I am one of you guys, was very passionate about research and had planned to be an academic for my whole life. I did math in college in my home country but like many of you knew no big name to write me a recommendation to get to a HRM. I heard from people around me that what you end up doing in your PhD is more important than where you do it. So I went to LRM following this misguided advice and here I am two years out of grad school, AP in a VLRM school, with a horror story about my tenure track experience. I had an extremely bad placement and bad experience with publishing which overall is worse than average. However, I had not been in such a rot, had I known about this forum and realities when I was applying. So I write this here to hopefully help someone out.
1) Read this thread to see how faculty and students from US/Europe are really thinking about you when you go to LRM. https://www.econjobrumors.com/topic/the-real-problem-with-lrm-grad-schools
There are some great points made there about the LRM culture.
2) I assume you are like me ambitious and passionate about research and your goal is publishing and collaborating with the same people like you. So your main motivation from coming to US is not getting a green card and you are not going to feel fulfilled if you end up isolated in a little college teaching dumb undergrads and getting no where in hitting good journals.
3) Economics is very hierarchical. So it matters a lot which department you graduate. Only HRM graduates get exposed to top people to build networks for collaboration and eventually get to hit those journals and get a shot to have a contribution. This is not to say HRM graduates have it all easy, it merely, says they have a shot that you don't.
4) Evenif you decide to go non-academic, you will again get ignored because of your lack of shiny pedigree. It is very hard to get a google, amazon type job or a wall street job.
5) Again, read that thread in 1. In LRMs most of the faculty are bitter and think of you as losers who couldn't make it to HRM so they have no incentive to train you properly or help you make it. In fact, many of them not themselves as good as top people either. So it can very well happen that the only good person around is a theory guy but, hey, there is no market for theory for people from LRM.
6) So please don't go to LRM for econ or finance PhD. If you are serious about doing PhD and can't get to HRM, change your major and go to CS or Applied Math. A number of places with LRM econ programs have solid CS and Applied Math programs. You will most probably not get academic jobs out of them but you have far more and better options with CS PhD and wall street respects your Math and CS PhD more than Econ/Finance PhD. You can do cool things with a CS PhD in a tech firm which is more satisfying than fighting tenure clock in a college.
To ambitious international students from developing countries: Don't go to LRMs
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If you place at a VLRM or below, the deadwood could be outright hostile to active (let alone passionate) researchers and want them gone by tenure decision.
Be prepared for nastiness of any kind. These people would stop at no low to get you to want to leave. If you don't, at the very least they want to decrease your productivity and use it as a chip to deny you tenure. If you somehow lose your cool (which they will provoke you to do time and time again), you'll be called a bad department citizen.
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Tbh I don't mind getting a VVLRM tenure position in the US as an international student, as I do not want to live in my terrible country. I guess I am not that ambitious that way but just want to live a good life. I cannot even drink alcohol in my home country and cannot go out because of the overpopulation and pollution.
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So what is the alternative if I am not good enough to get into HRM? Staying in India? No thanks, I'll take my chance and try get an LRM industry job. I'll take fisheries over India any day of the week.
https://econ.washington.edu/job-placement
I am one of you guys, was very passionate about research and had planned to be an academic for my whole life. I did math in college in my home country but like many of you knew no big name to write me a recommendation to get to a HRM. I heard from people around me that what you end up doing in your PhD is more important than where you do it. So I went to LRM following this misguided advice and here I am two years out of grad school, AP in a VLRM school, with a horror story about my tenure track experience. I had an extremely bad placement and bad experience with publishing which overall is worse than average. However, I had not been in such a rot, had I known about this forum and realities when I was applying. So I write this here to hopefully help someone out.
1) Read this thread to see how faculty and students from US/Europe are really thinking about you when you go to LRM. https://www.econjobrumors.com/topic/the-real-problem-with-lrm-grad-schools
There are some great points made there about the LRM culture.
2) I assume you are like me ambitious and passionate about research and your goal is publishing and collaborating with the same people like you. So your main motivation from coming to US is not getting a green card and you are not going to feel fulfilled if you end up isolated in a little college teaching dumb undergrads and getting no where in hitting good journals.
3) Economics is very hierarchical. So it matters a lot which department you graduate. Only HRM graduates get exposed to top people to build networks for collaboration and eventually get to hit those journals and get a shot to have a contribution. This is not to say HRM graduates have it all easy, it merely, says they have a shot that you don't.
4) Evenif you decide to go non-academic, you will again get ignored because of your lack of shiny pedigree. It is very hard to get a google, amazon type job or a wall street job.
5) Again, read that thread in 1. In LRMs most of the faculty are bitter and think of you as losers who couldn't make it to HRM so they have no incentive to train you properly or help you make it. In fact, many of them not themselves as good as top people either. So it can very well happen that the only good person around is a theory guy but, hey, there is no market for theory for people from LRM.
6) So please don't go to LRM for econ or finance PhD. If you are serious about doing PhD and can't get to HRM, change your major and go to CS or Applied Math. A number of places with LRM econ programs have solid CS and Applied Math programs. You will most probably not get academic jobs out of them but you have far more and better options with CS PhD and wall street respects your Math and CS PhD more than Econ/Finance PhD. You can do cool things with a CS PhD in a tech firm which is more satisfying than fighting tenure clock in a college. -
So what is the alternative if I am not good enough to get into HRM? Staying in India? No thanks, I'll take my chance and try get an LRM industry job. I'll take fisheries over India any day of the week.
https://econ.washington.edu/job-placementI am one of you guys, was very passionate about research and had planned to be an academic for my whole life. I did math in college in my home country but like many of you knew no big name to write me a recommendation to get to a HRM. I heard from people around me that what you end up doing in your PhD is more important than where you do it. So I went to LRM following this misguided advice and here I am two years out of grad school, AP in a VLRM school, with a horror story about my tenure track experience. I had an extremely bad placement and bad experience with publishing which overall is worse than average. However, I had not been in such a rot, had I known about this forum and realities when I was applying. So I write this here to hopefully help someone out.
1) Read this thread to see how faculty and students from US/Europe are really thinking about you when you go to LRM. https://www.econjobrumors.com/topic/the-real-problem-with-lrm-grad-schools
There are some great points made there about the LRM culture.
2) I assume you are like me ambitious and passionate about research and your goal is publishing and collaborating with the same people like you. So your main motivation from coming to US is not getting a green card and you are not going to feel fulfilled if you end up isolated in a little college teaching dumb undergrads and getting no where in hitting good journals.
3) Economics is very hierarchical. So it matters a lot which department you graduate. Only HRM graduates get exposed to top people to build networks for collaboration and eventually get to hit those journals and get a shot to have a contribution. This is not to say HRM graduates have it all easy, it merely, says they have a shot that you don't.
4) Evenif you decide to go non-academic, you will again get ignored because of your lack of shiny pedigree. It is very hard to get a google, amazon type job or a wall street job.
5) Again, read that thread in 1. In LRMs most of the faculty are bitter and think of you as losers who couldn't make it to HRM so they have no incentive to train you properly or help you make it. In fact, many of them not themselves as good as top people either. So it can very well happen that the only good person around is a theory guy but, hey, there is no market for theory for people from LRM.
6) So please don't go to LRM for econ or finance PhD. If you are serious about doing PhD and can't get to HRM, change your major and go to CS or Applied Math. A number of places with LRM econ programs have solid CS and Applied Math programs. You will most probably not get academic jobs out of them but you have far more and better options with CS PhD and wall street respects your Math and CS PhD more than Econ/Finance PhD. You can do cool things with a CS PhD in a tech firm which is more satisfying than fighting tenure clock in a college.
Tbh I don't mind getting a VVLRM tenure position in the US as an international student, as I do not want to live in my terrible country. I guess I am not that ambitious that way but just want to live a good life. I cannot even drink alcohol in my home country and cannot go out because of the overpopulation and pollution.
If this is what you want, it's OK. You are not ambitious and there is nothing wrong with it. But there a fair number of really ambitious people from developing countries that won't feel happy with vlrm job.
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It's not HRM, MRM or LRM that counts, but the determination of the student. The hero of LRM, Agostinelli, will form good networks.
Congrats to him but he is European. We are talking about non European students
But is there really a difference?
Yes, there is. Again, congrats to him and any LRM that lands a good job because they really deserve it. However, the attitudes towards Europeans are different. They are not regarded as coming after green card from a s**t hole so they are treated better and the same LRM faculty pay more attention to them. A lot of these faculty are from US/Europe so they know where they come from whereas they have a stereotypical view of developing world students running from s**tty homes.