Nalu

Notre Dame has some good applied micro faculty I follow. ASU has an enormous and broad economics faculty. You can't go very wrong here.

There is at least one student I know of doing health in the Wharton applied economics program. Here is some of his work: https://bepp.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/1740/research

Maryland!

Just an email. The sooner the better.

Any commitment made before April 15 is legally non-binding. Schools try to rush in order to exploit applicant risk aversion and get better students ( ). It causes some inefficiencies in the market bourn by students and non-rush schools. Tell A you are coming! Politely inform B that you are not. You should not feel bad. As I understand it, B was breaking the rules by requiring and earlier deadline. They are not supposed to do that.

I was unsure what I would suggest until I thought what I might say if my brother came to me in this situation. In my opinion, I do not think it's worth it. Your preferences for academia make it a difficult, even-more-ambiguous question since, yes, in the short-run you'll be in academia longer while in school, but it's unclear that you will get an academic job in the long-run. I agree with others on this thread that there are very bright faculty and students at schools outside of the "top 50". Part of this is due to the caliber of individuals interested in pursuing academic economics and part due to an imperfect, noisy application process. Whatever the causes, the consequences are quite clear. The chances of getting an academic job are not great. Would you be unhappy in a non-academic job with a Ph.D.? Would you be unhappy in a non-academic job without a Ph.D.?

It's pretty hard if your adviser is not an expert in the area you are producing work. The tools and standards vary considerably from field to field. Of course, it is logistically possible to be advised by someone who isn't close to your question. The problem won't come necessarily on the job market where your paper's general appeal is relatively important; the problem may come in publication where the gate keeping reviewers are experts in your subfield. Moreover, part of the letters from your advisers explain to hiring committees what your contribution is to the literature since the hiring committee may not have a person who can evaluate the contribution. It's easier for the adviser to do this if they know the landscape of the literature around your paper. But I think you can get good input from game theorists who aren't doing exactly what you're working. Also the airline IO person should be very capable counseling you on health IO. She won't know as much about what's been done or what data is available, but she can help you model and work through the problem. The answer varies a little field-by-field with difficulty within field across the theory-applied line. I think theory can advise applied pretty well by advising interesting tests of important theoretical questions. In empirical public or labor it seems you can get good advising even if the topics of adviser and student are divorced. Are these general examples or is this the situation you are in (interests in health IO, theoretical labor, and transportation)?

If you cannot get research experience during your undergraduate work and want to apply to graduate programs straight from undergrad you would need to get summer research jobs elsewhere (World Bank, JPAL, Federal Reserve, and other universities). In my experience its hard to get these jobs. Learning Stata by taking one of their online courses could prepare you to get a job and contribute meaningfully. Yes, letters from people you have only researched for are expected and are more valuable than letters from people who have only had you in class. A good letter of recommendation is a catalogue of lots of good work you've contributed to the professor's research. I've also heard that letters from people that the admissions committee does not know do very little good. Two examples: 1. Here, the admissions committee said that they have 100 applicants whose letters indicate "You'd be crazy not to admit my student, [insert name]." How do you separate all of these identical signals? By prioritizing them by the credibility and prestige of the letter writer. 2. Hank Farber at Princeton says he only reads letters from people he knows. Finally, I've heard that letters from non-economists (including mathematicians) don't hold water with economics admissions committees. My friend who's quite a bit brighter than me used his Math professors as letters who he had researched for. He under placed significantly. The most common avenues for getting a top placement without undergraduate research experience is spending two years doing research at NBER, the Federal Reserve, JPAL, IPA, or economist at a good school. Most of what I'm saying is hearsay or anecdotal, so ask around and hear lots of opinions.

In general the characteristics they look for in an RA are identical to those they look for in an intern but they expect that their interns have less experience.

I worked for IPA (JPAL's sister organization at Yale) for a summer so I only know a bit. But for the RA positions, Stata was very important. Languages are a big plus if the languages you can read correspond to the language of a project country with an RA opening. I'm not sure what links you would like. Best of luck getting the job.

Attrition is a problem at some of the best schools. Stock and co-authors wrote a sequence of articles on how students could complete their Ph.D.s and do so in a timely manner: Completing an Economics PhD in Five Years (Stock et al) Attrition in Economics Programs (Stock et al) Time-to-Degree for Economics PhD (Stock and Siegfried)

We used Sundaram's A First Course in Optimization Theory for math camp. I thought it was very readable and going through the first hundred pages or so would be a good, gentle-but-well-directed ramp to being prepared for first year. The book is on amazon here. If you are not steady with proofs I also found that way of thinking can be overwhelming and disorienting to the uninitiated. Perhaps picking up a proofs or real analysis book or taking point-set topology this summer would be useful.

What would you like to know? I'm a second year in the program. Feel free to message me.

Two things: One, ask for time to hear from your other schools. This rush strategy is useful for lower-tiered schools (think Al Roth). Two, if they insist you should know any decision you make before April 15 is not binding. You can "commit" and then update your decision when you know more about your option set.

I see you were admitted to UPenn who also has a good macro group. Dirk Krueger is excellent. US News Ranking in macro economics. I'm not a macro person but it's been my impression that Columbia is the relatively strong in macro relative to the other two you're considering. I looked around a bit and at least citations suggest that this is the case: Field Rankings at IDEAS: Macroeconomics Those are great options! Congratulations--you can't go very wrong!

I would also say Berkeley. The Princeton Labor/Public group hasn't placed anyone at a school I've heard of since the early 90s. It's an older, well-cited department. All of their top placements have been in macro for the past several years. It's also been the case that the Princeton folks are heavily involved in government owing to their prestige and proximity to DC. Mas (Department of Labor) spends half of his nights in Washington DC and Krueger and Rouse have been away for the administration's Council of Economic Advisors. Lee also has had some appointment, I think. Auerbach and Saez (both at Berkeley) are the center of the public finance field and Card is still very active. Both great places would serve you well but I suggest Berkeley.

We "need" smart people who will move the frontier on knowledge. To the extent [choose your favorite minority] diversity accomplishes that it should be encouraged. I'm fairly doubtful it is a significant factor.

There is some affirmative action for women and racial minorities. I'm not sure how much it helps relative to undergraduate admissions or admissions for other graduate programs. For instance, Michigan undergrad used to require that a person's application scored 20 points for admission. GPA and SAT above a certain threshold, a score of your personal statement and letters all gave you points toward your 20. But racial minorities received 12 points automatically. This is a relatively strong form of AA. It's also fairly strong in Law Schools. The automatic accept threshold for racial minorities is below the automatic reject threshold for white males; this means that AA is never a tie-break. Krueger and Wu (2000) looked at an "anonymous top-five economics department" (Princeton) and found that women and racial minorities were more likely to be admitted conditional on their application attributes indicating statistically discernible AA. A few years later Athey, Katz, Krueger, Levitt, and Poterba (2007) pooled the grade and graduation data of the top five schools (MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Chicago--I still think that Berkeley should somehow also be in the top five) to study what predicts good placements. One of the unintended byproducts was that they found women did significantly worse in coursework which is classic evidence of "discrimination" against men (Becker's The Economics of Discrimination, Ashenfelter's Discrimination in the Labor Market, etc.).

You could look at how highly cited a department's 40-45 year olds are. How old/young is the department make-up? I think that's a good indication. A healthy share of young sharp professors bode well for the department's trend. Lot's of departments are a bit geriatric, lots of highly cited, older people that built the foundation of modern economics but are no longer making progress on the margins that exist today. Talk to lots of people to get a sense of whether this or that school are headed in a good direction. What schools are you wondering about?

You could look at how highly cited a department's 40-45 year olds are. How old/young is the department make-up? I think that's a good indication. A healthy share of young sharp young professors bode well for the department's trend. Lot's of departments are a bit geriatric, lots of highly cited, older people that built the foundation of modern economics but are no longer making progress on the margins that exist today. Talk to lots of people to get a sense of whether this or that school are headed in a good direction. What schools are you wondering about?

Yes, I agree with Walras' Law. The department endowment may be a good signal or an important input but there are better signals and more crucial inputs. Primarily look at recent placements in the fields you are interested in and advisers that interest you. Good advising is crucial! Moreover, if you do need a lot of money for research, as in a large RCT, lots of that research would need to be funded externally by NSF, IES, NIH, etc. Plus, I'm not even sure how you would look up what all their endowments are. Do you know? That would be interesting. I know Princeton IR (Industrial Relations) has a large endowment apart from the rest of the department.

Hey guys, I've been reading this forum for a while now and wanted to jump in to answer a few questions when I can. Time to give back a bit. I'm an applied economics phd student at Wharton and I love it. Most of my research is in public-type questions and I'm trying to learn structural methods to deepen my toolkit. Umm...grew up all over the place. Nice to "meet" you all.