Fall 2007 - Good news, bad news

Hi, glad to hear you enjoy wharton, and you must have a very successful life there.

I am also waiting for the decision of hbs ob & soc joint program. Is that the program you are applying? How can I get to know the informal result too? Any clue is greatly appreciated.

i did apply to the ob program at hbs. they didn't tell me the formal result, but they told me that "at this stage, all finalists have already been interviewed, and offers where made to a subset of those"
i inferred that if i wasn't interviewed i won't be there
i got this email in response to an email i sent to them saying that i'll be in boston next week and wish to visit the school if it is relevant for me...

any news from Maryland finance/???
they r slow

Ding from Michigan, Ross, Phd Finance. I've written an e-mail to a professor, who said I'm not in the shortlist.

Yesterday (3/20) the coordinator at IU asked me if an offer from Kelley would have been competitive relative to other ones. I answered that I have some other offers that better fits to my needs.

me too, not on UMichigan's short list.

Robbie: where r u going then?

Re-reading the Michigan's prof. e-mail he said: while we found your file compelling, you are not CURRENTLY on our shortlist for admission. If you have another offer, you might want to take it.

Does this mean I am waitlisted or it is a polite way to tell "guy, you suck and you're out!"?

However, I don't know: UT or Florida? I am still waiting from HBS and MIT (but I think it is too late to have good news).I am going to visit U of Florida next week... then I will make a decision. I am a little worried about placements in both cases... I fell UT's department has a better research ranking, but my advisor at U.FL would be a very important professor (I think the best one concerning studies on IPO).

this is my email from Umichigan:
Your application file is very impressive but, as you know, the
competition is insanely harsh. Right now we are still considering your
file, but there are several other candidates that we are pursuing and
you are not currently on our "short list." If you have to make
decisions about other programs, you should feel free to take an offer
from another school.


hehe, I don't give any hope to it any longer~

btw: UT-Austin is better than UFL, isn't it?
More moeny, better reputation....

fishbowl/robbie: You must have some (perhaps small) number of people ahead of you on the waitlist. Since they are dealing with such small numbers, there is huge variation in who will get in off the waitlist. The thing that is very hard to predict is who from the waitlist will preemptively commit to another offer. Your letter sounds like if enough do so, you could get in, but they don't see it as likely.

I got the same email from Michigan. I have been accepted to three programs, but am still waiting to hear from Maryland. I am assuming Michigan is a no, but maybe miracles happen. If I don't get into Maryland or Michigan at least I have somewhere to go. Good luck to everyeone else.

herb: which schools have u got into?Are they better than Maryland~

Received a ding letter by postal service... date: 03/16. I enquiried them AFTER that date. I don't find them polite, I find them PATHETIC.

i guess mine is on the way

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.

The problem with UT and rankings (and to some extent with Florida, Ohio State, UIUC, Indiana, Penn State.. in other words the largest state schools) is that they are sometimes size-adjusted, but not always. This means that in some studies the smaller programs/schools are at a disadvantage to huge schools like UT-Austin. The other problem with those studies is that some faculty members are hugely productive, so if you work with those guys that's great, but if you don't, or if they leave to some other place (as has happened in the past few years with Rochester and accounting), then the ranking doesn't mean much for you.

As a related side note, you should be wary when comparing two schools' placement profile. The only thing that's true about placement is what you said about the very top schools: most assistant professors who get a job at Stanford or Wharton come from Chicago, Stanford, Wharton.. however when you get down the list and get to Duke, UNC, UT-Austin, Carnegie Mellon, Rochester.. the placement profile can be misleading, especially for very large schools such as UT-Austin. You could land a job "better" or "worse" than your school average easily. As I get closer to being on the job market myself (I'm still miles away), I'm starting to think this is an incredibly complicated market because very limited supply meets very limited demand. My view is that this is definitely a harder market to understand than PhD admissions; I don't think that this is because I have experience with the latter and not the former.

Hope this makes sense. I guess my main point is that you can care about placement later. Although it should be some part of your evaluation of potential schools to go to, it shouldn't be as important as the choice of your advisor, and some other not-so-tangible elements, such as the "type" of coursework that fits you best (many theory courses with few seminars, or thousands of papers to read and few theory courses).

Add-on to yesterday's comments about placement: top schools want someone who has research potential; a well-known (and respected) advisor and a good job market paper are proxies for research potential. However they are likely not independent: I think (disclaimer: my two cents only) many faculty members would view them as substitutes, with some kind of minimum threshold for the paper's quality.

In other words, if you have an unknown dissertation advisor, you need an incredible paper to stand a chance at landing a job at a top school. If you have a fairly well-known advisor, then you still need a very good paper, but you stand a higher chance at getting an interview. If you have an all-star advisor, you may just need a "good" paper. Of course, whether landing a job at a top school is welfare-maximizing for a job market candidate is an entirely different story.

Maryland would be my top choice if I get in. I saw on the grad cafe that someone was accepted today by email to the finance program. If I don't hear anything today then I'm probably a no, but maybe I'll make the waitlist.