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Research Assistanship before PhD


jakethedog

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I'm currently strongly considering applying for economics research assistant positions before applying for a PhD. After google searching research assistant, I noticed a lot of top universities offer research assistant positions, that being said, what is the eligibility criteria? How competitive are they? Furthermore, for those who have worked as a research assistant, would it be possible take a class or two as a non degree seeking student (I'm really concerned about taking a year off due to the depreciation of knowledge)?

What research assistant positions would you recommend given my profile below? My end goal would be to work as a tenure-track professor. I would greatly appreciate any advice!

 

 

PROFILE:

Type of Undergrad: US Public University:Econ and Math(Top 40, 50), National Ranking(Top 40)

Undergrad GPA: 3.4

Math Courses:

Calc I (B), Calc II (B-), Calc III©, Intro to proofs(B) Proof based Linear Algebra(W, A), Proof based Advance Calculus I/Real Analysis I (A), Proof base Advance Calculus II/ Real Analysis II(currently taking it this semester, I think I should get an A given what I got for RA I)

Econ Courses (grad-level):

Econ Courses (undergrad-level): Principles Micro/Macro(A), Intermediate Micro/Macro(B,B+), International Trade(B+), International Macro(A), Public Choice(B+), Honors Empirical Research(B+)

Other Courses:Statistics I(A), Intro to prob(W, retaking this semester)

I also have lots of experience with excel, STATA and I'm currently working on LaTex

Letters of Recommendation: One from my Real Analysis professor(UC San Diego), my professor who supervised my undergraduate research (University of Chicago) and lastly my employer from the research center that I work in

Research Experience: I wrote two empirical papers and currently work in an economic research center

Research Interests: For now, Development and Micro Theory

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The eligibility criteria for full time research assistant positions are similar to those for PhD candidates, but perhaps a bit looser. You still need to be strong in terms of grades, you usually have to provide some references and on top of that it's usually important to have some technical/programming skills. On the other hand of course the competition should be smaller - if someone can do good PhD straight away, he'll probably not bother with RA (although people take different paths). Hard to say how competitive they are overall because there are usually 1-2 places for RA. Last year I was rejected by all Top 10 PhD programs and accepted into couple of European programs. At the same time, I applied to 4 RA positions and was accepted to 1, not in US (but I'm international and the fact that I would need to get a visa was probably some problem in my case). I would say you can take a class if you want to but I'm not sure if it's worth it since obviously this will take time and you're already working full time (and want to make a good impression to get a strong letter).
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As Michalz said, criteria for RA positions are similar to PhD programs, just with weaker competition. There probably is a bit more focus on programming/data skills and a little less on pure math though.

 

In terms of classes, I can only speak about the RA position I had at a Fed. We had flexible work hours and for the vast majority of people taking classes was allowed and even encouraged. They also paid tuition for up to 2-3 classes, though there were people who took even more than that. Anecdotally a couple of people I know who worked as RAs for professors had the freedom to take classes, but I don't know how widespread that is.

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As Michalz said, criteria for RA positions are similar to PhD programs, just with weaker competition. There probably is a bit more focus on programming/data skills and a little less on pure math though.

 

Specifically, what programming/data skills would make oneself marketable for an RA position at the Fed beyond that of the normal proficiency in Stata/SAS/R/LaTex?

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Specifically, what programming/data skills would make oneself marketable for an RA position at the Fed beyond that of the normal proficiency in Stata/SAS/R/LaTex?

 

I think a standard Stata/Matlab/LaTeX or similar toolkit is plenty. Any other language skills are a plus but probably not required. Experience working with and cleaning real-world data is important too, not just the pre-cleaned datasets that a lot of undergrads get in econometrics classes.

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  • 2 weeks later...
As I wrote, my position is not in US so I cannot comment on visa process for RAs. The page you gave sometimes has positions also outside of US, but very rarely.

 

May I ask which RA programs you applied to? I'm an international student (undergrad in the US, but not in the US at the moment) as well, so FED and those posted on NBER are out of the question because of visa issue.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Does anyone else have thoughts or experience with applying to these positions: Research Assistant Positions not at the NBER? How competitive are these / does it make sense to just apply or does one need to be referred by a faculty member from a top school?

 

What are the qualifications of people that normally get these type of jobs? For example, those at Chicago?

 

Alternatively, what range of schools would someone likely get admitted to whom also was chosen for these positions?

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The competition is fierce. It's hard to say "where these individuals would place" but I'd guess at the best Top-5 and toward the bottom Top-40.

 

It's just simply a different maximization problem -- usually people hiring for these positions want people with solid technical/computer skills, whereas graduate schools may care less about these things and more about your "promise as an academic"

 

It's just not a 1-1 correspondence, so it is a bit difficult to compare.

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The competition is fierce. It's hard to say "where these individuals would place" but I'd guess at the best Top-5 and toward the bottom Top-40.

 

It's just simply a different maximization problem -- usually people hiring for these positions want people with solid technical/computer skills, whereas graduate schools may care less about these things and more about your "promise as an academic"

 

It's just not a 1-1 correspondence, so it is a bit difficult to compare.

 

Gotcha.

 

I am just trying to figure out whether it generally would be "worth it." I have had bad luck this cycle, despite the enthusiasm of my advisor. Generally, individuals from the program that I am in place into T50-70. There's a ridiculous amount of 'stuff' going on right now, so I was trying to figure out whether this was realistically an option. It doesn't seem like it is, though.

 

The only thing that I might have on my side is that professionally I have a lot of experience working with large data sets, managing projects, meeting timeline's, etc. I'd be surprised, though, if this made up for academic shortcomings.

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Gotcha.

 

I am just trying to figure out whether it generally would be "worth it." I have had bad luck this cycle, despite the enthusiasm of my advisor. Generally, individuals from the program that I am in place into T50-70. There's a ridiculous amount of 'stuff' going on right now, so I was trying to figure out whether this was realistically an option. It doesn't seem like it is, though.

 

The only thing that I might have on my side is that professionally I have a lot of experience working with large data sets, managing projects, meeting timeline's, etc. I'd be surprised, though, if this made up for academic shortcomings.

 

I even wonder if professional experience is seen as a bad thing in the admissions process.

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I even wonder if professional experience is seen as a bad thing in the admissions process.

 

My experience is outside the discipline, so I can't imagine it'd ever be seen as a plus. I didn't even include it in my resume while applying this cycle (just some small sentences about it in my SoP). I guess this left me with "gaping holes" for the summer, as a family member put it to me today. During my first round of admissions, while trying to enter a few master's programs a few years ago, I'm fairly sure that it did work against me.

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I even wonder if professional experience is seen as a bad thing in the admissions process.

 

I wouldn't put it so strongly. Unless you've been out of academia/school for a significant amount of time, working, I don't see how professional experience can be construed in a negative way. Of course, most likely it won't add anything positive to your application either. But I would even argue that having some experience in industry can actually help you determine whether you prefer research or the private sector. I mean it's much more credible to hear "I prefer academia to the private sector" from someone who's actually done both.

 

I guess this left me with "gaping holes" for the summer, as a family member put it to me today.

 

So applicants are not even allowed to have lives anymore? :(

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I've been told that it is highly unlikely that they would hire me as a research assistant from Universities such as: Yale, University Chicago, Princeton etc. because they primarily look for students who attend those programs. Is that true? Also, if I'm currently teaching myself Python, could I put that on my resume? Aside of my academic profile, I know how to use STATA and Excel because of my job and my two papers, and Latex. As for MATLAB, I've only used it to solve computational stuff like computing determinants, therefore what do they look for as far as skills involving MATLAB?
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I'm from a not super prestigious state school and have two interviews for RAs, one at Harvard and one at Chicago. As long as your grades are superb amd you can do the work, I don't think professors care if you went to an ivy or not.

 

That being said, it is probably easier getting a foot in the door if you are from a fancy institution.

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That is definitely reassuring :)

I wouldn't say my grades are superb though:

Calc I(B), Calc II(B-) Calc III©, Intro to Proofs(B+), Proof Based Linear(W,A), Real Analysis I (A), Real Analysis II(currently taking), and Intro to Prob(W, retaking this semester)

as for my Econ grades, I have A's and B+'s

my GPA is around a 3.4

Do I still have a shot at a top school? I definitely have a lot of experience in research(I would hope that helps my chances lol)

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Also, if I'm currently teaching myself Python, could I put that on my resume? Aside of my academic profile, I know how to use STATA and Excel because of my job and my two papers, and Latex. As for MATLAB, I've only used it to solve computational stuff like computing determinants, therefore what do they look for as far as skills involving MATLAB?

I don't see a problem putting it on a resume if you actually know how to use these. Your MATLAB experience seems rather limited though. Personally, I think it would be nice to have programmed a more complex, non-standard estimator / test yourself or run some kind of monte carlo simulations.

But then, at some point knowing a programming language (Python, C,...) and a matrix language (MATLAB, Gauss, R) means that using another matrix language should not pose too many problems. As an economist, you don't need to be able to write a complicated program without looking at the documentation after all.

I don't know whether STATA is seen as indicative of your programming ability in general, but it is likely considered quite useful.

Excel - I assume you mean VBA? Otherwise, I don't think people will see much value in it - it would be tedious manual work, and experience in that kind of work only speeds up things so much. (You can probably do most things in R,... just as fast as in VBA, in particular if you have a better grasp of the concepts used in matrix languages than in Excel. Last time I used VBA was to apply conditional formatting to hundreds of cells - it does give a nice overview.) So my personal opinion is: writing Excel but not VBA does not tell them much because few students who "know" Excel (but not VBA) will really have a significant advantage over the normal Excel user (which probably includes everyone), and there is little you can do to show that you are such an advanced user.

LaTeX I would list. Probably does not help a lot (unless that's one of your main tasks), but all else equal it could tip decisions in your favor.

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