[Mex_Econ]

Originally Posted by Freethinker

Yes, those interests are logical taking into account your background. Good luck with the LACEA membership and with your apps!

About cutoffs, I'm sorry I couldn't find info for UC Berkeley, but UCLA's graduate econ site:

http://www.econ.ucla.edu/grad/

Look for the Admissions link. There you will see this:

"the Department considers only those with excellent academic records, GRE scores that average in the 80th percentile in verbal, 95 percentile in quantitative, and with a 5.0 in analytical, and those with outstanding letters of recommendation. TOEFL scores must be at least 260."

And I recall that I had read somewhere that the whole UC system had the 5.0 AWA cutoff, but don't take my word (I don't want to mislead you), contact the grad advisor!

Yesterday, I got my first response. A rejection letter form UC San Diego (by e-mail Feb 14th). Why on San Valentine's Day? (During my "romantic dinner" with my girlfriend I was trying to found out why I got this rejection and did not pay attention on our talk).

So, Freethinker I guess you are probably right about the cutoff in UC. Although I knew that before I submitted my application (http://ogsr.ucsd.edu/admissions/programs/program.asp?ID=13). May be they don't even review my whole application.

Min UCSD Me
Verbal 560 450
Quantitative 720 800
Analitical W 4.5 4.0

Well, I'll probably never know why this rejection and I prefer to think that I did not make the cutoff than I was rejected due to my entire application was not good enough (let's see my next responses).

Anyway, I applied to UCSD due the weather and because is near (about 40 min) to Tijuana (where I can buy plane tickets to home for just 100 USDs).

BTW, my research agenda didn't match theirs (Mine: Public Sector Economics, Theirs: Mainly Econometrics).

Now, I'm thinking that I have not a chance to get in a Univ ranked over UCSD (or even to go nowhere).