Johns Hopkins or Ohio State for Econ PhD

[madnanm]

I have an offer from both the Johns Hopkins University and the Ohio State University. Both are amazing programs, with Johns Hopkins being ranked a little higher. I plan on doing my PhD in game theory. My problem is that the faculty members that I want to work with at JHU are old (70 years old) and there's a risk of them retiring soon. The faculty members are well known in their respective fields and are still actively publishing and researching. However, the faculty at OSU are younger and are making decent publications. Which one should I choose?

[eveline]

I wonder if there's a way to tactfully and respectfully ask the dept/admissions committee about their thoughts on the senior faculty retiring soon? If they do retire, are their other faculty at the school whose research you like and can at least transfer over to? If the sr members are well known it might be worth it to work with them for at least a couple years IMO. Also I'm in a different field than you; not sure if that matters though. 

[alitekin]

I think choosing your grad school according to the faculty you`d like to work with is a good idea. I am not particularly informed about the old faculty at JHU but in academia it is usually considered to be better to work with young faculty as they are gonna be more productive and ambitious in research and publishing. So based on the info you`ve given, Ohio State seems like a better option for you, which also has a pretty good ranking in Economics as far as I know.