songbirdaoe

My opinion is probably not and I am an alumni. UBC has a good masters program and its rigorous and a good preparation for an economics Ph.D. The course work is very much on par with Ph.D. level coursework at a lot of schools. However, my specific opinion is that masters programs usually don't increase your competitiveness that much, unless you have some deficiency they can fill. Like not having an economics background or not coming from a well known undergrad. In your case you have reasonably good grades and a strong math background. I don't think UBC's masters is going to do much for you, unless you don't have letters from economics Professors. The other thing is I would not be hung up about ranking as much and look for program fit. The reality is in economics is that entering cohort size is directly related to program ranking, where top programs have more students than bottom programs. Most students actually graduate from top 30 programs and the median student in any ranked school doesn't do that much better than schools ranked much below them. Instead, the criteria you should be is the program a good fit. Does it have people working in the areas you are interested in? Do the faculty in those areas put effort into advising graduate students? Etc.

I would pick UCR over Missouri. I am a recent grad of similarly ranked school and had the luxury of meeting some of their students during a conference, I was surprised that they actually seem to have a good deal of support. A batch of them were taking classes at some of the other UC's, because UC had a mechanism to do this and they have a relatively strong placements for their program. They also tend to be stronger in applied fields than Missouri has, and their placement record is better in macro (Missouri's strongest area).

Tulane is an applied micro school. I'd look into the empirical development literature and start from there. LSU, which is near by has Areendam Chanda and Dan Kenniston, maybe see if there would be a way to work with them.

My guess is your at U Toronto. I would talk to the faculty there and ask them. The one piece of advice, I will give you is pick the right letter writers. Someone who will write a strong letter and specific things about it. I've seen profiles like yours get rejected from every single top 10 school and I have sen profiles like yours get accepted at Harvard and Stanford. There is a lot of randomness profile.

The only way I see you striking out is if you are a bad match with everywhere you applied. I had a friend who had a profile like yours, slightly worse, that basically got rejected from everywhere because he said he wanted to do behavioral and applied to schools that did not have anyone doing behavioral. You seem very competitive for places ranked between 40 and 60. The Fed R.A. might push you into the top 30 range.

They take lots of internationals, but it of course depends what school your from etc. For most non-european international students coming to any north American program, basically your admission depends more on your schools reputation and whether or not they have a history of sending people to North American schools and how good you are relative to people who were admitted in the past.

1. Kiyotaki's is decades ago. 2. Asian Ph.D. has little value on American market, so there are good reason for someone in Asia to do a Ph.D. in America. Especially in Economics where majority of the top 150 programs are in North America. 3. The third guy doesn't look like he finished the Econ Ph.D., He looks like he transferred from Econ to Finance. The resume says Ph.D program in Economics, not a Ph.D in Economics.

So I signed up just to respond to your question. I basically checked this site out of curiosity. I am a graduate from a program from a Ph.D. program ranked lower than yours. I transferred programs, because I did not having first year funding. What you are asking about is a complete waste of time and a negative signal if you go on the job market. Here is why: 1. Getting a Ph.D. at a top 20 program is overrated. The reason is the top programs graduate and matriculate more students than low ranked programs. When you go on the market, you'll realize that forty percent of the market has a Ph.D. from a top 20 place. This is because Harvard graduates 25-35 students a year, while a place like University of Alabama graduates 4. As a a result, there are more students walking around with top 15 programs, than there are students from the bottom 50. So if you are not a star, you can expect to be competing with just about everyone for jobs. My own experience on the market, is that I was competing actively with students from top 15 programs. This especially is the case if you end up applying to non-academic (government, econ specific industry). 2. If your program isn't placing people into academia, it may not be a function of ranking. It can be the students or lack of support from professor or preferences. I have connections to four programs that are ranked outside of top 50 on USWNR and all of them have successfully placed students in academia. Generally its one or two students a year, who had good job market papers. Some of them had direct paths and others didn't. I even know some people who placed upwards, they of course had a stellar job market paper (it went into a top 10 journal). 3. Transferring is usually three lost years. One year to reapply. One year to repeat course work (they rarely transfer). By the time you are in your second year, your current cohort will be on the market. When I graduated, the people I did M.A. with were up for tenure. 4. Its very hard to transfer upwards. I actually was very successful in the sense that I actually got some admissions from better programs, when I transferred. None of the better programs gave me funding. However, the only reason I was successful, was that my original department strongly supported my transfer and I had a good reason. The administration had denied any more T.A positions for economics department and so I would have had to pay completely out of pocket. Had I not had that going for me, I don't think I would have been accepted at other departments. The reason is what I wrote above. Ranking does not matter as much as people think, and transferring makes it look like you don't know what your doing. A top 20 school knows that the bottom half of their students are unlikely to do much better than a typical student from a top 100 program. They also know that at least a few students from programs ranked between 30 and 50, will outplace their median student. That means for any upwards transfer, they need strong evidence, you are some how better than their median student. That is a tough hill to climb if you are already at a program worse than their own. The only other way I know students have successfully transferred is that their current program was an extremely bad fit. I.E They wanted to do macro, but their program had no active researchers in macro. Even then most of the time people moved laterally. 5. Here is JEP verifying what I am saying. It says research productivity by ranking is basically only matters if you are the top student The Research Productivity of New PhDs in Economics: The Surprisingly High Non-success of the Successful - American Economic Association. 6. The opportunity cost of your time is higher than your realize. Once you have an M.A., if your not dependent on a visa, you basically could find a job that pays 80-120k a year. This means that netting the value of tuition and T.A package, you are probably giving up about 50k a year of income. By the time I graduated, the people I knew from my M.A. program had 100k stop portfolios and are buying 500k$ houses. Obviously if you do a Ph.D., money is not a motivator, but you should put a value on time. So how to be successful at low ranked program? 7. Find an advisor who actually will give you attention and actually try to develop you into a researcher. The basic conclusion, I came across is that the main benefit of a better Ph.D. program, boils down to faculty and less the name of school. Top schools have more top researchers, and your more likely to have a researcher that closely aligns with your research interest. At lower ranked departments, you basically have to do what the department is good at and find advisors who will invest to you. Your advisors personal network effects your job market, so you are more likely to get connections. So for low ranked schools, you generally need to find the one or two faculty (usually the senior faculty who are actively publishing) who care about producing researchers and are willing to support their students. That might mean changing your research interests etc. Good advisor doesn't mean famous. It is someone who is invested into making you a researcher. Often the famous advisor is actually never at the department. 8. If your interested is development economics, that can be done from anywhere that is good at applied micro and has a couple of macro researchers interested in growth.

I graduated from undergraduate there. Though it was some time ago. They are a Canadian program and their curriculum is a mix of American and British style training (more lecture focused, less emphasis on graded problem sets). M.A students have their own core courses, but they are similar to Ph.D. level courses at non-top 50 school. The electives will contain both masters and Ph.D students. They tend to fund around a 30 to 50 percent of their masters students. Vancouver has a reputation for being expensive, but its actually cheaper than most cities on the American west coast. Its expensive relative to income, not expensive out right. My own experience as an UBC Alumni is that they are well known in Academia and unknown among American companies. Its a good way to know if a Ph.D. is right for you. Generally the structure was one where the first semester is a like the first semester of a Ph.D. program, the second semester is like the first semester of the 2nd year and the summer involved writing a paper (so you get a taste of research).