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I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Yale PhD Environmental Economics Ph.D. Opportunities | Yale

Has anyone looked into Stanford's PhD in Environment and Resources (https://pangea.stanford.edu/programs/eiper/academics/phd)? It seems to provide quite an interesting, broad foundation, and seems to give the opportunity to strongly focus on environmental economics and resource economics in later years? Would appreciate if anyone has any opinion on this as I've only just heard about it. Thanks!

Several influential European professors told me "top European schools" are UCL, LSE, Oxford, Barcelona SGS (from UPF), Tinbergen, and EUI. European schools are generally worse funded than American schools so there will always be a higher requirement for RA/TA tasks. In the end however, both systems require 4/5 years of work after your BA so coursework v. thesis work proportions are very similar.

No, declined the offer. Good luck, it's a great school!

PROFILE: Type of Undergrad: BSc Top 5 UK, major in Statistics, minor in Economics Undergrad GPA: 3.75 Type of Grad: N/A Grad GPA: N/A GRE: Q780, V530, AW5.5 Math Courses: Linear Algebra (A-), Real Analysis (A+), Calculus (B) Stats Courses: Introduction to Statistics (A), Further Statistics (A), Practical Statistics (A), Probability and Inference (B), Linear Models (B), Applied Probability (B+), Statistical Inference (B), Stochastic Systems (B), Decision and Risk (A+), Optimisation Algorithms (A+) Econ Courses: Microeconomics (A), Macroeconomics (A), Econometrics (A), Game Theory (A), Environmental Economics (B) Other Courses: Finance (B) Letters of Recommendation: Two unknown professors Research Experience: Undergraduate thesis Teaching Experience: None Research Interests: Development SOP: Linking research interests, relevant work experience, and undergraduate thesis Other: Lots of relevant international work experience (including 4 internships and one full-time job for a year) RESULTS: Acceptances: Yale MA International and Development Economics (IDE), UCL MSc Economics Waitlists: Cambridge MPhil Economics Rejections: UC Berkeley PhD Agricultural and Resource Economics, Oxford MPhil Economics Pending: Oxford MSc Economics for Development Attending: Yale MA International and Development Economics (IDE) What would you have done differently? Not too much, got into my dream master's program so am really very excited. UK schools rarely (if ever?) give TA/RA positions to undergraduates so I am not too worried about lacking experience there. If I had to mention something, I would say improve my grades. A's across the board, in difficult subjects, is absolutely essential.

I agree with poster above. What time of job do you mean by "economic-development type jobs"? There are so many types of jobs it's impossible to generalize. Even within the World Bank/IMF/UN there is such a range of people employed (from BSc to PhD holders). Then you could be working at a university researching the topic, working at one of many research institutes, working at a local NGO in a developing country, working in a development bank, working as a consultant to governments in developing countries, etc. etc. If you are set on a PhD then (like the person above said) degrees in Economics/AREC/Public Policy are all good choices.

My two cents: A PhD will definitely NOT help you to advance yourself in business and/or finance, unless you do a very quant PhD (in mathematical modeling or something) and you want to get into extremely technical stuff professionally. That said, if you are interested in the topic and you don't think you will enjoy a career in business/finance it may not be such a bad idea. I am doing a PhD because I am fascinated by the subject and I would love to spend five years of my life studying it. Maybe I will want to go into academia, maybe I will want to work for a research group, maybe I will want to go work for government, maybe I will want to go into the private sector - I really don't know. What I do know is that I find the topic interesting and want to study it further. In the best case scenario, I will feel intellectually challenged, developed, and end up with a research position getting paid to research topics that completely fascinate me. In the worst case scenario, I will continue from where I am now in my career, but I will have spent five years of my life doing something I was interested in and proud of. This is a fully acceptable, in fact an exciting risk for me. Then again, I have no family to maintain, so if I end up with $0 pay that still wouldn't be a terribly bad thing for me.

UCL is much stronger than Warwick. Overall UCL is in the UK top three for economics (LSE, UCL, Oxford) which are a big step ahead of Cambridge and Warwick, which are themselves a big step ahead of all other uni's. UCL is very micro and metrics focused, so be prepared for a lot of mathematical rigor.

Definitely UCL. UCL is terrible for development, macro, and environmental, but they are obscenely strong in micro and metrics, and they have an excellent statistics department.

Yale! MA International and Development Economics.

Just curious, which did you prefer in terms of faculty friendliness?

I would write to some of the faculty at OSU whose work interests you and ask more questions, to give them a chance to respond in more detail. Perhaps even schedule a phone/Skype call with some of the faculty as that is always more helpful than e-mail. I don't know exactly which questions would matter, because the questions I asked about the master's will be different than the questions you will want to ask about a PhD - perhaps questions like how many research assistants they usually take, whether he knows people who do work in the field that you're interested in, whether students can attend conferences on certain topics, etc. I also find that if you clearly state that you have already been given an offer, but you are not sure whether to accept, that they will be more likely to respond and their responses will be more likely to be more thorough. If they know you're a quality student (which you are because you were admitted) then they will try harder to convince you to attend.

I thought I would give my two cents. I posted a while ago about my dilemma of choosing between UCL and Yale for a master's (with the aim of continuing to an ARE PhD afterwards). I finally decided on Yale, and I am confident that I made the right choice. Even though there were no fly-outs, my e-mail communication with alumni and faculty of the program has been amazing. They went into great detail about previous graduates who went to the Berkeley ARE PhD afterwards, they recommended classes I should take, suggested a research assistantship at the school of forestry, etc. Every question I asked was answered with loads of excellent answers. I felt like the faculty cared about my individual success after the program, and it made it easy for me to trust that they would do their best to help me get into Berkeley or Davis (my favorite schools) afterwards. I know you want someone to tell you that you're "over-thinking things", but in my opinion individual attention to students is so important that it can trump academic rigor or reputation. Good luck with your choice!

Write to both departments and tell them you are considering their offers, but would like more information about their placements to US PhD programs in the past 3 years and what they do to actively support students looking to get a good placement. Also ask about which classes they offer that they believe can boost your profile. Somebody above said that "UCL and LSE are the same university" and that there is cross-over - not true. They are indeed both part of the "University of London" but that's just about as useful as the Queen. It's just an umbrella term, and they really are two completely different universities with their own staffing programs, and if you are enrolled in one of them there really is no opportunity to follow courses at the other.

Definitely BSGE. If you do reasonably well you should be able to place into a good PhD program in the US (better than UCSC), which is your best path to a good job in academia or at a research institution. The only disadvantage of that plan would be that you will have to repeat some of the BSGE material in the first year of the PhD and thus take a year longer to achieve the PhD. However (as long as you have a funded PhD offer so that costs would not matter), I personally would not care about that. An extra year would only strengthen your academic abilities.