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crslr

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crslr last won the day on December 5 2005

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  1. With regard to an academic career, coming out of UNC will be tough. You'd have to be top of the class to make the market notice you. It's something to keep in mind as you decide whether to put a lot of money on the line for this. When people apply to PhD programs, they underestimate the fixation of the academic job market on the top 20 programs. Some don't even read applications that they haven't specifically requested. And they don't usually request applications from new UNC graduates, unless you're in a particular field where UNC is top.
  2. Almost everyone stays who is able to. People routinely turn down better overseas jobs for US academic jobs. (Better in the sense of lower teaching load, nicer city, stronger faculty, perhaps higher pay ...) So US academic employers have no trouble filling their openings; on the contrary, teaching-oriented places often end up hiring people who are promising researchers, just because they are available.
  3. Even job candidates are not supposed to send unsolicited e-mails. Messages from PhD applicants will generally be ignored, occasionally answered but not followed up internally, and if you're unlucky become the subject of a lunch time rant. Hard to see how it can ever make a positive difference, unless it's your advisor writing.
  4. Strange guy, but I guess letters from mathematicians are generally not as informative as from economists. To succeed in economics, you need a certain familiarity with math, but you have to excel in other things. How can he give a credible recommendation for a top economics program when he doesn't observe the things that distinguish a good economist from a bad economist? So apparently he believes it's about "smart people" vs. "really smart people." In which case, you don't want his letter.
  5. The advice to review math, rather than economics, is worth taking. Graduate courses teach everything from the beginning - in principle, they assume nothing except familiarity with mathematical notation and concepts, some key results / techniques, and methods of proof.
  6. I think it's pretty simple: a GRE score with Q 800 helps your application, so you should never be worried about submitting it, and certainly should not consider retaking. While I haven't been reading applications myself, I would only look at the Q score, period - and I get the same impression from colleagues. If the whole application is difficult to read because of bad grammar, that's a negative. But I wouldn't necessarily conclude from a low verbal score that the applicant has insufficient language skills for graduate study.
  7. Econometrica is normally considered the top theory journal, and AER the most prestigious applied journal. The people who might publish in both are theorists, and they rank Econometrica above AER. About co-authoring with senior professors: often, though not always, the junior co-author effectively writes the paper, and the senior co-author makes some time available for discussion and final proof-reading. So there is a cost to you in following this route: you spend the time it takes to write a full paper by yourself, but you only get partial credit. In the job market, co-authored papers with a senior professor are discounted somewhat, because they are not "proof" that you can publish independently. On the other hand, the name and expertise of your co-author can certainly smooth the road to acceptance by a good journal, which is always valuable.
  8. In Australia, the best graduate programs are at Melbourne and the ANU. However, in terms of research strength, my ranking flatters the ANU a bit; there have been systematic faculty movements in Australia recently. The big gainer was Queensland, which has attracted the most productive theorists from the ANU, Sydney and Melbourne. While Sydney and Melbourne continue to be quite strong, the ANU has really suffered from limited funds and its complicated internal structure. I know the situation because I had a job offer from them this year and gave it serious consideration. My view mostly reflects the micro theory side though, where the decline has been especially obvious. I suspect the ANU is best in applied micro and in macro. Other notable departments in Australia are UNSW and QUT for econometrics. In New Zealand, Auckland is getting good in micro theory. But outside of the ANU and Melbourne, you don't have well-developed PhD programs yet; they're more ad-hoc. All major Australian universities have excellent track records placing their honors students (who do an extended BA degree) in US PhD programs. That gives the Australian degrees a good name. Among master's students the intake quality and motivations are mixed, so the placements will vary widely.
  9. You're better off with probability theory. It relates to everything you do in the PhD curriculum; lots of micro and macro models have uncertainty in them. What you learn in stats - hypothesis testing and such - only matters for econometrics, and will be taught again from the beginning (but more consistently) in that course. It helps to have studied it in detail before, but in my view isn't as essential as a good probability background.
  10. I believe top LACs are conservative hirers, not likely to take someone straight out of UMass. The people on their committees aren't the most confident judges of research quality, so they'll place more emphasis on secondary indicators (where your degree is from, who says what about you). Unless, of course, they have people in your field already on their staff. But, look, what everyone keeps saying about heterodox interests: if at all possible, try to get a good traditional degree, so that you get the core skills and can engage this type of economics fully. Only then will you be credible. And likely enough, you'll find that the people at top departments have good reasons for working the way they do. Being blunt: until you've spent some time in a PhD program, you really have no idea what you're talking about. You shouldn't make this kind of choice right now.
  11. I'd interpret Mankiw's statement in a similar way to "as a mathematician, you have economics as a fall-back option." People with economics backgrounds are popular with law school adcoms because they're trained to think analytically in a discipline which is more demanding in that respect. Whether or not they like law is a different matter, just as many mathematicians may not like economics. Mankiw was just saying that he, for one, could see himself going into law.
  12. I can't even find internet references to a North Eastern Economic Journal. Either it's obscure or you need to look up the name again. Is it perhaps conference proceedings? In general, to determine the quality of a journal: if it's been around for a while, it should begin to show up in impact studies, or on the lists of "tenure-relevant" journals ("A journals," "B journals," etc.) that departments maintain. Some of these lists can be found on the web. If it's a new journal, you'd look at the managing or associate editors - are they themselves well-published? Are they the kinds of people who wouldn't put their time in if it wasn't worthwhile? Don't read too much into the wider editorial board though, since that includes people who agreed to be listed as a favor to friends and who won't do the day-to-day work. Conference proceedings - I don't think they make much difference to anyone, since they're not refereed to the same standard as regular journals. But if you're a grad school applicant, they might signal that you're active.
  13. Except at the very best schools (maybe top 10, maybe fewer), placement success is very erratic. It reflects the less predictable quality of the student intake. I wouldn't worry so much about placement data at such schools. Where you would go from Oxford chiefly depends on your own research ability, not on their track record. It's sad if schools try to impress by counting people who didn't do their PhD there (or by listing post-doc placements as if they were tenure-track). You have to wonder about their priorities.
  14. Keep in mind that any PhD-granting university is a fairly prestigious employer for PhD graduates. Even Oregon gets pretty good people in the job market. They can, and want to, teach and supervise at a level similar to the top 10. The constraint are mainly the students. Lower-ranked programs get more students with real deficiencies in their backgrounds. Hence faculty settle for easier courses that focus on special, rather than general, cases, skip technical details - but cover most of the same terrain. You can get a decent education in such places, but you have to challenge yourself. Your professors are still well-qualified, and may have more time and interest, to guide you in your thesis research. Unfortunately, the job market screens people superficially, both in academia and outside. It doesn't have time to pick the needle out of the haystack of mediocre graduates from lower-ranked programs. That's where you have a problem later - you may not get a chance to show that you're up there with the rest. I suspect that many who consider lower-ranked US programs would be better off going to Europe or Australia, if they can manage it privately. There's money in these places, the admission bar isn't quite as high, you have a local job market later that values the local degree, and you're not as stigmatized in the US market either. These are far better packages, programs with resources and ambitions. Some excellent economists work outside the US because they want to be close to home. If you come out of, say, Toulouse or Bonn, even top US departments may consider hiring you - because respected people work there, who will produce outstanding graduates fairly regularly. In Australia, there are plenty of jobs for econ PhDs, and every year or so, one or two are able to compete in the international academic market.
  15. Keep in mind that any PhD-granting university is a fairly prestigious employer for PhD graduates. Even Oregon gets pretty good people in the job market. They can, and want to, teach and supervise at a level similar to the top 10. The constraint are mainly the students. Lower-ranked programs get more students with real deficiencies in their backgrounds. Hence faculty settle for easier courses that focus on special, rather than general, cases, skip technical details - but cover most of the same terrain. You can get a decent education in such places, but you have to challenge yourself. Your professors are still well-qualified, and may have more time and interest, to guide you in your thesis research. Unfortunately, the job market screens people superficially, both in academia and outside. It doesn't have time to pick the needle out of the haystack of mediocre graduates from lower-ranked programs. That's where you have a problem later - you may not get a chance to show that you're up there with the rest. I suspect that many who consider lower-ranked US programs would be better off going to Europe or Australia, if they can manage it privately. There's money in these places, the admission bar isn't quite as high, you have a local job market later that values the local degree, and you're not as stigmatized in the US market either. These are far better packages, programs with resources and ambitions. Some excellent economists work outside the US because they want to be close to home. If you come out of, say, Toulouse or Bonn, even top US departments may consider hiring you - because respected people work there, who will produce outstanding graduates fairly regularly. In Australia, there are plenty of jobs for econ PhDs, and every year or so, one or two are able to compete in the international academic market.
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