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I sent an e-mail to PhD students at the top 50 institutions in the United States and asked them a series of questions. I received a response rate of about 9% (which is much higher then the 2-3% I was expecting). The first question was:
Since this was my first attempt at e-mailing a question to PhD students, it goes without saying that I could have done a better job in writing the question. If I could turn back time I would have asked the question by simply stating a high GRE score and GPA. A lot of the responses came back saying the 3.5 GPA and a sub-800 GRE score just wouldn't cut it in today's competitive graduate school market. Also I would not have used the word should , instead I would have used the phrase "How many graduate schools is it appropriate to apply for?". The word should seems to create a lot of confusion for the more philosophically minded student. With that being said, the responses I received were very enlightening.
As for the first part of my question more then 60% of the responses I got back said it was wise to apply to 6 or more economics PhD programs. Only a handful of brave students attempted to apply to less then four programs when they applied to graduate school. Most of the people who applied to less then four schools regretted doing it. In retrospect they thought it was a good idea to apply to at least five, which was the overwhelming consensus of the current economics PhD students. One student at the University of Virginia wrote:
I found that answer to be amusing. Who else but an economics student would approach this sort of issue with this type of logic?
To sum up the overwhelming consensus of the current economics PhD students; Applying to too many schools has very few drawbacks. It seems that the more schools you can apply to, the better. Most of the respondents also chimed in with a resounding "yes", on the question of applying to a safety school. The only objection for applying to a safety school that came up can be summed up by the following response from a student at Johns Hopkins University:
The objection to a safety school is masked under the presumption that a person's only motivation to attend graduate school is to earn the degree. Although this may be true for some people, the overwhelming majority of PhD students I have talked to are attending graduate school to enter a career in academia or research. The issue is that most academic or research employers, that are respected, want to hire students from top PhD programs. If you need proof of this all you need to do is look to see where all the Economics professors from MIT or U. Chicago received their degrees. {Hint - You will not see a person with a degree from Washington State University (not that there's anything wrong with that!)}.
My take on the whole issue of applying to a safety school is that it can't hurt you. ***CAUTION***THE OBVIOUS IS ABOUT TO BE WRITTEN!!!*** If you end up getting accepted to higher ranked program you can always turn down the safety school. If, however, the higher ranked schools turn you down you still have an option with the safety school. Some people would suggest that if the safety school is the only school that accepts you, then you should go. The theory being that if you wait a year and then re-apply to the school(s) that rejected you, unless you did something outstanding during the year, you will just be rejected again. Losing a year in the process. The optimist's would say that since the competitive pool applying to economics PhD programs changes from year to year that it is possible for you to get accepted to a better ranked school by waiting a year to apply. I don't buy this argument (mainly because I think there is a strong application pool every year to the top programs); but it is a theory.
The fact is that the process of being accepted to a good econ PhD program is arduous and haphazard. You have to take the right classes (read - LOTS AND LOTS OF MATH), you have to obtain nearly perfect grades in your math and econ classes, you must score a near perfect GRE quant score, and get great letters of recommendation from your professors. Then after you have done all of that you look at the competition that is applying for the same 15-25 spots in each school and you notice they have done the exact same thing. Now what? The undergrads that have the great fortune of publishing work as an undergrad go to Chicago or Stanford, so do those who have the fortune of a letter of recommendation from Dr. Stiglitz; As for the rest of us, we are left competing for the remaining slots. Not only do we want to get into the best school we can, we want to be funded while we go. So potential econ grad students are left with a game of playing expected outcomes. If there is a small probability of getting into a good school with funding, then any statistics experience will tell you that you need to increase your sample size to increase your expected chances of getting into a good school with funding. I have heard more then a significant sample size of stories about how people have been rejected by U of Georgia but were accepted to Berkeley. The things that the admissions committees are looking for to differentiate candidates are undecipherable. The things we have control over such as the grades and test scores are already near perfect, so the adcoms look for arbitrary filters that differ from school to school. So if you want to go to a good school and not be in debt up to your eyeballs when you get out, the optimal strategy is to apply to as many schools as your budget will allow and that you would actually go to.
The last part of the question I sent to the current economics PhD students had to do with the process of deciding which PhD programs to apply for. The majority of respondents were primarily concerned with school ranking when applying. Although a lot of students thought that the ranking were not entirely indicative of a schools job at educating future economists, most used this system because it gave them the best chance at after school employment. USNEWS, Tom's Rankings, NAGPS, and a world-wide ranking system are four of the main ways students ranked colleges. The secondary considerations for which schools to apply for were concerns such as geography (west-coast, east-coast, overseas, etc.), weather (do I want to live in the snow of the mid-west, or deal with the heat of the east-coast in summer), and closeness to family and friends. Tertiary concerns were things such as the beauty of the campus, cost of moving to a new city, and one guy used the availability of cool bars near campus to decide the schools he wanted to attend (whatever floats your boat!).
Once the students were accepted to graduate schools, the way they decided on which campus to attend was pretty much decided on the same basis (with the additional factor of financial aid packages...but I'll save that topic for another post.)
In the end I have come to the conclusion that I will apply to as many top programs as my budget will allow me to. I still don't know if I will apply to a safety school...It seems like a waste of money and time to even fill out the application, since I probably wouldn't go to the school anyway. I would like to stay in the San Francisco Bay Area so Berkeley and Stanford will be by top choices, however UC San Diego does seem tempting (La Jolla is so beautiful). East-coast school will be second choice, with schools in the mid-west being a distant third (as you can tell, geography is a major deciding factor for me.). Although U.Chicago would be an honor to go to (how many Noble Prize's do they have to their name now?), it seems as though you have to publish three article while standing on your head and sucking up to five alumni during your undergraduate years to have a chance at being admitted so I will not hold my breathe for it.
I have attached a link to some of the better responses from this question, if you are interested click here.
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