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I am lucky to have an offer from a T12 school in this godforsaken season with a very solid fit. The location is also very good though funding is not excellent. But I have been rejected/implicitly rejected from most of the T10s. But I am wondering, assuming I have rejections from the few T10s yet to respond, whether it is beneficial for my long-run outcomes to delay for one more year and try again next year. I am currently an RA at a T3 for a fully tenured faculty member who is very respected in my subfield. I was planning to just do a one year RA'ship, but given this rough season I am considering taking more time to do research and extending my stay. While nothing is guaranteed obviously, surely my odds ought to go up (right?), because both I will have more research experience and also class sizes are projected to go back to normal post-covid (or at least be much better than right now). I am just weighing the tradeoffs and I was hoping to hear some of your opinions. On the one hand, I am a little tired of RA work as, while I am picking up very useful empirical skills, I am not able to do too much creative work. I have a few set of ideas from my RA work, and I want to enroll in a PhD program sooner to take grad classes in my subfield and adjacent subfields, so I can begin working on my projects and writing papers. I also do not want to spend another >$1.3k on applications, plus my mental health has taken a massive hit during the past two months. Yet on the other hand, there is much evidence that, even accounting for selection, that being in a T5 is very advantageous (see e.g. Jim Heckman and Sidharth Moktan's paper on the Tyranny of the Top Five). wondering if people had any thoughts to take into consideration. On average are advisors at T7's not available/there is a lot of competition amongst students for good advisors than at T15's? On the other hand, what are the peer networks like at T15's, are they as motivated and enterprising as those at T7's (both for self-motivation purposes and for potential coauthors)? Is being a star at a T15/T20 better than being middle-of-the-road at T7 (not saying I'll be a star but I'm just curious)? Should I take into consideration the fact that the job market in five-six years will probably be a bit easier due to smaller cohorts? Have I overestimated the likelihood of next admission season being easier (maybe because top students are thinking of deferring/delaying)? (please don't say past your first job nobody cares about your degree. Sure, conditional on that first job your degree won't matter, but it's precisely getting that first job that is very difficult and where I'm sure pedigree matters, see Heckman and Moktan 2020 as above.)

Hey everyone, I have been accepted into CEMFI (Msc.) and Toulouse M1 in Econometrics and Statistics. I want to pursue a PhD in economics, either in the US or maybe even continue at these places. I am having trouble deciding where to go. I was therefore looking for some advice in this regard. My research interests are in Econometrics and Applied Microeconomics. Toulouse has given me a fee waiver where as CEMFI has no funding. Toulouse has received some negative reviews on urch so I am confused. On one hand CEMFI is a smaller class with faculty that are very approachable (some have already contacted me and expressed interest). On the other hand, Toulouse is cheaper and also has good placements for its PhD program. Therefore I am very confused about my decision and any advice would be appreciated. Thank you.