as a Master's student until you pass your qualifying exam. I assume you're interested in Ag Econ, in which case conditional on funding at Iowa St I'd say ISU > NCSU.

There are many fine places to study in Europe including; LSE, Toulouse, Tilburg, Tinbergen, Stockholm, Bonn, Zurich, Sienna, Oxford, CERGE-EI among others.

This seems to be happening slightly more often. Some of the post-docs at CalTech, Stanford etc came from lower-ranked departments. So if you are a good researcher it may be advantageous to go to a higher ranked school for a year or two to pump out some quality research and do more co-authored work and you may fair better in the job market than without the post-doc. That said I think if you go to a post-doc and don't get much done/published it will hurt.

Good for experimental they have Harrison, Cox, Laury for senior faculty.

Dude, go to Cornell. Especially if you're interested in Experimental/Behaviorial (Donohue) and they have many good Labor faculty. Personally I think it's a little underrrated - but the program is structured a little different than most. Cornell > BU >> Texas.

Yea if you got the SPEFE fellowship it's a pretty good deal. For the most party it's pretty non-competitive. Most students work together on the first-year problem sets and whatnot. There's not real grading on a curve (except for econometrics because its dual with the finance students). But eveyone's real nice. The Prelims are the most difficult - b/c FSU is lower ranked they take chances on those with less than stellar undergraduate records - but if you study appropriately you'll do fine. And we're much more mainstream than GMU if that's a concern at all - the first-year sequence is pretty standard and much like many top-30 programs.

MSU, Vandy and UIUC are higher ranked than FSU, definitely, you can look at placement to confirm this. However, FSU has have a good and growing experimental group (Isaac, Cooper) plus a ton of junior faculty from Econ and Poli-Sci. We also have a fairly good public choice, law, free-market faculty (Holcombe, Benson, Gwartney) and empircal public (Ihlanfeldt). We have had a lot of junior hires lately (Minn, Texas, Oxford, Ohio St, CMU) and placements are slowly catching up. The program is smaller than most with an incoming class about ~10. If you are interested in Experimental or Public I would definitely consider FSU.

Overall I would say Maryland is definitely better ranked and especially with respect to public.

Maryland and Cornell definitely dominate Virginia in my view. I would heavily consider WashSTL only if I wanted to do Macro otherwise I'd stick with Marlyand/Cornell.

With no inside information is seems CU Boulder is very good at internation while Washington maybe a slightly better overall program and better at econometrics?. I believe there is a TM'er who post often and is at UW seattle. That said Boulder would be a fine place to live and is not a bad place to go if that is your only funded option.

30k for living at Penn State is definitely more than enough, you should have zero financial issues (it is quite a lot actually) I cannot speak to the cost of living in London. However if you are interested in Auction Theory, Penn State has a few of the top people in this field, specifically Krishna is there.

I'm not sure about the overall strength of the school though I'm sure it's considered out of the top-50. Yea, Ben Powell is doing lots of research in the Austrian/Public Choice fields with very strong ties to GMU. So it is one of the few schools that has some Austrian faculty if you're into that. Other than just living in Boston I would not really consider other geographically close schools in your decision as I agree with asquare.

Some schools ask for this to see if you are actually interested in attending and if you're not then they can offer the funding to another applicant. Thus I would let them know if you are interested in attending but say that you will (may) take until April-15 to decide, especially if you are serious this should not be a problem. They want to make sure you're not wasting their time.

Wisconsin, WUSTL, Columbia seem to be recruiting aggressively in recent years.

I agree with Team3. I would choose which school you like the best. Going to a better school definitely out-weighs finishing one year earlier.

Syracuse does not send out rejection notices. (although it seems that rarely does anyone on TM apply there)

Wisc made some aggressive recruitments (several? senior hires if I remember correctly) last year so they may be rising more than UCLA. If interested in Micro/IO/metrics I would probably say Wisc dominates UCLA. The U of C system does have to deal with lots of budget cuts, maybe someone on TM can speak to how this has affected any funding. They are similarly ranked so I would look at comparative field strength and overall living/institution preference.