magicahan
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Thanks for the information. Yes, my judgement could be biased a lot since I'm drawing conclusion from people coming from some specific background. And I'm not encouraging others should be waiting another year or anything, since this could well be an upward trend in competitvenes. Some people said it was a tough year last year and this year again seems to be getting no better. The prospective student list doesn't include the information you mentioned but does include information like major and institute, nationality etc. This sort of information gets leaked almost every year from upper class students. But again, I don't want to mislead other students here as well. Good to have someone insider that can clarify on it.
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The most credible one is from my advisor talking to other people on the committee and most of them are saying this is a very strong year. Some indirect evidence includes fellow students who applied this year, prospective student list from certain schools, and information filtered from gc, etc.
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In retrospect, according to information from all sources, this is a very hard year. So if you decide to apply next year, it's probably going to turn out to be amazing result. And also please don't let a single application process define you. I know friends who are way better than those I know who got accepted to the top 5 programs but get literally no admission. And also please remember, even if you decide to find a job, that seems a great option as well. It's not uncommon for PhD students to flounder and ended up in a job that they could have gotten 5-6 years ago. Any way is the right way.
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There looks like a post saying getting an email today, not sure if that is legit
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The same thing happened to Princeton though. There were 4 posts originally and some other people posted just to end the long threads speculating whether they will send more. Same thing could happen to Berkeley as well
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There is a post on gc for Berkeley. Can anybody confirm?
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I also got the offer but for sure will decline. Are you considering UCSD? They do have a very good program. But I also think that NW still dominates UCSD even given your information set. It's true that UCSD is really good at metrics, but it's also possible that you will choose other subfield over metrics after your first or second year (know a few people switch field away from metrics, may be it's just my own experience). With that uncertainty hanging around, NW definitely provides a better platform judging by past placement records. But again, you should choose whichever place you are comfortable with.
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I contacted three people who are in their first year right now. You can PM me if you want to talk. Willing to share some of their opinions.
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I have a friend got wl by that program. They accepted two of their RAs and my friend said both of them are going to take the offer.
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Re-edit this post before I got confirmation For what pulsars have said, then I have to confirm with my sources. I head this from a fifth year PhD student, a first year PhD student and someone worked as an RA there. It might be I'm wrong. I graduated from the master program last year and based on my personal experience taking the core sequences and the fact that they got easy micro finals for the second and third classes, I thought that was pretty legit. And also, Chicago allows for two attempts, they don't kick out students if they only failed once. Just to clarify. Got confirmation from one. Yes they did fail quite a few students, it was a class of around 22 people, 1/3 would be 7 people ish. But they seemed to recalculate the overall score by taking into account of their regular class grade so some of them avoided having to take the core again eventually. That's the story I got here. Also the rejection to offer letter situation is 100 percent true guaranteed. Talked to the person literally like two days ago. Don't get me wrong: Uchicago Econ is definitely one of the top programs for sure. The faculty quality there is just great. But there is a reason why it slips in ranking. The training in the first two years and research there is great. But the advising and environment there kinda sucks compared to other aspects. I guess people do still care about how happy you are during your phd education. Based on my own experience and collecting other people's opinions after they enter Uchicago Econ program or other phd programs other places, it seems to be a somewhat consensus that Uchicago doesn't have a very nice and welcoming environment. It may be easier to select the star students (looks like it is judging by their imc this year, so many flyouts) this way. But it's also true that quite some students got neglected and didn't end up on market. Actually, almost all the TA's I had there didn't show up on job market. This may be also true for other schools and I'm just telling my own experiences at Uchicago.
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The problem may be on the demand side. People are judging the quality of a PhD program largely on their placement into the top 30 programs etc. If the department itself is not expanding, to me it just sounds like more and more students will struggle to find jobs in academia. But again, a job in the industry could be really interesting as well.
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So according to my advisor and people he talked to, this year seems to be a very strong year. A lot of good people with great profiles don't get the offers they deserve and it's hard for the schools to make decisions. It may be just a very bad year for applicants, or it's the general trend that competition is getting more and more intense.
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Seems cool. Also, this year decisions seem to go out later than what it was last year. More to be expected
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That's why I sort of discourage people from going to Uchicago somehow on this board since I actually know some inside stories. Btw, last year, they failed more than one thirds of their entire first year on their micro core. Definitely something going wrong with the advising or their recruiting process.
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Exactly. Some people were mad. I know at least two people who got an offer after rejection. One guess is that after they realized that they lost a lot of their prospective students, they started to reevaluate some applicants. But these two people I know all have some sorts of affiliation with Uchicago, so they might just send them the offers to maximize the likelihood that they got enough students. The hilarious thing is that both of these people turn down the offer.