CorcoranCadet

Even if there are no hard and fast rules, I wonder if one should even bother trying to fulfill the 6 rules above instead of letting the relationship develop organically. The question is even more potent at lower ranking schools where only a few of the professors may really be well known, only a few of them may have had a track record of success in placing students, and only a few may be in your research area. Is it really worth it to be concerned about this issue? Given that most people aren't dead set on their fields, it seems natural that students will gravitate to the areas the school is strongest in.

If you are more interested in SMU, and you are sure those are the fields you want, I would not count it out so quickly. I was moderately impressed by their placements. They may push their candidates on the job market since they have a relatively small program. That's also probably part of the reason that Iowa State has a lot of people without academic placements. They simply have much larger cohorts. If you are interested in monetary, SMU looks like a good fit. That being said, it is not a major state university like Iowa State. (I haven't ever been to SMU so I don't know really what the campus scene is like) At SMU you will probably get more attention than Iowa State. The only reason I say this is that, at programs like Iowa State, agricultural economics usually brings in the most money.

If the cost is similar, I would go with BGSE. It seems like Texas A&M has recently redone their MS program and it is now focused on financial economics.

Economists is right on point with this. In general, I think US News does a good job of capturing the perceptions of most people in academia. I would argue that it is relatively correct up until about 50 or so and still mostly correct beyond that. I think one consideration is that the lower you go in "perceived rank" the more attention you may want to pay to the specialties of your department. For instance, someone doing international economics at UC-Santa Cruz will be a serious contender against candidates from schools that are ranked in the top 50 and perhaps even higher.

Many of the ARE economics programs seem to be four year. I think this is mainly due to the fact that it is not unusual for the applicant to have done a masters program prior to entering into the PhD program. That being said, people coming straight from undergrad are often admitted as well. In fact, I know of some places where you are given 4 years with a prior masters and 5 without. Either way, I wouldn't worry about it much. If you are showing good progress and can make the case that the 5th year is necessary they will probably fund you.

I think anyone will tell you that the prospects for placement coming from outside of the top 50 are slimmer than those from inside the top 50. But it really is a bunch of different factors. Missouri, for instance, has only 2 job market candidates this year. Compound this with the fact that many foreign students want to return to their home countries. Compound this with the fact that many Americans at lower ranking programs may even have a preference for private industry placement. Looking at it this way, it is easy to see why you don't find many PhDs from Missouri at other schools. That is not to say that it can't be done. I think many times we think that lower ranking schools for some reason or another cannot place within a certain range just because we see little evidence of it. What we do not consider is whether the placements are a result of student choice, incoming student ability, training, or bias on the part of employers. Maybe it is a little of all of them, but at least you are going to have a fighting chance if you work hard.

It is also worth considering that, unlike many of the top departments that have a large number of job market candidates, schools outside the top 50 generally have small cohorts in comparison. So it makes sense that you may sometimes be hard pressed to find an "example" of someone from a top 100 school.

I am not very familiar with Missouri, but I would suggest Clemson. I don't think the difference in private opportunities is going to be substantial. However, Clemson is going to have better opportunities in the academia. The one caveat to this of course is that you believe you can pass the prelims at Clemson after that first year.

Many schools cover Bartle and Sherbert (or whatever other text) in two semesters. That's what I did and I simply can't imagine doing it in one unless you were really just blazing through and only going over the proofs and examples in the book. If you plan to apply next year, I would be concerned about getting those courses in the fall. That way you have a reasonable chance of getting grades on the transcript for schools with deadlines on Jan. 1 or Jan 15th. If you plan to apply in two years it won't matter when you take them. I would not recommend going into real analysis without having taken or done some self-study of proofing. That being said, you should be able to learn it yourself over the summer. Pretty much any book with "transition to advanced mathematics" in the title should work.

Having some real trouble choosing a program. I am at the lower end of the ranking spectrum. My three choices differ significantly in many factors. However, I am mainly concerned about my funding. I am leaning towards thinking that it may be worth taking on the the first two of these given the rank difference. The first two options also have much better placements on average, but it is certainly not impossible to get an academic job from the third. Any comments are appreciated. Choosing between three programs: 1: Inside Top 50 US News though not by much. No funding first year, not guaranteed but likely. 2: Inside Top 60 US News. No funding first year, not guaranteed after but likely. (Has some specific strengths in being in a major city) 3: Inside Top 75 US News. Full funding.

Postdocs are much more common in political science and sociology than economics. But that is simply the nature of the game in those fields. My general impression has been that taking a postdoc is still somewhat risky. Obviously it helps if you can work with a big name guy and get his recommendation and/or publish, but these are both things that take a large amount of personal effort.

I certainly respect both JonWatson and Peot's views, but I think it is a bit far off to say that a research position at a major university could not be obtained from the Ohio State program. Just looking at the OSU AED placements from the last 4 years, job candidates have placed at Colgate, Alabama, Oregon State, Kentucky, New Mexico State, Mississippi State, Mount Saint Marys, and Washington College. It seems pretty clear that these aren't Harvard or Stanford, but most people at Harvard won't get jobs at Harvard. Alabama, Kentucky, and Mississippi State are not particularly "respected" in the narrow academic community, but let's not pretend that they aren't major research universities. Alabama, for instance, has a number of folks making over 150,000 and at least one making over 200,000. My point is that the idea of "outstanding placement" varies greatly. I think that in the end it comes down to whether you consider working at a place like South Carolina a real step down in comparison to Georgetown. I certainly don't but that is just my preference. Especially in the agricultural economics field, you are going to find a lot of movement between schools of all ranks. It's part of the reason that I think rank is not especially important in agricultural economics once you move past Berkeley.

While there is certainly a drop in quality as you move down the rankings, the drop in quality can be in different areas or due to different things. I know of one school in the 60-70 range that has professors that are almost all from top schools, some of them have AER's, and a number of them are on the REPEC top 5% by citation. The ranking of this school suffers, in my opinion, due to the quality of student they can take in. However, you would have a hard time convincing me that the quality of training you would receive at such a program is much worse that you would receive in a top 30 school. I am not going to say that it would be a better choice to take this program over a top 30, but I will say that the good students at lower programs can get good placements. You will likely not be getting hired into a top 40 program, but a major state university is not out of reach. As to the quality of student, as I have said, it is going to be "lower" in some sense. You are going to have foreign students who perhaps could have gone to better schools, but they didn't because they simply didn't have the information. Likewise, you are going to have domestic students who are there because of some deficiency in their application. That doesn't mean they aren't smart people though. It is only anecdotal, but I have met some PhD students at top school who didn't strike me as very impressive. Likewise, I have met some students as lower schools who I thought were very interesting. So these are not hard and fast rules. I think you could be in for a shock if you think that just because a school is outside of the top 50, the PhD students are going to be complete idiots.

Not to get off topic, but I do sometimes wonder if there is an upside to taking an RA/TA instead of a fellowship. The RA/TA guarantees you face time with professors, which can be incredibly valuable. It's one reason why I think that, if you know you will pass prelims either way, a fellowship is not always the best option.

Resource, I think it would be hard to make a case for you to take Maryland over Wisconsin. I don't think the placements are different enough to warrant the loss in money. Especially in the world of agricultural and resource economics, the rankings are very condensed. We can all probably agree that Berkeley is tops, but I don't believe that having a degree from UMD AREC vs WISC AAE is going to get you more consideration on the job market. If you look at some of the recent postings for Ag/Resource jobs, candidates with flyouts have come from places like Davis, Iowa State, UCSD, Oregon, and Stanford. This was for a job at Davis by the way. That is a lot of variation in people being flown out, and it leads me to believe that your chances of a job in Ag/Res Econ are going to be determined by your research and fit. Very little difference is being paid to ranking, especially if it is between someplace like Maryland vs. Wisconsin. On the extremes (very high or very low) ranking will surely matter, but I don't think that is what we are talking about with those two specific programs. Congratulations on the Wisconsin AAE admit by the way, I think it is a great program. (And Maryland too)