Hi everyone,
I haven’t been very active lately since I was on the job market in the past year. The process was quite long and arduous but I was fortunately able to land an economics assistant professor position at a top 50. I still plan to be somewhat active on this site in the coming years but we’ll see.
Back when I applied to grad school in 2009, this site was one of the top (if not the top) search result for PhD economics. But nowadays it is not even in the top 100. It seems as if Google no longer loves us and many are only finding their way here by the word of mouth. I still believe this site is a great resource but I don’t know how we can stop the steady loss of activity since we have no control over it.
There is a lot of information on here about what happens in the first few years of grad school but very little about what happens at the end of it. I think grad students do come in to grad school pretty naive. There might be a perception that the senior members on this site are somewhat harsh but the perspective they bring is mostly accurate. When you look at a grad school’s placement record, you should realize that the median placement on the placement list is closer to the top 1/3 or 1/4 of the incoming class. This is due to students dropping out or not going on the official market. Schools will often find someway to omit placements that they don’t like and it is not uncommon for departments to post only 10 placements when incoming classes average 20. Also, the two body problem (even if you don’t have it now) is very very difficult to solve. For example, no couple out of over a dozen from my department in the last few years were able to immediately solve their two body problem after grad school. In the end, almost no one is completely satisfied with their placement but most are content to be finished with grad school and live their life. People often make choices they would have probably thought to be beneath them when they were first entering grad school. I think most of the judgement of a site like EJMR comes from lower year grad students – people tend to develop a sense of empathy and understanding once they have gone through the job market cycle.
With all that being said, I would definitely still make the same choice that I did. Wishing I that I did something different would be wishing to be a different person. But nevertheless, grad school is hard and it is easy to get lost and disillusioned after the second year.
Anyways, I’m willing to do an AMA of sorts on this thread as long as answers do not require any identifying information.
Edited by mathemagician