soundchaser

Maybe competition is so fierce which makes acceptance rate unexpectedly high (no one declines a top 10 offer since they have only one)? We really need to write a structural model to make sense of it :excited:

I've heard there's been some lessening of competitiveness during the past few years. Is this true?

What should we make out of this year's surprisingly low rate of admission from waitlists? Or maybe it's always been this low?

For political economy and development Brown is way stringer. Knight, Michalopoulos, Galor.

I have heard that competitiveness of econ PhD admission declined a bit in the past two or three years or so. How competitive has this year been relative to the past? Some applicants including myself seem to think this year has been extremely competitive, but most of us haven't applied before so our conclusions may be biased. May I ask senior memebers make some cross-year comparison?

Even economics is just one of many foci of Stanford GSB, it has 5 JBC medalers in its relatively small econ group, which is, in absolute term, at the level of MIT econ, Harvard econ, Stanford econ and Princeton econ. Are you saying Queen's econ is better than those? I did my undergrad in a Canadian department and I know Queen's is great. But just based on your claim that Queen's is better than Toronto I would guess you don't really know Canadian schools as well as you think.

Working during the first year can be annoying.

Anderson makes sense for political economy.

One of my classmates received an offer today.

Just received an offer from UCLA. Stipend is pending. Kind of surprised given they started sending offers last week. Thought it would be, at best, another WL. Good luck for people who haven't heard from them.

He has been accepted by Harvard, Princeton, and UWM, but received this weird decision from Brown. Also we have someone who was accepted by Chicago but rejected by Brown. I know the process is pretty noisy in general, but Brown seems to be especially weird this year.

Overall UCSD is a much better department, and if you want to do empirical trade, or any other empirical micro, it's good. But if you like macro the theoretical side of trade, UCSD is pretty weak. For macro PSU has Shi, who is very good,

It also depends on the place. West Coast is more casual. I've heard Stanford visit day is casual, event for the Business School.

How many students do top programs admit initially (I.e., before going into waitlist)? Do they usually admit as many as the targeted cohort size or more than that?

Maybe it's just those super strong applicants, who have been admitted everywhere, are tired of posting on GC. Also notice that NYU admit a smaller cohort than other top 10 schools.