Which schools should I be looking at? Evaluation Help!

[KShih]

I went to top 10 liberal arts college, 3.5 GPA with an Economics/English major. Basically my freshman year I took lots of prereqs and did pretty bad in Calc II (C+) and Bio (C), and average in Micro (B). Then sophomore year i took lots of English and did average. Junior and Senior year I took lots of Economics and did well (A, A-): Macro, Statistics, International Econ, Money and Banking, Industrial Org, Econometrics, Senior Thesis. Senior year I worked at a research institute where I got to work with Economics Professors on their research.

After graduating i began working and taking math at night and have completed: Calc I, Calc II (again), Calc III, and Linear Algebra at City colleges in NY. I got an A in all these courses. I have one recommendor who is pretty well known economist, one his is not so well known, and one who is a phd economist at the company that i work.

GRE's i've gotten a 790 Q and 600 V

Given my current profile where should I be applying?

My goal is to go to a top 20 school in economics, and am considering options to be more competitive-Masters in stats/applied math. Would doing well in these MA programs boost me into top 20 programs?

Thanks for the help!


Edit: Also with my math credentials, what are the odds I can get into a good math master's program? I'm looking at NYU, and CUNYS (Hunter, CCNY). Does the rank of the Master's program matter to the PHD Adcoms?

[Gecko]

email NYU for a list of their placements into the PhD

the PhD economist at your company won't help much if you target him as your letter writer..

[zshfryoh1]

None of the econ masters programs you mentioned consistently place students in top 20's. NYU places one or two every few years and Hunter fairly frequently places in top 60s but not top 20s and I have not heard of CCNY placing students in any PhD programs with any frequency. Hunter does let you use masters level math and stats classes and PhD econ classes for electives so you could take those if you want to and it may help though most students in their masters program don't do that. Hunter's math and stats programs do place well into top 30 math and stats PhDs and they do let you take masters and PhD level econ classes for your electives if you so choose and some of the stats classes are taught by econ profs on occasion (time series, math finance and linear models). They don't have much of history in placing in econ PhD programs though.

[JohnMcClane]

I think you should look at the Duke Masters program. You might have a fair shot there and among the US masters programs they have the best placement. You can find their placement on their web page.

[tm_guru]

The Duke master's program is emerging as a decent PhD prep on this forum, but it is FAR more expensive and less of a boost than going to the top schools in Canada or Europe.

With your background and experience, good performance in the QEM program or a 2 year MA program from a mainland European university would be a big boost, for a small fee. With a major in econ and strong english skills, you could even get some funding at some places.

Right now, as I think you know, you are not competitive for the top20.

[KShih]

I'd like to give PhD programs a try just to see how I fare. Given my credentials where should I be looking? Top 50? Top 100? Lower than that?

[Gecko]

I'll go out on a limb and say end 20s to late 40s

[zshfryoh1]

I would think you would be competitive for top 50 with a small chance at a top 30, though top 20 is probably out.