如何选择经济的OFFER

danielmiraceUID: 2454767

Daniel（来自http://danielyoung.blog.sohu.com/ ）: 今天看到曼昆在博客上贴出的如何选择经济系博士生项目的帖子。曼昆教授其实和我们一样首先建议大家还是看排名。他推荐了三个排名分别是：Ideas, USNEWS(ECON), TILBURG. 对我而言前两个排名是很熟悉的，第三个排名还是头一回听说，不过从网上的反应来看应该是很权威的排名。我不知道USNEWS怎么排名的，但是IDEAS&TILBURG似乎都比较侧重是从论文发表的角度来排名。值得注意的是曼昆没有推荐NRC的排名（那个排名有些比较一般的学校排名很高，不好理解）。

然后对我比较有帮助的是曼昆建议和在读的博士生联系，询问他们的情况。我在附件中放了来自一个论坛里面建议的询问的清单（也就是说你应该在询问在读博士哪些问题）。由于清单很长，当然不能都问，否则别人肯定晕倒的。

然后，曼昆和其他的网上评论都建议注重系里面和学校的整体环境。我觉得这个调查的难度较大，不好说。当然了，USNEWS的综合排名或许能给一些帮助。

最后，曼昆根据网友建议补充了一点就是要看毕业生的就业。我觉得这是比较可靠而且容易判断的标准。如果你的目标是进美国高校，那可以看看学长们都进入了哪些高校。


总之，就我个人而言，我比较依赖一些“硬指标”（排名、就业）。在读了他们的建议之后，我更注意在最后的选择的时候通过与在读的博士联系等方式对那个项目更为全面的信息进行评估。

对了，对于那些排名和相近的学校，我还是更相信自己的判断——通过详细的查阅教授发表论文的时间（如果今年没有发表就要引起注意）、内容、数量和级别（依赖ECONOMETRICA上的排名，也见附件）来进行判断。特别是，如果有好几个教授在我感兴趣的领域今年大量在一流刊物发表文章的话，我就会特别喜欢这个学校。

在申请的时候，我们都已经做过一次选校了，现在才是真正的“选校”，应该更细致一点。



Choosing a Graduate Program

来自Mankiw博客
Now is the time of year when prospective PhD students in economics are deciding which graduate program to attend.
The decision is often hard.
If you are in that position, here are a few recommendations about things to think about:

1. Start with the rankings.
For some recent rankings of economics departments, click here and here and here.
All ranking systems are imperfect, but other things equal, higher is probably better.

2. Talk with the graduate students who are now in the programs you are considering.
Are they happy?

3. Don't make a decision based on a single faculty member.
He or she may leave or turn out to be not quite as wonderful as you now presume.
Look for a department that is strong overall.

4. Don't presume you know your specific research interests and focus just on faculty in that narrow area.
Many students change their mind over their first few years of grad school.

5. Is the location of the school a fun place to live?
Grad school is a long haul, typically 4 to 6 years, which is a significant fraction of your life.
Being a PhD student is hard work, but it should not be a miserable existence.

6. Is the university overall a good place?
It is always more fun being part of a great institution.
Even if the economics department is perfect, if it is an island in a sea of mediocrity, being there will be less satisfying.

7. Are the undergraduates there good students?
At some point as a graduate student, you will (and should) do some teaching, perhaps as a teaching assistant in an undergraduate course.
If the undergraduates are an academically strong group, they will be more intellectually engaged and more rewarding to teach.

8. Don't be distressed if you did not get into your top choice.
What you do in graduate school (or college) is far more important than where you go.
Your personal drive matters more than the ranking of the school you attend.

Update: Readers suggest an additional criterion:

9. Look at the record of recent PhD students.
What fraction who start the program complete a PhD?
What kinds of jobs do they get upon completion?
Are they the kinds of jobs you aspire to?
The placement record will give you an indication of the caliber of students who enter the program, the value-added of the program itself, and how well the department sells its students on the job market.

下文来自ECONPHD.NET


When you have several offers, you start looking for information in earnest. Fortunately, departments will be much more responsive to enquiries when you’ve been admitted, and it’s easy to get in touch with current students. You’ll be committing something between five and seven years to the program, so the chemistry in such correspondence is a factor not to be discounted. You’ll also want to check how many students fail to complete the degree and why (because they are asked to leave? fail the exams? enter better programs? take industry jobs?). Some schools are notorious for taking in a lot more students than they plan to graduate, in order to have a large pool of budget-friendly TAs on hand. The implication is that many won’t pass the qualifying exams or, most commonly, will not continue to get funded at some point. Completion rates of about half are normalcy in many U.S. departments. Few publically report their numbers, but as a rule of thumb, programs with higher drop-out rates tend to offer fewer and / or less generous fellowships in the first year, for obvious reasons.

Another key aspect to consider is the placement track record of the program. Most departments make this information available on their website or in brochures. A historical perspective of the eventual success of PhD training is offered in a 1992 article in the Journal of Economic Education.  It ranks departments by current faculty positions occupied by their PhD graduates. The sample includes virtually every academic economist at a PhD-granting school in the U.S. in 1992, making this a particularly objective effort that looks at labor market outcomes which necessarily reflect careful evaluation, since hiring institutions “put the money where the mouth is.” On the negative side, the list is biased towards long-standing and large programs, and recent developments have little influence.

Long-Term Impact Rankings: PhD-Equivalents Produced by Faculty of the Same Doctoral Origin
1.         Harvard   82.6 2.         MIT   75.0 3.         Chicago   52.1 4.         Berkeley   45.2 5.         Stanford   42.3 6.         Yale   39.3 7.         Princeton   33.4 8.         Wisconsin   29.3 9.         Minnesota   28.0 10.        Columbia   27.8 11.        Northwestern   24.4 12.        Pennsylvania   22.1 13.        Michigan   20.2 14.        Rochester   16.5 15.        Cornell   13.6 16.        JHU   10.8              Brown   10.8 18.        UCLA   10.6 19.        Duke   10.2 20.        Illinois   10.1	21.        Virginia   9.2 22.        Carnegie Mellon   8.6 23.        Purdue   8.1 24.        UNC   7.9 25.        UCSD   6.7 26.        NYU   6.6 27.        Michigan State   6.5 28.        U Washington   6.4 29.        WUSTL   6.3 30.        Rutgers   5.7 31.        Iowa   5.3 32.        Texas   5.0 33.        Indiana   4.8 Maryland   4.8 35.        Iowa State    4.5 36.        Texas A&M   3.7 Ohio State   3.7 38.        Cal Tech   3.5 39.        Penn State   3.3 Vanderbilt   3.3 41.        SUNY Buffalo   3.2 …
Explanation: PhD equivalents produced in 1992 by faculty with the same doctoral origin. For instance: the score for Harvard is, summed across all US programs, the number of PhDs granted by the program times the share of Harvard-educated faculty in the program. Source: Pieper, Paul J.; Willis, Rachel A. “The Doctoral Origins of Economics Faculty and the Education of New Economics Doctorates,” Journal of Economic Education, Winter 1999.

All said, there is a group of U.S. departments that has for decades supplied the great majority of leading economists. The stakes are high, and the competition is accordingly – but rest satisfied that, in giving it your best effort, you’ll serve the interest of our dismal science … as if led by an invisible hand, as they say!

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dualangUID: 2470343

谢谢楼主的贡献！

顺便贴上ideas的排名 http://ideas.repec.org/top/top.econdept.html  这个排名看起来最新 是2010年2月的，欧洲学校排名和econphd的略有些不同

usnews的排名 http://grad-schools.usnews.ranki ... cs-schools/rankings

tilburg的排名 https://econtop.uvt.nl/

其实排名文件在lz的附件里都有了  贴上地址方便大家发扬八卦精神～

shensimonUID: 2400375

和halking之前那篇部分内容一样。。
still 赞。。

dualangUID: 2470343

3# shensimon

都是在mankiw的博客上转的  不过lz多了原创部分～

alexanderheUID: 2491856

根据IDEAS的排名，UC Santa Cruz的经济系可以排到世界第44，甚至高于OSU,PSU和Cornell？

wooothUID: 2534678

Ideas自己都说：Please note that rankings can depend on the number of registered authors in the respective institutions. 所以它的排名相对来说有些偏差。UCSC据说宏观做的不错，但实力肯定比不上这几家。

USnews的排名一直不太被业内认可，TILBURG就不知道，反正欧洲自己做的排名一直都很奇怪。

所以，我非常赞同Daniel看faculty选校。

alexanderheUID: 2491856

Ideas自己都说：Please note that rankings can depend on the number of registered authors in the respective institutions. 所以它的排名相对来说有些偏差。UCSC据说宏观做的不错，但实力肯定比不上这几家。

...
woooth 发表于 2010-3-19 14:21

UCSC也就在Intl Economics还做的可以，其他都没什么名气

danielmiraceUID: 2454767

谢谢版主和各位网友的鼓励。我这几天自己在选校，收集到一些资料所以拿来和大家分享。希望大家都能进入合适自己的学校。
对了，UCSC的确国际经济很强哦……

安喻UID: 2781652

Caltech……居然排38……

shensimonUID: 2400375

usnews的没关注过，所以不知道。
除了econphd的排名。。其余这几个排名要看你怎么从中分析数据了。。基本上都是粗糙数据的排列甚至样本都不是很全，所以价值很有限。如果对各方面不是很懂的。。还是以econphd为基准，其余的参考一下变动趋势比较好。比如tilburg的排名，上次也说了，自己选择期刊排一个自己需要的排名才是这个排名最大价值所在。
至于说选校标准，其实看这些排名和看faculty的概念是一样的。关注点基本山还是在paper。。当然，network之类的，在一些排名里面看不出来，但是，估计新手也不见得能从CV里比较出个差别来。econphd有network的排名。如果要具体到学校，肯定这几年有变动了。但是设定一个区间比如top20，top50，大致不会有特别多的变化。而placement的信息，不是每个学校都有公布的，一个大概的方法还是看network的排名。有空的人。。可以把top50啊之类的学校faculty的education看一遍。
从我个人角度。。还是喜欢把选校放在申请前。。如果没有足够了解。。肯定开始就没法申请，而既然申请了，我其实觉得差不多你总有自己的一个list了。。一个项目如果没有了解到你能做出选择就已经去申请了，我觉得除了top10的学校之外，实在有点对自己不负责也对不起申请费。

安喻UID: 2781652

10# shensimon

ss版主太称职了………………@.@

有贴必回有问必答堪称模范啊啊……于是问下版主性别？@@……呃……能问不……

dualangUID: 2470343

ss太细致了  赞一个

我个人喜欢看往年毕业生的出路

shensimonUID: 2400375

其实= =对于广大中国本土申请者来说，特别是最近。。offer之类的。。不存在选的问题。。好一点的结果是一个保底offer+一个非保底的。。于是不用选。。。一般的结果是1个近似保底的offer+一些尚可的ad。。最差的就是全ad了。。后两种完全是你的现金预期和个人能力预期之间的比较。。谁也不能给出任何意见了。。
手上一堆offer的高端人士。。自己的判断力一般还是不需要借助启蒙级别的指导了。。

dualangUID: 2470343

ss的性别是个谜 他从来不承认也不否认关于他性别的任何讨论

所以大家可以果断调侃之～

turkeykUID: 208840

Ideas自己都说：Please note that rankings can depend on the number of registered authors in the respective institutions. 所以它的排名相对来说有些偏差。UCSC据说宏观做的不错，但实力肯定比不上这几家。

...
woooth 发表于 2010-3-19 07:21

欧洲自己做的排名和美国看上去不一样，一般都是因为欧洲考虑的journal多（起码30本，权重差别较小），美国考虑的journal少（一般只看top5, 或者至少把权重主要给top 5）。其实tilburg的排名长得和econphd真的差不多，而且它很厚道地把自己排得比在econphd上更低了，所以也不能说奇怪。

而且什么是top 5的期刊本身就是一个话语权问题，当欧洲是世界的中心的时候，剑桥或者维也纳的一群学者随便开个会聊个天记录下来出个书就是学术经典，影响力比今天的期刊大多了，可你能说那个时候美国人就没有做非常有价值的工作？