domino

Not only do you not know the meaning of words, but you have no sense for truth or proportion. I have been truthful in statements I have made about my program and you have no evidence to the contrary. You have evidence substantiating some of my claims.

love you too.

US News doesn't have them in top-13: they weight heavily the reviews of academics and deans. BU shows up in the top-20 weighting citations. Network-based ranking has them at 16. I don't know what goes into this one.

I would go with Offer 2. When you adjust the debt figure by understanding you will have to pay for it will post tax dollars and they are giving you tuition without tax and a stipend, I think it's well worth it, especially when they have a good placement record.

It happens to be true that most of the best interviews (Princeton, Columbia, Maryland, the other HBS flyout) were for Isen, not Soo, who is public, not real estate. I hadn't thought about the relatively small supply of real estate academics relative to the demand. It's a good point.

Friend, how much does school reputation matter for what?: getting a job in government, being admitted to a top-five economics Ph.D. program, impressing your fiancé's parents? "How much it matters" requires some sort of outcome to use as a criterion.

Could you help me understand what you mean by "there hasn't been a lot of work on economics about agent-based modelling and the like". Do you mean economics hasn't done a lot of work modeling decision makers? If so, what have they been modeling in your view?

[h=2]Treading the Admission Interview[/h] Many of the Economics Ph.D. programs in business schools (Wharton and Harvard Business School, for instance) and a growing number of economics departments conduct a brief (30 minute) interview with a shortlist of their most promising applicants. I think it's easy to be apprehensive about the interview granted that the purpose is usually unclear and the outcome is high-stakes. This post is intended to shed light on the purpose so that interested applicants can appropriately respond. The intention is multi-fold. First of all, Economics Ph.D. programs in Business schools tend to be especially small (Wharton admits 10 students, HBS admits 12, I think Chicago Booth admits even fewer) so a bad admit is especially damaging. Primarily, they want to figure out if you are a good fit for the department since Business Schools tend to be more narrow than their GSA peer institutions (they usually aren't deep enough for students interested in being macro or theory producers). It's my suggestion that applicants avoid strategizing their pitch to be "like the department" because an appropriate match is improving for both the applicant and the school. I should also note, that schools know where else you've been admitted and where else you've applied (they have a shared, automatically-updated spreadsheet) and an admission to a competing school for a marginal candidate may tip them below the admission threshold--so a strategic-induced mismatch admission can cost you at the school whose match would have been perhaps better. Economics Ph.D. programs in business schools are also more interested in your research promise than your technical background (although a strong technical background is still pre-requisite). They will want to know you have advanced training in math, statistics, and programming, but they will be especially interested in your research experience and your ideas about what questions you'd like to research and how you can appropriately respond to those questions with those technical tools. If you want to prepare, consider reading some of the interviewer's recent papers to gather an idea about their research interests and methodological preferences. Read the department website and figure out if you want to research with these people. Are they publishing in journals you recognize? Are they doing work in areas you want to study? Lastly, and this is relatively unimportant, but given it's a small group, they may be less tolerant of socially perturbed individuals. As always, be kind and genuine.

Like I said those were interviews and fly-outs for our students in the Wharton AE program this year. Not all of them were fly-outs. For instance, Princeton was an interview, not a fly-out and thus does not show up on Job Rumors. Isen is Labor and he has an HBS offer. Soo is Real Estate and she has the Michigan offer. They are both Wharton AE students. We've got plenty of great faculty in public, urban, IO, and health. Take it or leave it but I'll thank you to be more civil and less savage. These personal attacks are completely unnecessary. I see you've made this profile only to snipe my factual, straightforward, and accurate statement. Grow up a bit.

For private sector jobs, yes, the "star power" of the institution matters a bit for fancy employers. For academic jobs it matters but less so. It's my feeling that your adviser matters more than what school you are at for academic placement. Great adviser at an okay place would be better than an okay adviser at a great place.

I'm not sure if they are harder or easier to get in. I think it's easier for applied-oriented applicants to get in. I can really only speak from experience at Wharton, but our entering students usually had competitive offers at other economics departments: Princeton, Harvard Kennedy, Chicago, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Northwestern, Minnesota, Wisconsin, etc. If it were easier I would expect their best economics option to be lower I guess. The options depend a bit on what kind of department it is. Stanford and Kellogg tend to be micro-theory oriented, as I understand it. Harvard BusEc has a lot of mechanism design and Pakes-style IO in interesting topics. Wharton tends to be public economics and IO oriented. It really depends on who is there at the school for advising. Our students this year had interviews and fly-outs at HBS (2 flyouts), Princeton Econ, Columbia, Northwestern, NYU Stern, Maryland, Kellogg, Michigan, Boston U, Fed Reserve Board, etc. Its our first year on the job market so there were some hiccups but it went alright. Wharton strongly discourages its students from going to the private sector. I don't think we have anyone going to a non-academic job this year (six students). We did not have a macro qualifier, just micro and metrics and we have a second year paper requirement that's quite stringent. We have to take a course in macro, two in micro theory, and three in econometrics.

I've gotten some emails asking about the purpose and appropriate preparation for economics Ph.D. interviews. Bump.

Dear mf911, I'm sorry I didn't notice this earlier. I am in the economics section and I don't know well anyone in that program. Best wishes, and I can find you some contacts if you'd like, message me offline.

Placing graduates in top schools.

Have a native English speaker read your essays. I've heard from admission committees that it's a factor. Students with weak language skills may not perform well as TAs and often under perform on the job market. Reading your post, I don't see any glaring problem. Talking with friends in English, watching American TV, and noticing how others pronounce words you say often in your research can be very helpful.