veroniquaz

you will have to study a bit harder for the macro prelim

it is pretty much certain you will get a TA-ship. Your relative performance in class determines whether they give you a fellowship to cover the non-resident tuition (if you are not a California resident). At least this is what they told me two years ago. Try to look up old posts by TheBrothersKaramazov and jhai. TBK is a current student and some time ago she described her (very positive) impressions. Jhai was admitted but went to Georgetown eventually. She visited the department and posted some helpful stuff afterwards.

I never said it was impossible, it is just not obvious and the 34% drop out rate pretty much confirms that.

I will repeat myself. Given the state of the economy it is pretty likely BU will end up with a large class this year and that will make second year funding highly competitive. I would suggest everyone who is about to start a PhD program this year to not take second year funding for granted at any department and to think carefully if and for how long they are able to finance themselves.

Also remember that getting funding at BU after the first unfunded year is a STRONG assumption. I know someone who left, because he did not get funded after the first year even though he had funding in the first year. If you get unlucky with the class size you might end up going through an extremely competitive first year and no guarantee you will make it into the second, let alone you will get funded. In this respect the Master in Stat is not such a bad option and a good reality check at the same time. If you do excel over there you might get funded at BU or somewhere else in 2 years. If you are not among the best in the Stats MA, it is very unlikely you would have made into the second year with funding at BU either. But this way you will still end up with a marketable degree and no debt as a bonus. The Bank is not only hiring researchers, so with the MA you still will have a shot.

tell them you really like them and ask where you are on the waitlist. I was waitlisted two years ago and they told me exactly where I stood. In a normal year the people from the very high waitlist make it all in. I was on the other waitlist and did not make it eventually.

which university are you at? Is it any of these? Lausanne, Zurich, Geneva or St. Gallen? if yes you should be fine. Just make your LOR writers stress how rigorous the MA program is.

we have a micro development guy who exclusively uses R so I guess it can also handle large datasets. He also forced Masters students to use it for their homeworks in the metrics class.

I did not include any US programs because they are generally not considered a good preparation for PhD that you stated as your eventual target. I also dont think you really need a Master to get into a good PhD program, but now that you missed most of the deadlines, it is not such a bad idea and I would suggest you pick your program based on the brand name. By the time you will apply the adcoms will not have your grades anyway but reading your application they will be left with that nice feeling that you are at a good place. In my personal opinion go for one of the most rigorous Masters at LSE. You will get a good preparation for the PhD and it will look nice on your application. The only problem with LSE is that funding is rather unlikely. At the non-UK programs I listed you should also have a pretty good chance to get funding.

not sure what their deadlines are, but programs that are worth looking at in Europe: LSE, UCL, UPF, Toulouse, Tinbergen in Canada: UBC, Toronto, UWO, Queens I am sure I have forgotten some, but these are all very good and I am sure most of them will happily accept you.

double post

funny, I never noticed those superscripts were there, but they really are :blush:

I believe A,B, C refer to the part of the chapter the problem is related to, not the difficulty.

After all the horror stories I heard about the book, I expected something unreadable and incredibly hard to understand. Not true, I actually ended up liking the book, even though I am not even a micro person. With your math background and assuming you also took some intermediate micro, you should be fine reading that book.

Tillburg I heard is a boring village. At Tinbergen I believe you will be based in Amsterdam for at least the first two years, though you will be taking some classes in Rotterdam too. Amsterdam is a fun European city. For me it would be a reason enough to choose Tinbergen over Tillburg. Know nothing about Toulouse, but in general I would avoid French speaking cities if you do not know any French and quality of life outside the university matters for you.