Future econ applicant with unorthodox background

[starequalsmaybe]

Hi there,

First of all, I am glad to have come across this forum, as it seems to provide a lot of information for future applicants. I will definitely be going through as many threads as I can.

I am in a situation that is atypical to most other current and future applicants. I have been in the workforce for a few years, and had always plannned on going back to obtain an MBA. I have since decided that I would much rather pursue a phd and a position in the academic world, specifically in economics. My undergrad is in business, and I attended a top 25 public U.S. university. Honestly my grades were subpar (~3.3) because at the time I did not care about them, or school. I have since grown up, and even taken a few graduate classes (4.0). My current plan is to take several math classes (since I didn't take many in undergrad) over the next 18 months, and then enroll in a terminal Master's program in economics before applying for phd programs.

My questions are as follows: Does this sound like the right path given my background? How much does it matter where I take the math classes and get the master's degree? What advice (other than ace the gre) do you have for me, and what resources (other than econphd.net) do you recommend? I apologize for the long post, but any advice you can provide will be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time!

[notacolour]

First of all, I would suggest that you get a very good feel for what, exactly, your goals are. One thread you might want to check out is this one (Applying to Econ NEXT year--advice and sharing thread), in which I linked to a few things which you may have seen. What I stressed in that post is that it's really, really important to know you want it before you embark on a PhD program. In that sense, going for a master's degree first is an excellent move (and it happens to be what I did, too, having a somewhat similar background to your own).

Similarly, as I and plenty of others on this board have cautioned, many of the MA programs in the US are, well, not very good. Some have pretty good records of placing people in PhD programs, but pretty big-name institutions really don't invest much in their MA programs, seeing them mainly as a way to make money. It's not so easy to tell which is which, either.

Obviously, it does matter where you get your MA degree, though I suspect this may matter less than how well you do in it. I didn't have much of a strategy, but ended up going to an up-and-coming program (but nonetheless one with a very low ranking), and I'm hoping that excelling in it will be sufficient to get into a very good program. I'll be able to tell you whether this works out about in about a year from now. Of course, if I were paying my way through LSE rather than scraping by on an assistantship here, I'd be much poorer, but less worried about PhD prospects.

But as for the math courses, it's not all that clear which math courses you have taken. Did you take cal 3? Linear algebra? That should be about the limit of what you need for an MA program, but more would certainly be advisable for a PhD program (especially real analysis). Take them somewhere that works for you, so long as it's a decently well known university, and get A's in them, and you should be fine for MA admission. Take the MA program as an opportunity to make sure this is really what you want to do, and go from there. That's my advice, anyway, though it may be worth absolutely nothing :-)

[sting54911]

Are you planning on getting an MA in econ? It should help, but try to take the following graduate math courses if at all possible. They should really help. These courses are Real Analysis, Multivariate Statistics and Probability Theory. If you end up using a standard math text, such as Royden for Analysis and Casella and Berger for Probablity, the econ admissions department should look fondly towards you.