We are proud to announce that Aram Grigorian (ISET class 2015) was accepted with full university funding to the prestigious Economics Ph.D. program at Duke University. Aram received generous admission offers from other top schools, such as Johns Hopkins and Ohio State, which he had to decline. He also had to decline (at least for the time being) the possibility of a professional career as a rock guitarist.

ISET is proud to announce that on Wednesday, May 28th, 2015 Lasha Labadze, Deputy Director of ISET Policy Institute, defended his Ph.D. thesis at Tbilisi State University, Faculty of Economics and Business. Lasha Labadze is the first ISET alumna who graduated from the TSU Ph.D. program in economics. His paper titled “Modeling effects of an investment in Georgian Agricultural Sector” was supervised by TSU Professor Eteri Kharaishvili, Head of Microeconomics Department.

It is a moment the entire ISET community has been eagerly waiting for the last 6 years, ever since its first class graduated in 2008. Asya Shchepetova, the most Georgian Ukrainian economist, has just defended her doctoral dissertation and received an economics Ph.D. degree from the Toulouse School of Economics in France, a global leader in the field of industrial organization and competition policy.

Each year top students from ISET receive exceptionally promising and appealing offers to continue their graduate education at some of the best universities in the world. ISET graduates have been pursuing their Ph.D.’s at top universities such as University of Pennsylvania, University of Chicago, Stanford University, New York University etc. 32 ISETers have been selected throughout the past 8 years. Another six ISET graduates have successfully continued the path towards their Ph.D. Degrees this year. With full support of ISET’s senior international faculty, they are currently engaged in the first year of their studies. Most of them have already done some of their own research being a part of ISET’s “Third Year Program” working with ISET-PI on policy projects relevant to the fields of their interest, contributing to the ISET Economist Blog and taking online math classes to get ready for the “boot camp” experience awaiting them in the US or Europe.

Each year, top ISET students receive promising offers to continue their education at some of the best universities in the world. Ala Avoyan, the valedictorian of the ISET 2012 class, is currently completing the first year of Ph.D. studies at New York University (NYU).