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.

This is pretty normal. If you had taken easier courses, you may not have gotten an acceptance in the first place. British schools do this for undergrad, too. For example, if you get accepted into the BSc Economics program at LSE, it will always be conditional on obtaining the best grades in your senior year (usually A in advanced math, and two more A's in other classes). For Americans the equivalent would be to condition on obtaining 5, 5, 5, in three different AP courses, including Calculus. Master's applications are similar - the same Master's program can condition on obtaining a 2:1 for some students and obtaining a 1st for other students (or some combination of getting a 2:1 overall and getting a 1st in your final year), depending on the applicant, the courses they took, and how they did in previous years. It's just a British thing. Good luck!

You can get an OPT visa for the first year of work after completing a degree in the US. The employer doesn't need to do anything except for confirm that you are working in a field related to what you studied in undergrad (ie. economics). It's super sweet. Apply to any RA job you like!

I would mention both of their actual names, and also mention the organisation/institution that is funding you and/or the research. ie. Research Assistant at Institute Name to Professors John Alias and Jane Doe or something similar.

Thanks for the info! I should have clarified that by ARE I meant the field of agricultural and resource economics, and papers whose main focus is on those two branches of economics - not necessarily just the professors who teach in those departments, nor related fields such as development or political economy of regulation. AJAE seems to be solid. Is it uniformly regarded as the leading agricultural economics journal? What others are runners-up?

Question about journals - What are considered the "top journals" in ARE, in other words, the ag econ equivalents of what AER/QJE/Econometrica are to Economics overall?

In my experience your ability to code well is weighed more strongly than having a perfect grade record. Some RA gigs require a coding sample as part of the application material, or even a 2-hour or 4-hour coding test during the interview rounds. I'm a full-time RA with a less-than-perfect grade record.

thegradcafe[dot]com/survey/index.php?q=econ*

Does anyone know how admissions committees perceive medical events when assessing your record? For example, I took a grad-level analysis course, but received a B because of pretty serious medical reasons (which I clarify in my SOP and which one of my letter-writers also fully explains). Do they still consider this a poor performance, do they think this is a good performance (because if I got a B under these circumstances then I might have gotten an A under better circumstances), do they appreciate that I tried to challenge myself, or do they just ignore the class altogether because it isn't representative of my 'healthy' potential? Just curious if anyone had experience or inside knowledge on this issue. Thanks!

I'm a full-time RA who just applied for PhD's. Reasons: A) Can include activities from last year's spring semester (classes, thesis, TA, RA) in PhD applications. B) Excellent letters of recommendation from well-respected economics researchers. C) See whether I like research (I do!) and what I want to do (I like some projects that I'm working on much more than others).

Check out UCL's MSc Economics and Policy of Energy and the Environment. I don't actually know anything about this programme other than that it was launched quite recently. I don't know what topics in ARE you're interested in, but you might be able to get what you want out of it, and UCL certainly has a great standard econ program, should you want to take electives in the econ department (and should that be allowed - again, I don't know much about this program). MSc in Economics and Policy of Energy and the Environment