how much does prestige matter? (in your opinion for undergrad)

<p>^ Its not just publishing by the way. Most professors did post-docs, and made friends during their PhD years. Professors also attend seminars and conference where they present papers and meet their colleagues. Its quite impossible to know who your professors knows. Also the admission committee is obviously made up of different people from diverse fields who might be familiar with the works of a diverse group of professors.</p>

<p>However this is irrelevant IMO, the best recommendation is from a professor who knows you, and can actively state your potential to be a researcher, as opposed to a big name professor who gets the PhD student/Post doc to write a letter for you and then he signs it, or who has a template that he makes changes to. But you never know who your professors might know. </p>

<p>If you are cozy with a professor, I might even advise that you take the leap and try and find out if he has friends anywhere. Of course not directly, just by sitting down and chatting with him about his research, who he works with and the conferences he attends. Could give one a good idea of your recommenders reputation though it could be a very shallow approach.</p>

<p>Sakky, I want to clear up some things that I believe are misconceptions.</p>

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<p>No, this isn’t necessarily the case. It doesn’t matter whether a renowned professor is still doing research or not when it comes to the weight of her LOR. Such a person understands MUCH better than a junior faculty what it takes to be an excellent researcher. If she knows an undergraduate well and think he/she is extremely promising, that says a lot. She is experienced. She knows what it takes to research, get published, succeed, even if that part of her life is behind her. She IS impressive to adcoms. Of course, as Sefago points out, a “name-brand” professor’s letter is useless if it doesn’t show deep familiarity with the applicant.</p>

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<p>I’m confused. Are we talking graduate or undergraduate school? The two, and their failures, are quite different. If an undergraduate fails out of CalTech, he can transfer/apply elsewhere. And the reasons that a graduate student leaves a program are quite different and varied, often having nothing to do with ability. Many students do not make the transition well because they treat graduate school as the same kind of education they have been used to. Other students find out that they aren’t as impassioned as they thought they were. Others discover that they’d rather do something else with their lives. And still others lose their advisors. These are only a few of the reasons that graduate students do not finish. Getting a PhD is a grueling process that naturally leaves some behind.</p>

<p>But standards are not “arbitrary.” Maybe you could explain what you mean by that.</p>

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<p>No, that is precisely where we disagree. Somebody such as Widnall - in the past tense - understood what it took to be an excellent researcher and knew what it took to become published, but likely does not understand and know what it takes now. Contrast that with a MIT junior faculty member who is tenaciously pursuing tenure and therefore understands - as a matter of course - what it takes to publish today. Such a person is far more impressive to adcoms simply because such a person can validate an applicant’s chances of being a successful researcher under today’s standards, not yesteryear’s. </p>

<p>Now, to reiterate, a LOR from Widnall is obviously far more impressive than one from the vast majority of others one could obtain such a letter, especially anybody who has never published anything at anytime in their lives. But the contrast I am making is between somebody who is a major name who has published before but not now, versus somebody who is actively publishing right now. {Obviously those junior faculty who have been unsuccessful in publishing would not be prime LOR writers.} </p>

<p>Also note, this is not to be taken as any endorsement whatsoever that publication/tenure standards of today are superior to those of yesteryear. Whether standards should have changed is an entirely different question, and indeed much grumbling persists about currently tenured faculty who could not publish (and hence would fail tenure review) under today’s standards, yet are allowed to vote on tenure decisions for today’s upcoming junior faculty. But, like it or not, standards change, often times drastically, and LOR’s will optimally speak to your ability to flourish under today’s standards. </p>

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<p>Regarding this topic, I’m talking about undergrad. </p>

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<p>Not easily. At least, not to anywhere decent. After all, any decent school doesn’t want to accept a transfer student who flunked out of his previous school, even if from a notoriously difficult school such as Caltech. Many schools require that transfer applicants have a bare minimum GPA to even apply - UCLA requires at least a 3.2 GPA in “transferable courses” and even the CalStates require a 2.0 - which somebody who flunked out of Caltech will not have. Those schools who don’t have a formal GPA requirement will look askance at transfer candidates who lack high GPA’s. If you don’t have that GPA, they won’t care why. All they will see is that you don’t have the GPA they desire. Sad but true. That’s why my brother and I know plenty of people who flunked out of Caltech and could find no other decent school to take them. {Granted, I suppose they could have transferred to a 4th tier school or a community college, but nevertheless, the fact that they had flunked out of their prior school is a rotten albatross around their neck.}</p>

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<p>Uh, of course they are. Publication standards are entirely arbitrary, and science has sometimes been described as merely “four people agreeing” - those three people being the three referees plus the editor. History is replete with research papers that later won numerous accolades that were rejected by journals. Rosalyn Yalow’s struggled mightily to publish her paper on insulin antigen-antibodies to the point that she began to regard editors and referees as [“dumbbells”](<a href=“http://books.google.com/books?id=k2BSOpipdpcC&pg=PA148&lpg=PA148&dq=rosalyn+yalow+rejection&source=bl&ots=lPmw6orqzl&sig=rVWjmWxUVwfKKCHCKgOG5-cfwmQ&hl=en&ei=Q8C-TayDGoGztweDws3gBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false”>http://books.google.com/books?id=k2BSOpipdpcC&pg=PA148&lpg=PA148&dq=rosalyn+yalow+rejection&source=bl&ots=lPmw6orqzl&sig=rVWjmWxUVwfKKCHCKgOG5-cfwmQ&hl=en&ei=Q8C-TayDGoGztweDws3gBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false&lt;/a&gt;). Yalow’s paper would later comprise a key pillar in meriting her granting of the Nobel Prize in Medicine - becoming the 2nd woman in history to win that prize. George Akerlof’s paper on ‘The Market for Lemons’ - which eventually won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics - took a whopping four years to publish, having been rejected by 3 journals, once for being too trivial and specific, and another time, ironically for being too general. </p>

<p>Or take the standards necessary for both admission and for graduation. I used to participate in a series of wide-ranging discussions on CC with Caltech alumni Ben Golub, and while we disagree on much, we do agree that graduation standards at Caltech have changed significantly over the past 2 generations. Caltech - for all its vaunted difficulty - is a significantly easier school to graduate from than it was in the 1950’s. The upshot is that likely many Caltech students who are successfully graduating today might not have been able to graduate if they had been students in the 50’s. </p>

<p>The upshot is that, whether we like it or not, when it comes to any human endeavor such as graduation or publication, standards will always be arbitrary. A publishing ‘standard’ is whatever the referees and editors decide that it will be. A graduation standard is whatever the school decides that it will be. No objective standard exists, and never will.</p>

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<p>The familiarity of a professor - whether a major name or not - with your work goes without saying. I am taking that as a given. Obviously somebody who doesn’t know you well, whether a major name who hasn’t published anything in years or an actively publishing junior faculty member, will not be able to provide a compelling LOR.</p>

<p>However, I would also argue that it is almost certainly easier to apprise an active junior faculty member of your work. After all, somebody of the stature of Widnall is repeatedly being summoned to Washington to consult with politicians or called for corporate board directorships or speaking engagements. Frankly, you’d probably be lucky to obtain a meeting with her more often than once every month. But an active junior researcher is likely to be in the lab/office every day. Moreover, the latter person, being an active member of the research community, probably wants to talk about cutting-edge research. He will know who was recently promoted to editor, what the latest conference and seminar presentations have found. Somebody like Widnall is no longer part of the active research community.</p>

<p>Sakky, I do respect you a great amount and feel like you are a valuable asset to the forums (in a variety of the boards i frequent), but I was wondering:</p>

<p>Have you yourself served on an admissions board? Are you a professor yourself?</p>

<p>If not, then I feel you’re delving too far into the realm of hypotheticals and ideals that may or may not be true at universities. It’s one thing to propose that a certain methodology may be employed to accept applicants, but it’s another to completely denounce someone else’s (mwfn) theory as wrong. If you can speak to being an authority in admissions matters in a variety of disciplines (you mentioned engineering and namely economics–something I feel like I’ve had valuable experience with recently this past admissions round), then thanks for the advice. Otherwise, this just sounds like you’re overextending your advice into the domain of second guessing arbitrary standards for admissions standards.</p>

<p>I’m sorry if any of that came across as rude, but it’s important to allow a lot of breathing room for readers of the forum and not pidgeonhole them into thinking there is an “ideal best” way to gain admission into graduate school. There isn’t. I definitely had an unorthodox profile, but gained admission to a number of top programs in economics and related programs. All three of my letter writers came from professors either passed their “prime” of publishing in top journals regularly or were from from non-economics departments. Even if they weren’t junior faculty pumping out pubs year after year (my strongest letter came from a professor whose most productive period came in the late 60s/early 70s), their recommendations definitely pushed my application over the top from mediocre to admit-worthy. The thing is drive, creativity, ingenuity, tenacity, etc. are all characteristics that can evolve as publishing standards evolve. Students haven’t been indoctrinated to a certain methodology this early into their career so any “outdated” habits gained from senior faculty can feasibly be remedied early in graduate school. These senior professors were great for a reason and most likely supervised other great students that would go on to be productive researchers themselves. Your discounting of their ability to pick out candidates and have those sentiments be respectable by admissions committees is almost affable. These professors still pull in weight and it’s very noticeable when I get raised eyebrows from professors at other schools when I mention who I’ve worked with in the past. Some of those professors didn’t even know that my referee was still even doing research, but said that his impression of me was something to take great note of (this one being the professor who stopped doing loads of research early in the 1970s).</p>

<p>I know my anecdote counts for just n=1, but I agree with mwfn on this point: a famous professor–even past his or her prime–will still draw weight with their letter. In my case, I only had letters from such famous professors whom I’ve done research with as an undergraduate and I’d argue those letters gained me admission, and not my fairly mediocre profile.</p>

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<p>Then allow me to ask you the following. Are you going to pose these very same questions to mwfn? Have you established that she is an authority on these very same matters that you’re demanding of me.</p>

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<p>Well, the fact of the matter is that mwfn disagree. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Yes, I think she is wrong, and she surely thinks that I am wrong. I’ve laid out my evidence to support my position, she’s laid out her evidence to support hers, and she’s welcome to lay out more if she so wishes. Isn’t the whole point of a discussion board to have a free and open debate? Are we always supposed to agree with whatever anybody else has said? I believe the value of a board is precisely to allow competing ideas to be presented and allow the readers to make their own determination about who is right. Those who find mwfn’s arguments to be more convincing than mine are obviously free to choose to believe her and disbelieve me. </p>

<p>To be clear, I respect mwfn’s points, and I hope that she (and others) will return the favor regarding my points. I accord her every opportunity to express her argument. But I also believe I have the right to express mine. </p>

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<p>Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but what I have stated is indeed how PhD admissions are determined nowadays, at least as I have seen it. Adcoms primarily want to know whether you will be successful under today’s publication clime, not yesteryear’s. Can you punch your papers into A-level venues under the refereeing/editing stipulations being enforced today, not yesteryear? </p>

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<p>I’m afraid I have to disagree once again, and I will use economics as my watchword example considering that it is a field that you know. It wasn’t that long ago when economics was not particularly mathematical - indeed being rather akin to philosophy or even qualitative literary analysis - and indeed some of the more venerable economics faculty who were trained under the old system still populate some economics departments. Heck, Hayek and Simon even won Nobel Memorial Prizes in Economics for purely qualitative pieces. But certainly over the last few decades, nobody can deny the intense quantification of the discipline, to the point that earning a PhD in economics is nowadays often times nearly indistinguishable from earning a PhD in applied mathematics or statistics, and any article from the current issue of any A-level economics journal is probably unintelligible without advanced quantitative training. You certainly can’t succeed as a PhD student or junior faculty member by writing qualitative books as Hayek or Simon did - heck, as a PhD student, you won’t even pass your qual exams. {Granted, neither Hayek or Simon held PhD’s in economics themselves.} Nor is this a deficiency that can be easily remedied. Without the proper background, and unless you’re a true autodidact, you’re not going to be able to build your quant skills quickly enough to pass your qualifying exams, or, heck, to even pass your first-year doctoral coursework. </p>

<p>The essential problem is that those long-standing faculty members who were tenured under the old regime and who are unable to publish under the current standards are simply not going to be able to speak to the level of quant skills that you need to publish and succeed in economics academia today. Frankly, those guys themselves would have never been tenured under the current system, but as tenure is irrevocable, they are allowed to linger. A LOR from one of them therefore leaves the unanswered question of whether you can succeed under the current quant standards. </p>

<p>The point I am emphasizing is that publication standards change all the time, such that many papers published in top journals even as recently as 10-20 years ago probably wouldn’t be published in top journals today. Heck, it has sometimes been said that some currently tenured faculty members wouldn’t even be placed at their own department as a junior faculty member today, let alone become tenured. The most valuable LOR comes from somebody who can speak to your ability to succeed according to the academic standards of today. </p>

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<p>Allow me to be perfectly clear: I have never once argued that a LOR from Widnall or any other name-brand but currently unpublishing faculty carries zero weight. In fact, I have stated explicitly that such a LOR clearly carries significantly more weight than somebody who has barely if ever published anything in their whole life, such as a LOR from somebody who couldn’t even land an academic position at all and hence went to industry or a junior faculty member who has been unsuccessful in publishing much of anything. </p>

<p>But what I am saying is that what is even more valuable is a LOR from somebody who is actively in the publication game (assuming that the person knows you well and can personally attest to your capabilities). The endorsement of your ability to succeed according to today’s standards is more valuable than a LOR from a name-brand prof who is inactive. </p>

<p>Of course the optimal LOR would be from somebody who both has a name-brand and is actively participating in the game - Penny Goldberg, Robert Barro, or Lawrence Katz being some prime examples. A strong LOR from them will basically admit you anywhere. </p>

<p>But my point is, if you have to choose one, you should choose familiarity with current publication standards over name. A no-name junior faculty member who is actively publishing can provide a more powerful LOR than a big-name senior guy who hasn’t published in decades and is unfamiliar with current standards. After all, as a PhD student and future young researcher, you will be expected to succeed under the publication regime as it exists today, not as it may have been decades ago. </p>

<p>But like I said, that is my opinion. People are obviously free to disagree.</p>

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<p>PhD programs are not going to do that because building a proper class is not that mathematical. It’s in part based on who you know, in part based upon who needs an RA that year, based upon the distrubution of research areas within the department…it’s not that formulaic, and admissions commitees (especially the ones in qual fields) would balk at the idea.</p>

<p>Also, it makes no sense because it introduces SO many confounds. For example, is there a cause-and-effect relationship between geographic regions and leaving the program? Probably not! The other thing is that some of these things are not going to be known before the program begins, and some of them are illegal. Women may leave more often because they are more likely to have children, but you don’t know who is going to have kids in the program, and it’s illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender either way.</p>

<p>I don’t think that grad school admissions are directly analogous to insurance.</p>

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<p>This is NOT at ALL true in my field. It would be far better to get a glowing letter of referece from a distinguished professor emeritus who hasn’t published in 10 years than it would be to get it from a second-year assistant prof who published 15 articles last year, for all the reasons MWFN listed. I’d argue it would be better from that professor emerita than it would be from a tenured associate professor who is a top publisher. Grad programs do not admit people solely on their ability to publish.</p>

<p>Also, students from LACs where the professors don’t have top publication records get into graduate school all the time, so it’s not bad to get a letter of recommendation from someone with an okay publication record if they know you well and can speak about your traits as a student. My letter writers were relatively unknown assistant and associate professors with good but not top publication records.</p>

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<p>Actually, that discussion was specific to undergraduate programs for which admissions are indeed quite formulaic, or could be.</p>

<p>But, to your point, I would say that PhD admissions could also become more quantitative as well. See below. </p>

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<p>The statistical model does not require a ‘cause-and-effect’ relationship, but rather only requires correlation. For example, as an auto insurance actuary, I don’t care why people driving red cars tend to suffer from more accidents than those driving white cars. Maybe red cars are preferentially bought by those with aggressive, risk-seeking personalities. Maybe red cars are harder for other drivers to see, and hence easier to crash into. (I’m just making these examples up, I don’t know if they’re true). The point is, I don’t know, and I don’t care. All I need to see for underwriting purposes is that, for whatever reason, red cars seem to equate to more accidents. </p>

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<p>It doesn’t matter if you don’t know them, if you can probably guess them. I return back to the example of auto insurance. Obviously nobody knows exactly who is going to have an accident. So you take those variables that are correlated with accident likelihood as predictive factors. </p>

<p>If this sounds outrageous, I would point out that this happens now. After all, why do graduate programs care about GPA, test scores, and LOR’s? That is because those factors are correlated with graduate school success. Obviously nobody knows exactly who is going to flunk out and who isn’t. But it is fairly clear that the guy with a 2.0 GPA and terrible GRE scores and LOR’s is likely to flunk out, so you probably shouldn’t admit that guy. </p>

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<p>So you use the covariates that are not illegal. For example, auto insurance companies obviously make extensive use of driving records. Yet driving records are themselves stratified by the ostensibly ‘illegal’ gender and race variables, for example, they would almost surely demonstrate that Asian females tend to be safer drivers than are white males. So insurance companies can and do cleverly avoid using race and gender variables by simply invoking driving records, which are perfectly legal to use as tools of underwriting differentiation. </p>

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<p>How so? Either way, you’re forced to make a predictive decision based on unknown factors. </p>

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<p>Then I strongly disagree with you as well, and I would ask that you actually ask around your field to determine what the true determinants of admission success are. Let’s be perfectly honest - publication and research are such dominant factors within the academic landscape that it is entirely natural for adcoms to weight it heavily. If you can’t publish, then you’re not going to be successful within academia, which means that the program has little incentive to admit you. </p>

<p>But - sidebar to the readers - the issue is not whether I disagree with mwfn or juillet. Don’t take it from me, and don’t take it from mwfn or juillet either. The readers should determine for themselves what adcoms of the PhD programs in their field truly want. Ask the those adcom officers - who are almost always faculty members - what sorts of LOR’s would be truly indicative: one from a major name but who is out of the pub game, or one from a junior faculty member who is actively publishing. My opinion is that it is not even a close call - the latter wins in a walk - but those who don’t believe me are welcome to find out for themselves. </p>

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<p>Nobody is saying that it’s “bad” to obtain such a LOR. The issue is what is the better possible LOR to obtain. Like I said, publication is such a dominant feature within the academic landscape that it behooves you to find somebody who can attest to your abilities to do so. Obviously the ideal LOR would come from somebody who is both a major name and who is active in the publication game, especially an editor of a top-flight journal. But if you can’t get that - and who really can? - the better bet is to obtain one from an active junior-level publisher.</p>

<p>But this is all obviously IMO. People are free to disagree. </p>

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<p>Nobody said that they it was the sole criteria for determining who is admitted. Surely there are thousands of factors that play.</p>

<p>The problem with the LOR argument is that there are no absolutes. A renowned professor usually publishes throughout his/her career, even if less frequently later on, but that doesn’t necessarily make him/her out of touch. The most famous researchers are those who keep an active presence through collaboration, graduate student mentoring, and research community interactions as well as publications. But even if a professor is no longer familiar with cutting-edge research in his field (unlikely, since professors read a lot of journal articles, but it happens), it doesn’t matter since the graduate adcoms are not evaluating the professor but rather the applicant. </p>

<p>Here’s another reason why there are no absolutes: some professors are known for writing universally gushing letters – every LOR they write contains hyperbole and/or the same phraseology of near-brilliance – and those letters, no matter how active those professors are, carry less weight than a carefully worded one from another, less-known professor. Once the pattern of hyperbole has been established and known in the community, there’s no going back. A letter that tries to cut back on the enthusiasm then makes the applicant sound like a loser, even if he is just as good as the others. A renowned professor who gushes may not the advantage that the student thinks he is. </p>

<p>Graduate schools are looking for promising researchers, and while eventual publications are expected, they are only the by-products of good research. A professor at the end of his career can identify a promising researcher even at the end of his career; he doesn’t have to be publishing regularly to do so, which is why, as Juillet points out, students from LACs gain admittance to graduate programs, sometimes at a high rate. An undergraduate is not expected to already be trained in cutting-edge research (although some are); that is the responsibility of the graduate program. Instead, undergraduates/BA-/BS-holders are only expected to know what research entails and to have demonstrated the qualities necessary to be trainable at the higher level graduate school requires. Now, if you were talking about the other end, graduate students looking for post-docs and other employment, then an LOR from an inactive researcher WOULD be undesirable. Hugely. </p>

<p>Each stage of academia – undergraduate, graduate, post-doc (if applicable), academic appointment, tenure, promotion – has a different set of criteria, so adding thoughts about undergraduate education to a discussion about graduate admission/success muddles the issues.</p>

<p>As for applying quantitative measures to graduate (or undergraduate) admissions, there’s a reason that the best universities/programs look more holistically at applicants. They have discovered that quantitative measures do not predict on their own the success of students. In the case of graduate programs, each looks for matches to its research program. That’s why a 3.3 undergraduate GPA is often treated the same as a 3.8 GPA. Will the 3.3 underperform compared to the 3.8? Maybe. Maybe not. The pattern of all 3.3’s or 3.8’s doesn’t matter since each case is individual. It doesn’t matter if 50% of all brunettes drop out of a graduate program since the next brunette may turn out to be a star. You’re right that graduate programs don’t care (in general) about failure because they don’t have an obligation to make sure that all their students leave with a PhD. If a student can’t or doesn’t want to continue, it’s much better for that student to move on. Graduate school has a high rate of dropouts not because a program fails its students but because graduate study requires different skills than undergraduate does. The students who struggle in a graduate program are usually those who apply an undergraduate-level approach to their studies. Being book-smart and a good student in class is no longer good enough.</p>

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<p>Perhaps this is precisely where our disagreement lies, because I would say that the opposite is true, although it hinges upon how one defines “famous”. The most famous researchers, how I define it, are actually the ones who basically stepped out of academia to greater fame in the wider world by writing popular books, news op-ed punditry, TV engagements, consulting, and other high-profile activities that have little if anything to do with academia. But by doing so, you inevitably sunder your links with academia.</p>

<p>As a case in point, Paul Krugman is one of the most ‘famous’ economists alive today. But that’s not because of his academic work, but rather because of his New York Times op-eds that have excoriated the economic policies of the Bush Administration, and because of his Nobel Memorial Prize which served as a lifetime achievement award for his prior academic work. Yet the fact is, Krugman hasn’t published any A-level papers since the 90’s and is no longer participating in cutting-edge economics research. People such as Penny Goldberg, Robert Barro, and Larry Katz are far more cognizant of what cutting edge research is, but they are clearly far less ‘famous’ than Krugman. </p>

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<p>I would actually say that that’s quite common, from a simple skills standpoint. For example, many older economics professors who won tenure via the more qualitative research that economics used to value will freely admit that they simply cannot understand much of what the latest research even says. Meaning that they cannot understand even the first paragraph. They simply do not have the mathematical talent to do it, and never will. A-level economics research in recent history has basically become indistinguishable from applied mathematics or statistics. If you never learned what a Huber-White sandwich estimator or Generalized Method of Moments is, you probably never will. </p>

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<p>And again, that’s precisely where we seem to disagree. A professor at the end of a career may well be able to identify a promising researcher * according to the prior standards of his day*. But that’s precisely the point - standards change, often times drastically. </p>

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<p>Actually, I’m afraid that does not hold, for LAC’s (or at least the top ones) offer the benefit of an excellent personalized overall undergraduate education which serves to minimize whatever LOR deficiencies students may have because the LAC professors tend to be neither prolific researchers nor famous. </p>

<p>The core question is, holding everything else constant, and given the choice of a LOR written by a famous prof who is not active in research vs. one written by a non-famous prof who is actively researching, what would you do? I would choose the latter every time. Manipulating other variables does not answer the question at hand. </p>

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<p>Sure, but the real question then is whether the more qualitative measures are more predictive of that success. Making admissions decisions based on ‘feel’ or ‘gut instinct’ may be just as unreliable as making them based on quantitative data, perhaps even more so.</p>

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<p>I would actually argue that a 50% drop out rate is a sign of failure on the part of the program. After all, this is not a game. You’re playing with people’s lives here. While obviously I don’t expect a 100% pass rate, to say that only half of the students you bring in will actually finish the program does speak to a problem: students are spending years of effort in a program of which only half will finish.</p>

<p>I am defining fame as in fame within a school. Graduate professors don’t care about popular fame. I’m talking about professors who have distinguished records within their field and are well-known for scholarship in their field. I’m a psychologist. An applicant in my field who got an excellent, personal recommendation letter from Bandura or Steele is likely going to get admitted given a good overall record. Those people aren’t publishing anymore, but they have written seminal works and begun entire fields of literature.</p>

<p>I think that economics may be a special case given the shift from qual to quant, but in my field it’s unlikely that a retired professor simply doesn’t know how to read any of the new literature in the field. Professors at the end of their careers are still in the field and their opinions are valued enormously within the field.</p>

<p>*The core question is, holding everything else constant, and given the choice of a LOR written by a famous prof who is not active in research vs. one written by a non-famous prof who is actively researching, what would you do? I would choose the latter every time. Manipulating other variables does not answer the question at hand. *</p>

<p>This is a meaningless question. The real answer is, “The one that knows me the best and can write the best personal LOR for me.” But if those professors are equal, I would go with the former every time, and in MY field, that would likely get me admitted over the one who chose a 2-year out assistant prof just because they published 10 articles last year.</p>

<p>Again, students leave for different reasons. Especially when time-to-degree is long (more than 6 years) students often decide that other endeavors - families, other careers, hobbies, whatever - are more important than graduate school. It’s a testament to the difficulty of a grad degree - 50% attrition is the average across the field. It’s great if a program has a lower attrition rate but seriously, there’s NO gain in forcing a student who doesn’t want to stick around to stay.</p>

<p>I’m really curious…are you in graduate school, or have you gone through the process yourself? Are you in academia? I’m curious because I’m in the field and have casually talked to many professors about admissions (because I’m nosy) and the things you say sound so far off the mark from what I’ve heard from within my field. My advisor is the chair of my dept and was the DGS for the first two years of my degree, too. So I have talked to professors within my field, as you’ve suggested, and I’ve also been successful in gaining admissions and outside funding.</p>

<p>I’d also like to point out that my advisor is a full professor who is still relatively active, but certainly not as active as he was in years prior. When I go to conferences and mention his name, people - within my field - are impressed and I can see the respect in their eyes. My external funding comments have been positive towards having this man, who is experienced and seminal in the field in the methods I use, on my committee as support.</p>

<p>I don’t know how much prestige matters to graduate schools. I went to Cleveland State which I believe is currently ranked 74 or 75 in the top 100 nation’s best universities according to U.S. News and World Report.</p>

<p>It has some prestige but certainly not as much as say Ohio State, Florida, Miami, North Carolina, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, etc.</p>

<p>However, my portfolio has the attention of top graduate journalism schools. Southern California, North Carolina, and Miami all want me. Unfortunately, finances are holding me back at the moment.</p>

<p>I am not saying prestige doesn’t matter. It may very well matter. I am merely saying that there are other factors to consider.</p>