Janek

Hi econcoco and thanks for your opinion! I am going to agree with vanbasten in that Bocconi is not as great for graduate school from what I've heard. I would choose CEMFI over BGSE if I were in your shoes just because of the size of the program, but I really enjoy smaller places and I am quite risk-averse when it comes to PhD continuation and funding. Thus the choice would be between North Carolina and CEMFI. Both seem like strong programs, my thesis advisor Robin Sickles went to North Carolina and is now a fellow of the Econometric Society and a tenured professor at Rice University. North Carolina is much larger so the pool of possible advisors is richer and they probably have strong networks with other schools. On the other hand, CEMFI just placed a professor at LSE and MIT last year, so that's pretty amazing as well. Sorry, my conclusion isn't really anything helpful, but I hope to see you at CEMFI and please shoot me a message if you choose to go there ;)

Gecko: I did just that, I hope they respond quickly :) So far no response from UCL or LSE, but it's only been 2 days. As an update, I am now deciding between CEMFI and the PhD track at Cambridge, but strongly leaning towards CEMFI. I am hope I can visit the place before I make the final call. A question for everyone - people talk a lot about the PhD job market, is there possibly a single website where I can see how PhD students from various schools fared or do I have to visit each university's website? Thanks!

Interview is quite informal - takes 15-30 min (depending on how many questions you have) and they ask about your research, how you'd like to go about it, why TI, where else you applied, why a PhD.. pretty informal :) I felt like it was half-way them trying to advertise TI, which was great, since I didn't know that much about the program before. Good luck to you!

Oh sorry if this is too late, but I had a pretty good feeling and the questions were mostly pretty informal, such as why I want to do a PhD, why I applied to Warwick, what kind of research I want to do and why. The most technical questions I received was what academic article I read and liked recently. Congrats Shomak!

Exactly, although I would not call CEMFI/Tinbergen second-tier places, although they are not as well established as LSE or UCL. All have some amazing professors, although London has a lot more heh :) Right now I am leaning towards CEMFI, I just talked to my economics department head (at Rice University) and he said he'd be happy to hire a top student from CEMFI! Okun also helped answer a lot of my very detailed questions haha

I had my interview a few hours ago, they said they will take into account other deadlines which I have to honor, but nothing more detailed than that.

First of all, thanks so much for your insights sulebrahim and gecko. I have a few clarifying questions: Do you know if there are people who come to CEMFI PhD from Master's at other schools? I am definitely having some issues with choosing a ranking which could suggest how I can fare after finishing PhD at a given school, do you have a suggestion? I must have seen more than 10 by now (IDEAS, QS rankings, Econphd, some academic papers...) but they vary considerably with large US departments at the top and almost none where CEMFI would be even top 50 (IDEA Top 25% Financial Economics and Finance Departments would be an exception). Your method of looking at the job market interview list may be better for this than any ranking. Sorry about my ignorance, but would you be so kind to post a link here with the given list? Gecko, do you think this is a relevant factor for me if I am accepted to the MSc at UCL, not the PhD track? While I am at it, what do you think are my chances of continuing directly to the Phd track and receiving funding? I am an applicant from the US with a strong record in econ and math double major, but no genius in math to be frank.

Thanks so much sulebrahim, you're definitely right about the placements, but I am not sure whether these were for Postdoc or entry level professor positions, is that a relevant question? It worries me a little that most people see CEMFI as more of a stepping stone to a top US PhD program than a place to finish one's PhD, while I would like to find a place to stay. I do not know much about the strength of a brand name when looking for a job in the academia, but looking at CEMFI professors, about 80% have PhD's from LSE, there's one UCL, some top US schools and University of St. Gallen From what I've seen, this is the case for most top programs in the US and Europe, so I am worried that I may be held back by the lack of a name competing against people who went to schools such as UCL and LSE. Which rankings by field do you suggest I look at? I found CEMFI in top 5 for financial economics at IDEAS, but not in the top 25% departments in their overall ranking. Lastly, looking at my options, are you suggesting I should go for CEMFI? Thanks a lot for your time!

I am not sure I can be confident, my results in undergrad have been strong in math and economics (I am a double major), but it is hard to compare the level of my uni (Rice University) and UCL. It is really hard for me to turn down CEMFI since in addition to the security, I got emails from 3 professors and they were really friendly, I feel like the approach would be more personal than at UCL/LSE. However, the PhD placement at CEMFI is worse than UCL/LSE, I am not sure I would still have a shot at a position at a US university after going to CEMFI, for example. What do you think about this "prestige" dimension, would that be a large impediment in finding a university position later?

Thanks for your response, this really makes me question going to LSE, since I would prefer to stay in Europe, and ideally not have to go through the application process again. Do you know if UCL is similar in that it is very hard to continue to the PhD track with funding? Do you think the quality of LSE/UCL still outweighs the difficulty of getting to a funded PhD there, while I am already accepted to a funded PhD at CEMFI?

I received offers for MSc Economics at UCL, MSc Econometrics at LSE and PhD tracks at CEMFI,Tinbergen and BGSE. I would like to continue in the PhD program after finishing the master's level and my research interests are labor and applied microeconomics. I think that for labor and microeconomics, UCL and LSE would be the stronger programs (please correct me if you think otherwise). However, I am worried that I will have hard time getting a distinction and continuing in the PhD track. Moreover, I fear that even if I am able to get into the PhD track, I will not get funding and I will be forced to leave the program after all the work, while CEMFI and Tinbergen offer virtually complete security in staying in the program as well as funding (BGSE offers partial funding). I was wondering if you guys have a better idea of what the chances for a distinction are and even more importantly, for getting funding at UCL or LSE after getting into the PhD track. Do you think the risk of going to the London schools will pay off? Thank you so much for your help.