EnvEcon
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Unranked. Don't go.
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Some random thoughts: - I would suggest to re-take the GRE, just because some depts use it as a threshold to make the first selection. It is NOT (one of) the most important aspects adcoms will look at. - It's good that you took a grad class in econometrics and that you already have some extensive research experience (mention it in your SOP or make sure your letter writers mention it!). That will help a lot. Don't worry too much about lack of math. - It's not true that ag econ Phd don't end up doing policy work. Look at placements and you will find lots of people ending in government agencies, international organizations and think tanks. - Among the list of ag schools, I would apply also to Cornell (Dyson) and a bunch of good econ programs focused on environmental (e.g. Wyoming). Note that Duke and Yale have a Phd program in their environmental schools: these are excellent programs as well. - The more you go down the rankings of ag econ schools (say, after the top 5), the more they will be focused on traditional ag econ fields with less emphasis on environmental/resource. Also, those programs have more emphasis on extension or local issues than research. I'm not saying you should not apply to these schools, but you should examine each school very carefully when deciding between different offers: look at faculty research interests, placement of last graduates (if they are not public, ask for them!) and so on.
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Well, we already had the prospective students visit, about 12 people. This is usually a higher number then our average entering class size, so unless many accepted students decide to not to come here (very unlikely) the games are pretty much over, regardless the official rejections have been sent or not.
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Difficult question to answer without knowing your background, your research interests, and whether you would be satisfied getting an industry/policy job. Placement-wise, Berkely ARE dominates other programs in your list IMHO, apart of that it really depends. I would apply to a variety of places compatible with your interests, both econ and ARE, and see what happens.
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Ok, ok, ok. Before you guys start freaking out: it's still very early for offers. Some places might still be busy for faculty recruiting. Also, some places have a rolling admission process. In fact, I received my offer at my current place in mid March. If you don't hear anything by the end of March you might think about plan B. Until then, good luck everyone! :)
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The top journals in ARE are AER/QJE/Econometrica (I would add JPE and ReStud, the traditional "top five"). Seriously, top general interest journal are the same for all the economics subdisciplines. We can discuss how easy is to publish with an ag paper in those journals (not general interest enough?), but it happened in the past. You can say the same for second tier general interest journals (e.g. ReStat). What might change is the perception of top field journals. I guess that AJAE has more weight in an agecon department than an econ department, where there might not be ag economists at all. Also, ranking and specialization of the department might matter: if it's specialized in environmental, JEEM will be highly regarded, JDE if it's specialized in development. But my impression is that top ag econ department are aligning with the rest of the profession in terms of internal ranking of journals.
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I totally second this. As far as I remember, in my program all the people from Europe had a master in economics or engeneering. None had a master in ag econ. On the other hand, we had one person that got in with a ag econ master from UC Davis, but even that was not the canonical route that most people take. The other point is that the European ag econ department are much, much more specialized towards agriculture than the Phd programs you are targeting. Top US Ag econ departments are doing less and less "pure ag" and more and more resource/environmental/micro development, depending on the specific strength of the department. The risk is that you find yourself stuck with a very narrow specialization which is not even proved effective in getting into an ARE Phd.
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Reputation of the article: I think that your intuition is correct - at the beginning the journal rank is what matters, but in the long run citation is what counts more. The two things are quite correlated though: publishing in one of the top five general interest journal or a top field journal gives you a lot more visibility than a third tier general interest or a second tier field journal. Also IMHO comparing two articles of different fields published in field journals makes little sense: theory papers for instance have on average lower citations than applied papers, and some fields/subfields are just bigger than others. Another caveat: articles in certain field journals are read by a wider audience (e.g. non-economists) and therefore have more citations, but that doesn't mean that the reputation among economists is higher. Reputation of the author: I don't think exists a unique quantitative measure that does that. Also, a researcher might be well known and respected in his field but relatively unknown in other fields. I feel reputation is a combination of past achievements (publications in good journals, citations...) and current involvement in the profession (attending workshops, field and general conferences, having a good amount of ongoing projects). For choosing letter writers, my suggestion is simple: go with the person which will write you a better letter.
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jmjd, going to a low ranked school presuming to become the star of the department is a very, very risky strategy. And even if you will end up to be a star, probably you will still be underplaced at the job market (sadly, rankings matter a lot in economics). In other words, there is a fair chance that things won't go as in the best case scenario, and you need to ask yourself if you are going to be happy with the median placement of a UM Phd. The paper fakeo is quoting is about assistant professors in research schools 6 years after their Phd, and treats schools below top 30 as a unique group. Most unranked program for one reason or another rarely place in a research university. And there is a pretty big group of Phd programs below top 30 which produce very good researchers so mixing a top 50 with, say, a top 200 makes little sense. The difference between a top 40-50 program and an unranked program is considerable in terms of resources available, quality of advising, peer effects and so on. This is not to discourage you to pursue your dreams, but to give a more objective view of the return of a costly 5 years (at least) investment in your education. And an invite to consider whether or not you would be satisfied with the typical placement of your target program, or you would be better off with a different career strategy.
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Writing dissertation or working as an assistant in the summer?
EnvEcon replied to Moon Na's topic in PhD in Economics
This is a great advice. Bear in mind that the professor's expectations on what you are able to offer as RA are lower than you think. It's called research assistant for a reason. Depending by his style, you might get frequent or very sparse feedback, but in both cases you will learn a lot. You are very likely not the first RA he had, so he surely know you first need to figure out what you are supposed to do and how. Also note that even if the topic is not close to what you are interested in, the tools of empirical analysis you will use have generally a much broader application than the single research question you will work on! The really important thing IMHO is showing a sincere desire to learn (yes, even asking "I do not understand this") and to put a good amount of effort. Again on the research interests "not matching": it seems you are interested in field experiments. Well, a TON of field experiments on social choices are run in developing countries! If you are interested I suggest to look at some literature about field experiments on, for instance, purchase of crop insurance. A lot of these experiments have an underlying behavioral economics question (e.g. "Why farmers in developing countries seem to under-invest in crop insurance?"). One of the things I remember from the literature is that farmers under-invest in certain assets because they do not want to signal to other members of the community that they have spare funds available (there is strong social pressure to share savings with other community members). This is probably something your professor is quite familiar with. -
Writing dissertation or working as an assistant in the summer?
EnvEcon replied to Moon Na's topic in PhD in Economics
Short answer: go for the 1, if you have time go for two as well. Long answer: Let me comment on the disadvantages for option 1: Not a problem, especially if he still publishes / is well known / has sent other students in good phd programs. Not a problem. As long as the school is known and sent some students to US programs it's fine. Not a problem. Admission committees know well that research interests change. What matters is that he can provide a good letter explaining that you have a good economics background and you are seriously motivated. If the professor in option 2 is less known, publishes in lower ranked journals and he's not as helpful, you might not want him to be your main letter writer. -
The answer is yes, if you mean lab experiments only. But most of the development faculty (included a new assistant professor hired this year) have some field experiment project. I'm aware at least of two students who are currently running experiments in the lab.
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I'm not that into the process, but we don't have a fixed size for the entering class i.e. if some of the people visiting will reject our offer, it doesn't necessarily mean that their place will be offered to someone else. Also, almost all the departments tend to admit more people than their target class size, figuring out that some of them will make another choice. If you are waitlisted, there are some chances to be admitted conditional on the fact that more people than expected won't take the offer. I really sympathize with your situation but again, it's better to have a surprise later than holding on a slim chance.
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We have scheduled campus visits already, so if you don't have an offer at this point, better you don't have many hopes. It sucks, but I hope you have some other good offers elsewhere. For the guys who are visiting, looking forward to see you soon!
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It seems that you have a pretty good idea about the schools strong on environmental econ. I would definitely add San Diego and Santa Barbara. I second chateauheart: you are planning to apply to 10 schools, but why not to apply to (almost) all the schools you mentioned? They are around 15 applications. The cost of applying to 5-6 more school is not much in the big scheme of things, but doing so you would be more "insured" against the randomness of the application process, which is not negligible. If you will get into similarly ranked schools you will be able to consider other things than placement and academic strength such as location, quality of life, value of assistantship and so on. Obviously if you have serious budget constraints, forget what I wrote.
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A recent hire in energy econ at UMD is Sébastien Houde.
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I assumed "worse = non-academic jobs". There is some selection going on here. I have the impression that ARE students are - on average - more interested in policy jobs than econ students (some of them are even not interested in academia).
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That is probably true (I'm skeptical about Berkeley though) if you look at the whole list of placements, but you need to compare placements of people with similar research interests. That's incorrect. At Maryland we have one class in the first semester of static and dynamic optimization (the one we take instead of macro). Also, the natural resource field class (which virtually everybody takes) is all focused on dynamic optimization as well. I don't know the other ARE programs, but I would be very surprised if they didn't have one: the dynamics of e.g. natural resource extraction are fundamental in resource economics, with tons of papers published in top field and general interests journals.
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No, I know plenty of people in my program who are married. Some universities have rolling admits, and acceptances can be sent even in the second half of March. The only time I did this was when I was accepted to a non-us program which asked for a decision way before the 15th of April. And even in that case I mailed the graduate administrator, not the professor. It's not "wrong" per se, but professors are likely to be annoyed by unsolicited requests.
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(Disclaimer: Maryland student here) Once you start to compare the ARE programs coming after Berkeley in the rankings, it depends really by what is your (sub)area of specialization. Maryland is traditionally considered strong in environmental/energy and econometrics. With the recent hires the department is pushing further in that direction as well as in other areas: in particular land use (there is a nice group of senior and junior faculty), experimental/behavioral economics and development (especially field experiments). I'm happy to answer in PM to further questions about the program. The thing I know about Cornell is that there are some very good faculty working on automobiles; my impression is that it's climbing the ranks but I cannot give info on specific field. In general, my advice is to check if there are at least two senior faculty (associate or full professor) working in your main area of interest. You don't want to have to change topic because the person you are working with is moving or going to retire.
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Don't get anxious, it's still quite early for decisions. Moreover in this period some departments are hiring new faculty members and this might delay the process. Most of the feedback I got from ARE and econ departments when I applied was at mid-March.
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My view as "insider" is that a fair number of ARE school are shifting to other research fields than pure agricultural economics. Depending on the school, these fields can be environmental, resource economics (water, fishery, forestry) and development. Agriculture still plays an important role, but the research questions are more like "How fertilizer use affects water quality?", "Why farmers in developing countries invest so little in pesticides?" or "What is the impact of climate change on land use?". So in these departments is difficult to find younger people who do research in the same areas they do 20 or 30 years ago, but that doesn't mean that faculty is necessarily older overall. Then obviously there are schools that still do research in more traditional ag fields, but that's not where ARE departments are heading in general.
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I'm really not into macro, so I cannot give advice about schools, but the fact that most of the econ PhD in your country comes from BU is actually a strength, not a weakness, of BU. Probably faculty has good connections/prestige and is able to place easier in your country (at least conditional on ability) and/or that employers are quite happy with their previous BU PhD and trust the "brand". Anyway, as someone else said before, just wait until you got accepted somewhere and then start worrying where to go!
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I agree with mcsokrates. Also, I feel that mentioning a lot of fields in the same SOP is a bad idea, because it can give the impression that you don't really have a focus on anything. Unless you manage to write a nice story that put them all together, of course. I would say it's a bad idea to put a research interest in your SOP just because some of the faculty is working on it if it's not likely you will work on that in the future. It's unlikely you will increase much the chances to be admitted. Also, you don't want to get in any program. You want to get in a program that is a good match for your interests. Being in a program with no people working in what you want to do is bad for your morale and your future placement.
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Short answer: It depends by your profile, but it's worth a try anyway. Long answer: For the comparison with top 40-60, it really depends what you are looking for. As far as I know, they are doing a lot of work in energy modelling, climate change and land use, generally using computable general equilibrium. Also, they have a good international trade research group called GTAP. Apart very top schools, generally one program is specialized in some specific fields (especially ARE programs). The ranking changes between different fields. Also you might want to look at their placements. Go to their site and look at what people is doing there. If you think you are interested in what they are doing, definitely apply there.
