envirodevonomic

Does Berkeley Econ have fly-outs, or at least a visiting day?

That's rough. I've never been to the West Coast, let alone met any of the faculty there. I'm gonna have a hard time accepting the offer without ever having visited the campus or met any of the people I'm supposed to be directly working with for the next 5 years. Might pay for a trip out there on my own, but that's definitely sub-optimal... ugh.

Anybody have any knowledge on Berkeley ARE fly outs? I didn't hear anything about it in the unofficial email I received. Any chance of them paying for a flight from the East Coast?

Not the case. I just got an offer from Berkeley without fellowship. Funding is decent but not great.

Nope.

I think he was on leave from SIPA at Berkeley for 2012-2013 but is now back at SIPA, although I'm not completely sure of that.

Off the top of my head, Wolfram Schlenker and Scott Barrett are their main guys. They're very different programs so it depends on what you want to do. Economics if you want to have a shot at a tenure-track position in an economics department, and if you want to get a more mainstream technical training. They don't really have environmental courses in their economics department, but at least you'll get a better technical training. SD if you have an engineering background or want to specialise in sustainable policy from a climate sciences and engineering perspective.

Are you talking about the straight PhD Economics programs, or applied programs like Chicago's Public Policy and Columbia's Sustainable Development? If Economics, go to Chicago. Greenstone just moved there and they're setting up an energy policy institute, for which they'll be hiring a bunch of environmental economics faculty in the coming years.

The GC admit was me. They admitted three students this year - each faculty member admitted one student to advise for the duration of the PhD. I would say having extensive contact with a faculty member before the application process is the biggest single requirement for admission.

The GC acceptance was me. They admitted three students this year: each faculty member admitted one student, who they advise for the duration of the PhD, so having support from a faculty member is a perhaps the biggest requirement for admission.

Short of identifying the person in real life, or speaking with the schools' admissions committees, how would the website check the validity of posts - surely impossible?

You're very optimistic! I hope you're right. For the sake of anonymity I won't mention which school (sorry), but yes it is a well-ranked applied program. They might therefore care about fit and research preferences. I told him it's one of my top choices, which I hope will work in my favor. Fingers crossed!

I just got an e-mail from a tenured prof telling me I was one of his top choices and asking "if we gave you an offer, would you accept it?". Does anybody know if this will likely lead to an offer, or whether they're just measuring response rates or something? How much influence can the grad school have given a tenured prof's preferences? Trying to contain my excitement, just in case I'm overinterpreting this...

Absolute nonsense. The poster's English is totally fine. There's like three typo's in the post, and they could just as easily have been made by native speakers. To answer your question - definitely speak with advisors in your school who know the students that previously got accepted into T10 programs and ask what their experience was at the time of applying. You could probably also find their CV's (most PhD students in T10 programs post their CV's by their second or third year) which might list RA experience or any jobs they held between undergrad and starting their PhD.

The Yale FES doctoral program has a specific track in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics (ENRE). Website here: environment [dot] yale [dot] edu [slash] groups [slash] enre . Students usually take the Micro and Metrics first-year sequence with PhD Economics students, and can add on other PhD Economics field courses depending on their research interests. You're pretty much free to pick and choose the rest of your courses at FES. Their main researchers have been William Nordhaus and Robert Mendelsohn, then they have mid-career applied policy people like Matthew Kotchen and Mushfiq Mobarak, and young guys like Kenneth Gillingham and Joseph Shapiro who joined recently. Fairly good place to do ARE, depending on your research interests, I'd say. It's super selective - they only take like max 3 people in the ENRE track each year, and someone on Urch said that they didn't take on any new students last year.