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This is going off-topic, but I think MIT is pretty solid in PF. We currently have Poterba doing taxation; Diamond, Golosov and Werning doing theory, including the new dynamic stuff; Finkelstein and Gruber working on health, insurance, and other applied topics; Greenstone doing environmental and urban econ. Emmanuel Saez is also going to be visiting here next fall to teach a topic class. It's a very exciting place to do PF!

While I don't necessarily think Berkeley's economic department is going to disintegrate there are reasons to bear these facts in mind when deciding which school to go to. Even one or two people leaving every other year can be really disruptive if they happen to be your advisers. At the fly-out last year I met a grad student who was a sixth year and whose previous two advisers had left Berkeley. While this can happen at any school, faculty attrition seemed to be more of a problem at Berkeley than at other top programs.

MIT decided not to extend any offers this year. The new professors in the Fall should be Parag Pathak :tup: who is at the Harvard Society of Fellows this year and Bob Townsend :tup:.

I've found the resources here Resources to help you learn and use Stata very helpful when I started using STATA. In general, googling something like "keep unique duplicate stata" would take you to some good resources on the STATA FAQ website or Statalist archive. Those are also great to see how other people write code and maybe learn some new nifty commands.

I thought this was worth mentioning since everyone else so far had the opposite advice. My data point is a friend of mine who applied with his girlfriend to PhD programs in Math last year. They both made it clear in their applications that they're applying "together" and that they wouldn't take an offer if the other one couldn't go there. I think even their letter writers mentioned the other person in the letter. At the time I thought it was a bit silly and extreme, but it worked out well for them. I think all the schools that accepted one of them also accepted the other, and they're now at Cornell.

My writing sample to Chicago last year was about 25 pages. It was a final paper that I wrote for an undergraduate econ class. It was pretty well received. I know people who got in that sent papers in philosophy, math, etc. People have asked about this before so you should be able to find other opinions if you do a search on the forum.

Congrats, Cassin! :)

You could try contacting professors at Berkeley.

Ashdown... it has a really nice location, right next to the campus center, on the Charles River. If you want to figure out how far things are from the Econ dept, check out http://whereis.mit.edu/. The Econ dept and classes are in E51-52. It's a pretty social dorm, they have a lot of common space and organize events regularly. There's also a pub in the basement (The Thirsty Ear). Cons of Ashdown... it's a pretty old building, so expect some cracked tiles, older carpet, musty smell, and dust. It doesn't have the nice facilities the newer dorms have, most apartments do not have their own kitchen, so you need to share a floor kitchen, most people get assigned to doubles the first year they live there, they have mice problems sometimes. It's going to be closed down at the end of the year and renovated into an undergrad dorm. I hope this helps, argyecon!

It's not that bad. Unless you live in Tang which is far away from everything. Edgerton, S&P and the Warehouse are very close to the Star supermarket, maybe 10 minutes walking from the Central Sq. T-stop and at most 15 minute walking from the department. But the rents on campus are a bit steep...

Oops. By "accept" I thought you meant accepted to graduate school. My bad.

I really doubt this is true. During the fly-outs I've met people who had worked at the Fed, Brookings, central banks in their home countries, the World Bank, in Econ consulting, worked for professors as RAs, did fieldwork in development in Africa, etc. I feel like I'm missing out by going straight to graduate school.

Does anybody know when the math camp is supposed to start? I think I'll just go home for the summer and chill... It's probably our last chance to do that for a while :)

Where are you guys planning to live next year?

We used this for my undergrad metrics class http://www.amazon.com/Statistics-Econometrics-Applications-Orley-Ashenfelter/dp/0470009454/ref=sr_1_1/103-1732344-5455845?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176672241&sr=1-1 The first part of the book is just elementary statistics. The whole book is pretty elementary. Check to see if you're library has it... Good luck!