cabro57 wrote:
robbie: I think you summed it up pretty well. UT Austin as a whole has a very solid reputation, perhaps more so than Florida. However when you're on the job market it will mostly be about 1) your paper, and 2) where you get invited, which follows from who your dissertation chair is. Thus if you are sure you want to work on IPOs (I assume you're talking about Jay Ritter), he's the guy for sure. On the other hand if you're not sure about that UT Austin might have a deeper field of faculty members to choose from. Good luck with your decision.
Thank you, Cabro. Yes, I'm talking about Jay Ritter, I have met him in my country and he said he had very high praise for me. I would like to work on empirical asset pricing and on behavioral finance (of course, I might focus on behavioral finance applications to IPOs), and he has published papers on both topics. However, if I look at placements on UFlorida website, none of his previous students has obtained a placement at very top schools. UT @ Austin's students placements seems slightly better - but UT reputation has significantly improved in the last years, and its faculty roster is going to increase by more than 50%. Thus, I guess students' placement quality will dramatically increase over time.
However, I'm starting to doubt that publications on top journals are a good way to rank schools. Talking about finance, UT is in the top ten, better than Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and Northwestern and with a number of articles on top journals similar to MIT's one. However, placements are very different. Looking at faculty profiles I realized that almost all assistant professors at Universities as Stanford, Northwestern, MIT, Michigan, Harvard, Chicago, Wharton have received their Phd's from such set of schools.
In sum, let's suppose my goal (or my dream, I know it is very difficult) is to get a job at an ultra-elite school (e.g. Wharton). Let's also suppose (or dream) I will manage to publish a very good paper. Since I failed to enter very top schools (I'm still waiting for Harvard letter, but I concluded that without either a reccomendation from faculty - or from an important professor - or without a significant research experience you will never enter a ultra-elite school), should I conclude I will never get such job because my school (Florida or UT) has not enough reputation? It this case, I conclude my only chance would be to go at UT and hope the placements will improve because of increasing reputation.
It would be frustrating to know I have no chances in getting a top placement before starting my Phd.