Thanks for writing this excellent guide Johan. For those wishing to do a PhD outside South Africa, I recommend participating in one of the applicant mentoring programs. Typically, someone already on a PhD program will mentor an applicant through the process, providing insight and guidance and sometimes feedback on application materials. Here is one for some UK universities: https://sites.google.com/view/econphdamp/home USA: https://www.economicsmentoringprogram.com/ and World: https://gain-network.net/program
Another option which I’ve seen work well in recent years is to transfer during your undergrad degree. One of the students I worked with did two years at UCT, transferred to Smith College when I was there, did a thesis (which she, her other advisor and I got published) and she got a great pre-doc at Princeton and is now doing her PhD at Yale alongside having had other great offers (I’m sure she won’t mind my recounting all that). She knows some others who followed similar pathways. I realize the post is intended for folks who completed UG in SA, but the point is that you can also plan earlier if you know what you want to do.
To be clear, I *didn’t* know I wanted an Econ PhD at that stage of my UG career and there’s all kinds of hidden curriculum stuff I clearly didn’t know that partly affected the path I took.
It’s also worth mentioning that in well funded places there are also almost inevitably additional pots of money that aren’t obvious. For example, at CES we have a $5-10k grad fellowship for students at Hopkins and we’ve funded Econ and poli sci students. We also have an “exchange” program for students in the Hewlett EPE network (we funded and supported a PhD candidate from Berkeley for a year who is now going to the Harvard Kennedy school for a post-doc).
Thanks for writing this excellent guide Johan. For those wishing to do a PhD outside South Africa, I recommend participating in one of the applicant mentoring programs. Typically, someone already on a PhD program will mentor an applicant through the process, providing insight and guidance and sometimes feedback on application materials. Here is one for some UK universities: https://sites.google.com/view/econphdamp/home USA: https://www.economicsmentoringprogram.com/ and World: https://gain-network.net/program
Another option which I’ve seen work well in recent years is to transfer during your undergrad degree. One of the students I worked with did two years at UCT, transferred to Smith College when I was there, did a thesis (which she, her other advisor and I got published) and she got a great pre-doc at Princeton and is now doing her PhD at Yale alongside having had other great offers (I’m sure she won’t mind my recounting all that). She knows some others who followed similar pathways. I realize the post is intended for folks who completed UG in SA, but the point is that you can also plan earlier if you know what you want to do.
To be clear, I *didn’t* know I wanted an Econ PhD at that stage of my UG career and there’s all kinds of hidden curriculum stuff I clearly didn’t know that partly affected the path I took.
It’s also worth mentioning that in well funded places there are also almost inevitably additional pots of money that aren’t obvious. For example, at CES we have a $5-10k grad fellowship for students at Hopkins and we’ve funded Econ and poli sci students. We also have an “exchange” program for students in the Hewlett EPE network (we funded and supported a PhD candidate from Berkeley for a year who is now going to the Harvard Kennedy school for a post-doc).