Something doesn’t make a lot of sense. Sure, Yale did lose CU/DK/NQ to NU, but have those guys actually produced good students over there? We need to look elsewhere to understand why their applied placements are lackluster.
What's going on at Yale?
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Honestly avoid Yale at all cost if you have offer like Berkely/Princeton/NU/NYU. Really not the best place to do PhD right now. If you're 100% sure to do theory, just for working with DB/PS/MH etc Yale might still be worth considering, but again Princeton/NU/NYU, especially NU, is still better
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Earlier in this thread some people discussed the problems at the Growth Center. They are devastating for the department. The Yale development group attracted some of the best students, and was an alternative to the super-structural approach people in this thread dislike.
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These problems filter through the rest of the department. RP, for example, led grad admissions this year
Earlier in this thread some people discussed the problems at the Growth Center. They are devastating for the department. The Yale development group attracted some of the best students, and was an alternative to the super-structural approach people in this thread dislike.
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I hope Yale doubles down in their structural theory approach. It's the right way to many people and a viable differentiation strategy in a hellscape of low IQ regmonkeys who should be in sociology making 60k.
Unfortunately most junior faculty recruiting committees do not share the same view
Only LRM sway to the latest fads. Accepting your reasoning, macro at harvard and MIT should have gone full on Minnesota r'tard in the 80s and 90s. They did not and came out winning
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Yalie here. Until very recently, faculty had old-fashioned views about how students should approach research during their PhD: that your JMP matters above all else, it should be solo authored, and it's a good thing to take many years to gain in depth understanding of a topic, even if it means fewer papers. Nowadays the market seems to value paper quantity more and penalize coauthorship less. This is probably the biggest reason for weak placements in recent years. The good news is the faculty seem to have adapted the advice they give students in light of placement outcomes.
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That doesn't sound like good news to me. The views you call old fashioned are wise. I agree that demand has changed to favour shallow but prolific research done by teams. That doesn't mean that research training at elite institutions should adjust in response. The objective is not to obtain good placements, it is to produce good researchers. These two things do not always perfectly align.
Yalie here. Until very recently, faculty had old-fashioned views about how students should approach research during their PhD: that your JMP matters above all else, it should be solo authored, and it's a good thing to take many years to gain in depth understanding of a topic, even if it means fewer papers. Nowadays the market seems to value paper quantity more and penalize coauthorship less. This is probably the biggest reason for weak placements in recent years. The good news is the faculty seem to have adapted the advice they give students in light of placement outcomes.
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You need to consider the impact on quality of incoming grad student cohorts if placements tank. How can you do good research if people don’t wanna come to New Haven? Placements was one of the few things Yale had going for it.
That doesn't sound like good news to me. The views you call old fashioned are wise. I agree that demand has changed to favour shallow but prolific research done by teams. That doesn't mean that research training at elite institutions should adjust in response. The objective is not to obtain good placements, it is to produce good researchers. These two things do not always perfectly align.
Yalie here. Until very recently, faculty had old-fashioned views about how students should approach research during their PhD: that your JMP matters above all else, it should be solo authored, and it's a good thing to take many years to gain in depth understanding of a topic, even if it means fewer papers. Nowadays the market seems to value paper quantity more and penalize coauthorship less. This is probably the biggest reason for weak placements in recent years. The good news is the faculty seem to have adapted the advice they give students in light of placement outcomes.
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That doesn't sound like good news to me. The views you call old fashioned are wise. I agree that demand has changed to favour shallow but prolific research done by teams. That doesn't mean that research training at elite institutions should adjust in response. The objective is not to obtain good placements, it is to produce good researchers. These two things do not always perfectly align.
Yalie here. Until very recently, faculty had old-fashioned views about how students should approach research during their PhD: that your JMP matters above all else, it should be solo authored, and it's a good thing to take many years to gain in depth understanding of a topic, even if it means fewer papers. Nowadays the market seems to value paper quantity more and penalize coauthorship less. This is probably the biggest reason for weak placements in recent years. The good news is the faculty seem to have adapted the advice they give students in light of placement outcomes.
This. Sociologists please sod off to Berkeley or Michigan or whatever. The 'quality' of income grad students doesn't matter when they all do rtarded DiD or RCT.
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Another factor that might be at play is the mental health of students. I know that academia is never the best place in terms of mental health, but my impression is that Yale is doing worse than its peers in that regard. There were a few suic1de cases in the last few years (not in the econ department though). And as you can read in the NYT and WaPo the university doesn't have a great reputation in taking care of its students with mental health issues.
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No way NYU is better. Their macro and theory are collapsing in front of our eyes.
Honestly avoid Yale at all cost if you have offer like Berkely/Princeton/NU/NYU. Really not the best place to do PhD right now. If you're 100% sure to do theory, just for working with DB/PS/MH etc Yale might still be worth considering, but again Princeton/NU/NYU, especially NU, is still better