I was thinking whether I would have made the exact same choices during my PhD applications if I had known more about the programmes. The websites, brochures and ranking lists give you a vague picture of what these programmes are offering. However you definitely need more information while you are making one of the most important choices of your life.
I realized that every single economics Phd programme in the European continent claim that they are "one of the best". In the absence of a universally accepted rankings list, some of these universities and research institutions sponsor their own lists which is far from being reliable. As you probably know already, ranking of a PhD programme is quite sensitive to the criteria that is chosen.
Even more importantly, we do not have a resource that reports attrition rates and placement records of the European programmes. Obviously some European PhD programmes such as UvT (Tilburg) benefit from these information assymetries. They think that they can attract high tier applicants by exploiting these asymmetries whenever they can. In plain words, they blatantly lie. I learned that some of these institutions (I mean UvT) lie quite easily since they believe that they can get away with lies and false promises. This blog aims to expose this scheme and warn potential applicants about dangers of the PhD universe.
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