How would an applicant with good grades only in advanced courses be seen?

[econercccc]

Hi all.

 

I am an undergraduate student at a public university with top 15 econ department. I took many advanced math courses (including Phd real analysis) and Phd micro sequences and got all A's and A+'s for them. However, I got one A-, one B+, and one W in three undergraduate economics field courses. The one that I withdrew was one that I did not do well in the first midterm. All of these have exams that rely heavily on memorization, and I am extremely bad at such types of exams, and just could not outperform my classmates who are good at memorization in the grading curve. (I often confused things and forgot what I had memorized.) I have only three other undergraduate field courses in which I got A's, which makes half of my undergraduate field courses be something below A. I am mostly interested in theory and the professor that I RA'd for said that those courses would not be too much of a problem for conducting theory research, but I am really concerned that such profile would be seen by the adcom as someone who is not serious in economics. Would this compromise me too much? Would stating an interest in theory in SOP save me to some extent?

Edited November 2, 2017 by econercccc
Clarify

[cjyNel]

These undergrad field course have little to do with serious PhD level research. The admission committee would rather see something else.