Getting a PhD in Economics

2 :Applying to Ph.D. Programs: It's Both What You Know and Who You Know

C h a p t e r 2 Applying to Ph.D. Programs: It’s BothWhatYou Know andWhoYou Know So you’ve done the requisite amount of navel gazing and decided that you do indeed want to apply to Ph.D. programs in economics . The process seems straightforward: write a one-page statement about your favorite subject (yourself), ask a few professors for letters of reference, and glue your bottom to a chair for a couple of hours to take the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE). Aside from parting with your hard-earned money for the application fees, the process doesn’t seem too painful. And it isn’t painful. It is also not as straightforward as it seems. Sure, the mechanics of the process are clear—just as, say, the mechanics of running a marathon are clear: just put one foot ahead of the other, then repeat for the next 26.2 miles. But would you expect to finish the race if you decided to do nothing else but just show up on the day of the marathon? If you wanted to run a marathon, you would have needed to train for a couple of months, figured out when to drink Gatorade and when to stop at the Porta-Potty, and found out which running gear worked for you so you don’t get blisters in unpleasant places. Similarly, to complete a successful application, you need to be prepared . You can’t just cough up an essay overnight and lie in your Applying to Ph.D. Programs 15 hammock waiting for those acceptances to roll in. You need to have thought hard about what the graduate programs want, and figured out the best way to present yourself to them before you sit down to fill out those applications. You don’t have to be obsessive or Machiavellian about it, but you do need to be smart and pragmatic. Inside the Head of the Graduate Admissions Director Now the last place we want to be is inside the head of the admissions director, but in the interest of pedagogy, let’s take a short field trip. The admissions director is likely some tenured professor who has volunteered for this job because he has been promised lots of goodies (e.g., less teaching, a promotion) if he agrees to do so. He may also vaguely care about the kinds of students who are populating his department. Perhaps he thinks the current students are too narrow or too unprepared or not suited to his own research interests; he can now have the fairly expansive and often unchecked power of deciding who gets in the door. The modern admissions director sometimes has others assisting him. These assistants are other professors who have volunteered to be on the admissions committee, and are delegated to read the files and give them some kind of numerical score. These people also vaguely care about finding the kinds of students with whom they would like to work (or, equivalently, who might be good research assistants for them). There may also be other faculty members who, because they are either hapless or inexplicably conscientious, have volunteered to be screeners; they go through the files at a maniacal pace and do the quick first cut of the files. The admissions director has to manage his own preferences, the department’s stated objectives (“get better macro students!”), other faculty’s preferences (especially those of the powerful faculty), and perhaps his relationship with his colleagues in other departments at other universities. At the same time, he has a limited number of departmental fellowships and university fellowships which he had to wrest away from the Dean. He may also be interested in (or be 16 Chapter 2 forced to be interested in) issues of ethnic, gender, and other kinds of diversity. So you see, this is one conflicted person. But enough about his mental health. The purpose of this tour was to show you how politically complicated the admissions process can be, and that it is not simply a matter of “merit” and hoping that people will see past your bad grade in linear algebra and clearly see the real you. On the other hand, I do not want to be deeply cynical and tell you that it is about who you know as opposed to what you know; being very good does help, being very prepared helps as well, and really wanting to and being willing to make the commitment to be a...