Lemons, peaches, and Econ PhD programs

A short piece I wrote when I was deciding which offer to accept.

There are lemons and peaches. Peaches are the applicants who got their A.B. from Harvard and majored in math and physics, did a 2-year RAship with Raj Chetty or at some other top-5 school, took way more math courses than econ courses, 4.0 GPA, 170Q, you get the picture. Then you have the lemons, the not-so-stellar applicants from schools you’ve never heard of, with imperfect stats, gaps in their CVs, the “might-not-survive-our-PhD-program” kind… the list goes on.

I like to think that I am somewhere in between, an “unripe peach”. From afar (just looking at the stats), the admissions committee may think I am a lemon (I am unripe after all, maybe even slightly yellow in color). I may be assigned automatically to their lemon pile with a simple “drop if GPA<=3.80” or “drop if missing(real analysis)” command. I’m not complaining, nor am I salty (or, more fittingly, sour). Sometimes even I think I am a lemon, but let’s not get into that for now.

Instead, let’s introduce a few assumptions:

  1. All schools are looking for peaches, including the not-so-top schools
  2. These not-so-top schools put at least as much effort in screening for peaches as do the 1st tier schools. In fact, they may very well have to put in more effort to find peaches in a pile of mixed fruit of slightly lower quality (after the top 10 get their first pick)
  3. Schools would rather admit a peach than a lemon (they have standards and want to maintain their reputation/prestige). The pecking order is peach > unripe peach > lemon. But it’s very difficult, even for the top programs, to admit only peaches (there will always be 1 or 2 lemons, those who either managed to find their way into the peach pile, or after joining the peach pile, they appear quite lemony next to their very peachy peers)

I am offered a place of admission at some of these schools, presumably because they took a closer look and decided that I am a peach, or an “unripe peach”. For arguments sake, let’s just say that I am an “unripe peach” — I have the potential to become a peach, but I am currently in the process of potentially becoming one.

Assuming that my goal as an “unripe peach” is to ripen and become a ripe peach, have several factors to consider when deciding which “farm” to join (or which program to attend):

  1. The environment of the “farm”. Harsh environments are not conducive to ripening or growth. A strong wind/storm (e.g. quals designed to weed out half the program) can easily blow an unripe peach like me off the branch, and into somewhere far far away (spiraling depression or an existential crisis). A supportive environment is one that makes you feel like you are a peach, and one that encourages you to ripen
  2. The size of the “farm”. Farmers don’t have time to visit each and every corner of a farm if the farm is a massive 100 acre farm filled with peach trees. Farmers might not even visit the farm if it’s huge, and instead send in drones to do check-ups. In contrast, (holding the number of farmers constant) peaches get a lot more attention on a small farm
  3. The farmers. If the farmer is an award-winning donut peach farmer, do you, as an unripe peach (supposing it’s genetically/biologically possible), want to be a donut peach? Or do you want to be a white peach? Or a yellow nectarine? Also, how many farmers are there? How attentive are the farmers? Do they care about the peaches on their farm? Do they bother working with the peaches? Do they use good fertilizer? Do they move you into the greenhouse or leave you alone outside to withstand the forces of nature (survival of the fittest, fruit version)?
  4. The quality of the other fruit in the “incoming class of XXXX” basket. Unripe fruit tend to ripen faster when placed next other ripe fruit (the more the better). However, one rotten/bad fruit can make the rest of the fruit go bad too. One would rather be with a higher quality bunch than a lower quality bunch

Lastly, not all peaches end up as a delicious peach by the time harvest season comes around, let alone a peach market star or an award winning peach. In the “wrong” environment, an incoming peach with a lot of potential may not do particularly well and end up in the discard pile when harvest season comes.

Even though a top peach farm on average produces peaches of higher quality, it is not guaranteed that you will ripen and become an above-average peach. In fact, if you’re an unripe peach (or even a lemon (gasp)) at a top peach farm, farmers may only spend their time and attention on the riper peaches or the peaches with more potential, and neglect you (maybe they’ll only come around once a year to check on you). In the end, the quality of the bottom quartile of peaches at a top peach farm may be similar to the quality of the top quartile of peaches at your ranked #30 farm.

This begs the question — would you rather be an average peach on a good farm, or a peach on an average small farm? Some may choose to join a top farm with the hopes that they will, by the quality of the farmers and the other fruit in the basket, catch the wave and become an above-average peach by harvest season. Alternatively, others may choose to join a not-so-top farm (maybe a farm so obscure and “average” that raises eyebrows when you are asked the unavoidable question of which farm you plan on joining) with more fitting conditions for you and your growth.

The answer is not obvious, and maybe there is no right answer. Maybe the answer would be easier if the peach market would assign less importance to the farm, and more importance to the quality of the peach. But doing so would undermine hundreds of years of reputation and prestige built up by top farms and their award-winning farmers. In addition, the average Joe cannot tell the difference between a peach from a top farm and an average farm without looking at the fruit sticker. Anyways, thanks for indulging me and my fruit analogy (my chosen form of procrastination when faced with an important but difficult decision to make).