bump
Stanford vs MIT for applied theory
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Op here: will choose mit. General risk aversion and particularly the non-trivial chance I swap to more empirical work are persuasive. Thanks for everyone’s input.
About applied theory: I still mean theory, but akbarpour type of theory (motivated the an actual economic problem) and not folk theorems about repeated games, or similar.
I know that is, per the very useful logic of posters above, a reason to pick Stanford over mit, but the other reasons have dominated.I think it was the wrong decision OP. Stanford is literally the best university on earth for applied theory (of all types, mech design, behavioral, pol econ etc.), and it seemed like you had a perfect match with Akbarpour, Niederle, Bernheim etc. Match with advisors who think like you do and work in the same niches as you is a massive advantage.
I agree that you should hedge against the risk of not doing theory, but the gap between Stanford and MIT empirics is not that large to justify going to the weaker program in your main field. Besides, Stanford has the better applied theory group than MIT (if you're going to do empirics at least do some theoretically motivated empirics -- makes no sense to give up your advantage in theory completely to do regmonkey work). Better to bank on your primary field; being too strategic and doing boring or derivative work even in a "hot" and high demand field will get you nowhere.I strongly agree. I think candidates are too strategic and trying to be too clever these days. The only chance of succeeding in the market is to go into the field you're passionate about and do interesting work. Stanford or MIT will both guarantee you a good non-academia job anyway.
I agree. Being risk averse doesn't make sense when you are gunning for a very right tail outcome (academic placement). Better to go for broke in your primary interest than to try to "play it safe".