dregon03

All of them are good schools! French Masters Programs - TSE, PSE and ENSAE-X You should look at what the previous thread on this topic!

PROFILE: Canadian student in mediocre school ranked 200-300 in the world. Type of Undergrad: B.Math Double Honours in Math and Economics Undergrad GPA: 3.91/4.0 Type of Grad: N/A Grad GPA: N/A GRE: N/A Math Courses: Real analysis, Differential equations, Statsitics and Probability, Other less popular heavy math courses Econ Courses: Advanced Econ, Other Courses: Letters of Recommendation: 1 from the dean, 2 from the regular faculty Research Experience: 1 year with econ faculty Teaching Experience: 2 years as TA since first year summer Research Interests: Flexible SOP: Standard Applied: U of Toronto, UBC, Queen's, Paris School of Economics, LSE RESULTS: Acceptances: Everywhere I applied Waitlists: None Rejections: None Pending: Attending: PSE Comments: Decided to attend PSE to see Piketty and Paris. I might transfer to US if I don't find a good supervisor at PSE. I agree entirely with the guy above who said applying from non-high ranked schools directly to these top schools in Canada and UK was not easy. I was fortunate to have references who attended MIT. Otherwise, I doubt that I would've been accepted at PSE and LSE, two schools that are harder to get into among the schools I applied. The downside is that even though I got admissions from everywhere with "full funding", they weren't exceptional. They all offered me standard funding at around $20000. Someone from good university with my profile would probably receive a lot more funding.

PROFILE: Canadian student in mediocre school ranked 200-300 in the world. Type of Undergrad: B.Math Double Honours in Math and Economics Undergrad GPA: 3.91/4.0 Type of Grad: N/A Grad GPA: N/A GRE: N/A Math Courses: Real analysis, Differential equations, Statsitics and Probability, Other less popular heavy math courses Econ Courses: Advanced Econ, Other Courses: Letters of Recommendation: 1 from the dean, 2 from the regular faculty Research Experience: 1 year with econ faculty Teaching Experience: 2 years as TA since first year summer Research Interests: Flexible SOP: Standard Applied: U of Toronto, UBC, Queen's, Paris School of Economics, LSE RESULTS: Acceptances: Everywhere I applied Waitlists: None Rejections: None Pending: Attending: PSE Comments: Decided to attend PSE to see Piketty and Paris. I might transfer to US after doing GRE.

If you are a professor, then perhaps you should stop your stubborn comment about economics ranking system. Thank you for pointing out that we were talking about US school rankings. I simply didn't assume that since I am not American. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/economics-business This was the site I was referring to. I simply said that Stanford SGB is a business school and it's natural that it places low on the economics ranking scale. Business schools generally have many research areas and economics is only a subset of their research at Stanford SGB. I'm very aware that Stanford SGB places their graduates at top economics schools occasionally, but most of them are placed at Business graduate schools, which makes sense. Compare Stanford Economics Department to Stanford SGB, and would you still argue that Stanfrod SGB is a better Economics school than Stanford Economics department? You are fooling yourself with the term "reputation" if this is the case. In fact, you should take a look at this since I think other people have sacrificed precious time to criticize the ridiculous US news ranking of the world universities. I decline to spend any more time explaining why USnews ranking system is flawed, and unless you are working for US news ranking system, I urge you to rethink about your favorability of US news ranking. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/09/your-annual-reminder-to-ignore-the-em-us-news-world-report-em-college-rankings/279103/

Wow... Why does honesty get ignored? Not a lot of people are going to be honest with you. I just gave you advice coming from my heart so you don't waste your time trying for top 35 econ grad schools.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/economics-business it's a world ranking and it very misrepresent the rankings outside US.

It depends on what top 35 you mean. If you are speaking about top 35 in US, then maybe. If you are speaking about top 35 in the world, then no. I think you should rather aim for admissions at schools that specialize since your GPA is definitely too low for any decent school. Good luck!

I am glad that you are a professor, congratulations, but I hope you aren't misinforming your students to believe that US news ranking is a good ranking system. Without going into the details of US news ranking system methodology, we can see it's flaws. Out of top 10, according to US news, 9 are located in US. Out of top 20, 17 are located in US. Three outliers are LSE and two schools in Netherlands. As you put it, "only the biological mother of these Netherlands schools" would think that the Dutch schools are better than Oxford, PSE, UBoconni, Ubonn, which are top European economics schools that the Dutch schools can directly compare to. It is not to say that US schools aren't excellent. They are just overly represented in US news ranking. Good luck with your research, whichever department you are in. Hopefully not economics.

I agree with you. As I said, I acknowledge the reputation of Stanford GSB in Business. If you are careful with their placements, majority of their graduates do business, not necessarily economics. Doing research in Economics means a lot different than landing a position in Business department. Economics phD's are likely to place in both Business and Economics departments, but the other way around doesn't usually happen. (happens only in rare occasion). Business degrees tend to be a lot more career focused and "money making" focused, whereas economics is a field of social science concerned with research.

My words were directed to the person who started this thread. It's great that you are already employed. Congratulations. US news ranking has many flaws. Without going into the details of their methodology, US news ranking claims that out of top 10 economics departments 9 are located in US. The only one exception being LSE. According to US news ranking, out of top 20 economics departments 17 are located in US. 1 is LSE and 2 are Dutch schools. Only the "mother of biological affiliates" as you put it of these two Dutch schools would consider themselves to have better overall research outcomes than Oxford, PSE, UBonn, UBoconni, which are the top European economics schools that Dutch schools can directly compare to.The ranking over represents US economics departments and heavily underestimates + misrepresent non-American institutes. In addition, economics departments should be compared with national institutes such as NBER or Bank of Canada since these government/financial institutes have departments that do pure research and shouldn't be forgetten in graduate rankings. If you are purely concerned about how people think about each schools, then yes. I think you "can" consider US news ranking, but if you are a serious economist, I urge you to consider Ideas rankings most seriously.

redundant from the previous post.

US News asks around people which schools are good and you are saying this is a reasonable ranking system?... That is disappointing if you are an economist even more so. Ideas ranks schools based on research output. https://ideas.repec.org/t/ranking.html I encourage you to read the methodology they use to compute the economics rankings and compare it to simply "asking around people..."

I didn't claim that one ranking system is perfect and the other is not. Among economists ideas ranking system is most widely used. If Queen's University graduates rank higher than Stanford GSB, it makes sense. GSB is a business school and Queen's is an economics school. Business schools tend to have harder time placing graduates in economics, but this shouldn't come to you as a surprise. Business schools and economics schools teach different material. If these were rankings purely on employer satisfaction, then yes, Stanford SGB would place at a much higher level than Queen's graduate. It's highly likely that an economics student gets an employment at a Business school, but not the other way around. I don't want anyone to be misinformed and think that USNews ranking is a better measure than Ideas just because StanfordGSB ranks lower, but again, this is a Business school. Queen's University currently produces second most cited research in Canada after University of British Columbia. Queen's is a very good school. Some think that University of Toronto is the best school in economics. It might well be given heavier percentage of their professors hold ivy league degrees than both University of British Columbia and Queen's University combined, but clearly the research output says otherwise. I encourage you to read some of the faculty's papers before comparing schools, or at the very least look at professors' Curriculum Vitae. The biggest bias of USnews ranking system is that it over-ranks the American schools. Among top 20 schools according to US news, 17 out of 20 universities are American. Even surprising fact is that 2 of them are Netherland's Universities. It's not to say that the two Dutch schools and American schools are not excellent, but they just don't compare with some of top European institutes such as PSE, Bocconi, CEMFI. US news might be taken seriously by non economists, business majors, and non-researchers, but not among economists. Ideas is the only ranking that economics researchers should take seriously and ask your professors which ranking they use as an indicator of strong performance in research. I have done this, and 9 out of 10 will say Ideas.

Also, I want to inform you that https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.inst.all10.html This is the ranking of institutions by research output (only research output) in the past 10 years. When choosing your graduate program, this might be the most useful source instead of looking for graduate academic placements, since if the research is good, then placement is something that just follows.

Redundant

I believe Ideas is the only reliable ranking system that truly measures the level of graduate studies in economics. I recommend you not to look at other rankings as they can depend heavily on non relevant factors such as the university student size and employer feedback. These things might heavily matter for undergraduate studies but graduate studies quality is determined by the research output by the department or institution. https://ideas.repec.org/top/ Under the special ranking, there is one for the "success" of graduate students. This measures the research output by the current researchers and ranking based on their institution that they received phD degrees from.

These two departments don't really compare in economics field. Only a fool would choose Cambridge over Oxford in any economics subfields you name. You will understand my statement if you read several of Cambridge economic's department faculties papers. If this is too much to do, then at the very least read ten random Curriculum Vitae of each school. My advisor who's an expert in behavioral/experimental economics (game theory) specifically advised me not to apply to Cambridge university because he said they are a dying economics school with their old economics thought. Unfortunately, both of them aren't that good in economics, at the very best second tier competing with some top 20-30 schools in America. Instead, the only recognized economics school in Europe are the top schools in each nation. U Bonn, U Bocconi, PSE, Stockholm, and at the top there is LSE. Why? These schools place their phD graduates at Harvard, MIT, or Princeton (three traditionally best economics schools) LSE is the reason why Oxford is second tier economics school. Cambridge is fourth tier at best. I will still answer your questions in order. 1) Oxford... if anyone says otherwise, don't trust them, and you should ask whether they are actually economics students. 2) Oxford. 3) Well, I am not from the future but with high probability Oxford will remain better. And you mention that you are interested in pursuing finance afterwards. Then the answer is clear. You shouldn't go to either Oxford or Cambridge. You should pursue LSE degree. LSE is the one and only top in financial economics thanks to gigantic UK stock market which attracts the best researchers and students around the world.

Both of them are top20-50 schools. I don't think it makes much difference which school you choose.

Institution: Toronto Program: MA (They say they are eliminating the distinction between doctoral and general stream but I doubt this. I think they are funding much higher for doctoral stream students) Decision: Reject Funding: 8K faculty Scholarship plus TAship 6K Notification date: Mar/3/17 Notified via phone, snail mail, or email: Email Institution: Queens Program: MA Decision: Reject Funding: 18000K (TA+Scholarship) Notification date: Feb/28/17 Notified via phone, snail mail, or email: Email Additionally, I got admissions from UBC Msc Econ and LSE Msc Econ. Final decision: I chose PSE econ.

I think Illinois school is excellent if you want to land a position in the states after your degree, although generally speaking pursuing a masters degree in the US in economics is not praised upon because most decent schools offer direct admissions to phD. Also, the school overall doesn't compare to PSE or LSE overall. I would place Illinois and Warwick at about the same level in terms of research (I can't speak for their teaching). The reason only some schools in the states have masters program is because they lack funding, whereas in Europe they have masters degree because their undergraduate degree is only three years and require time for students to prepare for research level work. Good luck!

Yes and no. These are the types of work that will be done in computer science department or collaboration between computer science department and economics department. In economics department, I wouldn't say that algorithmic Game Theory is a popular field.

I think your choice should be between U wisconsin and Duke. In general fields of economics, I would say Uwisconsin has a better reputation. If you are Canadian, then U of T should be fine too since Canadians get good advantage of applying for government funding at both national and international levels. Good luck!

In Europe, PSE, LSE, Oxford, Boconni, CMEFI are big names. I can't speak for other schools although I am sure there are a few more in Europe that have good reputation depending on sub field of economics. LSE is a gigantic institution that supports every type of economcis fields. PSE specializes in many fields but they are popular for applied macroeconomics and public economics. Each year PSE's reputation is rising. Oxford is just a popular name. Boconni is strong with micro,macro theory. CMEFI is a small elite institution that supports individual students quite well. Their average placement record is probably the strongest in all Europe. If you are the very top student, then choose PSE or LSE. If you manage to stand out among these stellar grad students, then you will easily place at top schools, and by this I mean Harvard, MIT, Chicago, UC Berkely and so on. If you are a decent student, then Oxford or CMEFI. Their average placements are really decent. I just simply don't know if these schools have top researchers today. If you like theory in general, then Boconni.

CEMFI is an elite institution that fully supports each of its graduate students. LSE is a giant institution that produces a lot of graduates.If you think you are the top of the top student, then clear choice is LSE. If you are a decent student, than easily choose CEMFI!

I think the easy answer to this is PSE overall. You might want to consider other options if applied economics is not your thing. PSE has absolute strength in applied macroeconomics and public economics.