Profile Evaluation 2016

[ksocial]

PROFILE:

Type of Undergrad: one top 20 U.S. Private undergraduate

Undergrad GPA: 3.65/4.0

Type of Grad: N/A

Grad GPA: N/A

GRE: V155 / Q168 / 4.0

Math Courses: Calculus 2 (A), Honors Calc III(A), Honors Calc IV (A), Honors Linear Algebra(B+, A), Intro to Real Analysis I (B, A), Intro to Real Analysis II (A+), General Topology (A-), Intro to Statistics (A+), Probability and Stat (A-), Overview of Math Stat (B+), Matrix Analysis (A), Numerical Analysis (A), Integration Theory (Grad level, A), Probability (Grad level, A) (Two grades imply retake)

Econ Courses: Intermediate Micro (A+), Macro(A-), Econometrics(A-), Intro Game Theory (A-), Advanced Game Theory (A-), Econ modeling (A), Political Economy (A), Microeconomics II(1st year Phd Game Theory, A-), Microeconomics III(Phd 2nd year course, A)

Other Courses:Nothing special

Letters of Recommendation: 2 from very connected, active professors at my school; they should be fairly strong. 1 from a math instructor who recently got PhD from a top school (from whom I got A+ at Real Analysis II) (I'm considering asking for one more from a professor in econ or math department; how do you think?)

Research Experience: Nothing substantive.

Teaching Experience: N/A

Research Interests: Voting, political economy, information, media, etc

SOP+Others: I'm a programmer; I've been running a project that crawls internet news articles, from which I analyze media outlets' usage of topics(vocabularies) and thus try to understand their optimal behavior, which I expect to be closely related to the functioning of modern democracy. I'm trying to write up a game theoretic model concerning this, and I hope I can relate the model to the huge data set to submit it as a writing sample.

 

My concern is:

1) Courses retaken; I haven't quite heard of retaking a class but I did it for Real Analysis 2 and Honors Linear Algebra. Hopefully, the results were A's but still a bit afraid.

2) GRE Verbal score; it is quite low compared to other applicants. Many say it will not matter that much, given that my quant score is fine, but I wonder how it is when it comes to top 10 schools.

3) 3rd or 4th recommendation letter; As mentioned, my 3rd letter writer is an instructor, which might appeal less. I thought getting an A+ in that Real Analysis 2 was something remarkable, but I'm not really sure. Do you think I'd be better get 4th letter to be safe, or no need to worry about it?

I would greatly appreciate your replies. Thank you.

[chateauheart]

You need research experience. You'll be easily shut out of the top 10, and likely top 20, without research experience and associated letters.