Starvingecon

You might be able to arrange some sort of independant study or research type class for credit where all you do is take the graduate class. Might be a way of skirting the issue and allow you to still get credit.

In Micro Epstein and Thomson are the big boys and its definitely theory not applied.

They lost some ppl recently, in metrics and macro to top schools or places with lots of money, Micro is still very strong and macro is pretty solid, I would only hesitate if you wanted to do metrics theory. I was an undergrad there last year you can PM me if you have any specific questions. I'm now a first year at a comparable program.

You look to be in good shape. i would focus in the 10-20 range throw in a couple top 10's and a few safeties.

if you get the quant up to 780ish i say you should aim a little higher

Congrats guys. Money is a little tight at UVA so they tend to relese financial aid information slowly, so they are sure they don't make too many offers.

If you get good LOR then your chances for top 15 should be very good. I wouldn't worry too much about your low overall GPA.

Maryland did this to me i was waitlisted. No one else asked me for my fall grades.

MD's placements are not that good, in terms of producing profs. I think they put a lot of ppl at places in DC, due to their proximity. A lot of this is conjecture since they don't post a whole list of their placements.

I'll repeat what i said last year. Many top schools don't even read SOP, however i'm sure smaller dept's, and lower ranked schools check to make sure fields of intererest line up somewhat.

I think you should be ok just send them ASAP the committee won't start looking at things until after break.

You didn't look at Timmins. He does micro development.

Its not a good thing because they really are too busy with other things to respond to an e-mail from random undergrads. Its not a bad thing really though because they won't even care enough to say anything to the adcom, unless you keep bothering them or something silly like that.

The Rochester Endowment is fine, its not what it was 20-30 years ago but nothing major has happened recently. They don't really have anyone doing development though. I think duke has a few people doing development check out Professor Timmins and Professor Connolly.

Way too long a lot of Top schools won't even read your SOP. I imagine no one will finish reading it. I say get it down to one page.