Why Can't Penn Place its students into MIT/ Chicago's Economics PhD Program?

College Search & Lists
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<p>The PhD program in economics (especially MIT, Chicago, Harvard, Princeton, Berkeley) is one of the hardest to get into PhD programs. The salary for faculty position is high, the job market outlook for both academic and industry is good for top school graduates.</p>

<p>I have posted placement data on Professional schools (Wall Street Journal ranking), placement into Yale Law School, placement into top physics programs such as CalTech and Harvard, and PhD productivity info on different thread.</p>

<p>I am criticised for bashing Penn. Here I am bashing again. Penn is noted for Wharton and the economics. Wharton plus economics is almost half of Harvard or Stanford undergraduate population, nearly the size of MIT, Chicago, Columbia, Duke, Dartmouth and Brown. Yet very few Penn students are able to get PhD in economics from top schools such as Chicago, MIT, Harvard, Princeton or Berkeley.</p>

<p>Here is the data based on the most recent PhD graduates from MIT, Chicago, Princeton and Berkeley. Once again, I don’t see any Penn representation here.</p>

<p>Sorry, I may be biased against Penn. I don’t see why MIT, Chicago, Princeton, Berkeley, Harvard, Yale, and CalTech are all biased against Penn at the same time. The odds is small.</p>

<p>Rank of colleges based on how many students get their PhD degree from the following PHD programs in the past couple of years: MIT, Chicago, Princeton, and Berkeley.</p>

<p>Rank College Number recent PhDs from MIT<em>Chicago</em>Princeton_Berkeley
1 Chicago 7
1 MIT 7
3 Harvard 5
4 Stanford 4
4 Michigan 4
6 Yale 3
9 Princeton 2
9 Columbia 2
9 Dartmouth 2
9 Swarthmore 2
9 Berkeley 2
9 Northwestern 2
12 Duke 1
13 Grinell 1
14 UNC 1
15 Union 1
16 Arionana 1
17 Mount Holyoke 1
18 Maryland 1
19 BYU 1
20 Brown 1
21 Carlton 1
22 Oberline 1
23 Texas 1
24 SMU 1
25 Minnesota 1</p>

<p>Penn 0</p>

<p>As you could see, not many colleges are represtented here. It is a very competitive field. I see the similar pattern as I saw in professional school placement, PhD productivity data: </p>

<p>HYP, Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown and Duke are all represented, along with Berkeley and Michigan, but not Penn. I spied the similar pattern in physics, math, computer science, political science, and other subjets.</p>

<p>Sorry, Penn.</p>

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<p>because Penn sucks, isn’t it obvious?</p>

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<p>What’s “recent”? Seems like you have not gone far enough back for any statistical significance since the most common frequency is 1.</p>

<p>One of my friends is doing Econ at UChicago. Starting this semester. I guess he’s in a rather small crowd, though I know of at least one more student who graduated 09 at Brown who ended up at UChicago econ.</p>

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<p>I am talking about the students who just get their PhDs, not the students who are in the PhD programs. I don’t doubt there are penn students are Chicago, MIT or Harvard. If there were, why can;t they complete their PhDs. Maybe Harvard, Chicago, and MIT are too hard for penn students.</p>

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Keep up the good work, buddy.</p>

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<p>because you touch yourself at night.</p>

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<p>So basically, you looked at one year of completed PhDs and said Penn students can’t finish their PhDs?</p>

<p>There are ■■■■■■, then there is Y7. This has gotten so bad I’m now convinced he actually believes what he is saying and thinks he is doing some kind of service.</p>

<p>Bravo, internet hero.</p>

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<p>I got into Penn as an undergrad, with a full ride. I chose SUNY Oswego, though because Penn just wasn’t good enough for me. Later, I was offered Wharton for my MBA, but I chose Florida because the student body of Penn really were a bunch of losers with no future.</p>

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<p>is it wrong that the only reason I go on CC now is to read another Y7 thread?</p>

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<p>Penn is a decent school, but not top 10. There is a strong battle to fight for being top 10. There are HYPSMCCCDB ahead of Penn based on more objective data. </p>

<p>I am not against Penn. </p>

<p>Does Penn grads have anything to do with the financial crisis we are in given the fact so many Penn kids went to Wall Street? </p>

<p>How much negative added value is created?</p>

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<p>I could show probably 5-10 metrics which demonstrate Penn is “better” than Brown. Do I think it’s true? Not in any comprehensive sense, but your so-called objective data can be hand-picked in many ways.</p>

<p>I would never have gone to Penn, and for me, Brown is and was superior in every dimension that mattered to me. However, on the whole “objective data” stand point, I imagine I’d be able to make the case for Penn far easier than I could for Brown (due to the strength of its graduate programs and professional programs which, in a comprehensive sense, Brown cannot and doesn’t wish to compete with).</p>

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<p>Saying that a school’s graduates are overly powerful and helped cause the financial crisis doesn’t help your case that the school in question isn’t a top school. Also, I’m sure just and many if not more investment bankers come from HYP than from Penn.</p>

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<p>okay Y7, I’m a little confused about your data. Just to check a little bit I went to the Princeton website. There were 23 people listed as receiving PhDs in economics in 2009 from Princeton. Here is where they got their undergraduate degrees:</p>

<p>3 Bocconi University-Milan
3 Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janiero
2 ITAM (Mexico)</p>

<p>Cambridge
Oxford
University of Aarhus
University of Bonn
Budapest University of Economics
Columbia
Ecole Polytechnique
University of Tokyo
IIT
Universidad de la Republica
University of Chicago
Presidency College Kolkata
Stanford
Harvard
University of Chicago</p>

<p>While obviously Penn is not on this list, neither is MIT, Yale, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Northwestern, Berkeley or a myriad of other schools. In fact, looking at this list, one might conclude that Bocconi University and Pontifical Catholic University are the top schools in the world.</p>

<p>Such small samples say very little about the strength of Penn undergrad offerings. In addition, since we have no idea how many Penn grads applied to any of these programs, none of your data can be placed in any type of context. Indeed, my suspicion is that most Penn economics majors apply to business or law schools, rather than trying to get a PhD in economics.</p>

<p>I am not claiming that Penn deserves a specific ranking in US News. However, it is an excellent school and your constant bashing makes you, rather than Penn, look bad.</p>

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<p>Well, yeah, if your sole measure of “success” is getting into certain PhD programs. People with lives are aware that there is actually more to a college than placement in certain PhD programs.</p>

<p>And who with a life thinks that it’s a “battle” for the top 10?</p>

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<p>Well, if you look at Penn’s 2008 career survey Penn places students into Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, Caltech, MIT, and Yale PhD programs. However, among econ majors, none went to grad school, but tons went to law school and some got MDs.<br>
[Career</a> Services, University of Pennsylvania](<a href=“http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/college/careersurveys.html]Career”>http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/college/careersurveys.html)</p>

<p>Keep in mind, only 67.5% of students responded to the survey, and most of the people not filling out the survey are the ones going to grad school, not the ones getting jobs. </p>

<p>If you look at SEAS career survey, [Career</a> Services, University of Pennsylvania](<a href=“http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/seas/surveys.html]Career”>http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/seas/surveys.html), only 18 students reported seeking a PhD. Among the PhD schools, you have Northwestern med, Michigan Ross, Princeton, UCSD for BME, Caltech, Columbia, MIT, Stanford, and Cornell.</p>

<p>Among the 23 Wharton students to go to grad school, [Career</a> Services, University of Pennsylvania](<a href=“http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/wharton/surveys.html]Career”>http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/wharton/surveys.html), you have students going to Harvard, Stanford, and Michigan Ross, LSE, and Oxford.</p>

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<p>Let’s cut to the chase here.
If Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janiero is so good, then why can’t the Pont place more students into Penn’s famous Linguistics Ph.D. program?</p>

<p>It’s got to be the most overrated, under-performing of all the pontificals.</p>

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<p>If you are curious and really want to know, why don’t you check Penn’s placement in Harvard econ PhD or Stanford PhD program. I am sure that the result looks bad on Penn. Any number coming out from me will make Penn look bad. </p>

<p>Please do it yourself.</p>

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<p>Let’s be more fair in assessing any of these numbers. Step One was already done for us by Vanderbilt (<a href=“http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Econ/wparchive/workpaper/vu06-w11.pdf[/url]”>http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Econ/wparchive/workpaper/vu06-w11.pdf&lt;/a&gt;) which found the following schools to be the top schools (when normalized by number of undergraduate degrees offered) for producing eventual Econ Ph.D.s. from 1997-2003:</p>

<p>School #Eventual Ph.D. #Of UndergradDegrees ColumnB/ColumnA</p>

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<p>Number of PhDs in Econ Generated from 1997-2003

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<p>Now, we’d have to look at top 10 or so programs and combine that data with the above to get anything like a fair comparison of what schools are more likely to send students to top PhD programs. Even then, we’re not looking at pure quality of program issue, we’ve got a few things entangled. 1) Whether a school attracts students who would be interested in graduate school or leads students to be more interested in graduate school 2) Whether students in that program are prepared for top econ programs 3) Whether top grad econ programs are a fair way to measure success in educating those interested in econ.</p>

<p>Another complication is the tendency for math majors and applied math majors to be the students who enter econ graduate school, not econ students. So if we were to “fix” these normalized numbers based on Econ + Math/Applied Math concentrators, we may see different results. Anyone want to mess with IPEDS to figure this out, or have I sufficiently muddled the issue for future readers of Y7’s stupid posts?</p>

<p>Edit: I should have read further. The Vanderbilt study did break down by size of Econ program:</p>

<h1>Ph.D.s Generated 1997-2003; # Economics Degrees; Ph.D.s per econ degree</h1>

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<p>^Could you send links of where you got the MIT and UChicago numbers? Could you also send links where you got the Harvard numbers?</p>

<p>For econ, I already said, according to the career placement survey, no one from Penn econ went directly into any PhD econ program. If we saw Penn students in low ranked econ PhD programs then that would mean that they are unable to get into top programs. However, because there are none, one can assume that it is rarer for a Penn student to pursue graduate study in economics. Even if you go back a few years in the survey, you see Penn econ grads going into med school and law school, but not graduate school. If there aren’t many applicants, there won’t be many acceptances, and there won’t be many Penn students finishing.</p>

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<p>Venkat-- I think that’s exactly what the data in my post shows. UPenn, alongside some other favorites of Y7, are not necessarily big producers of econ PhD students.</p>