EconScribe

I outsource most of my statistical programming, while projects with greater likelihood for unforeseen contingencies are done by part-time employees I hire. All I do is come up with ideas. Why learn about division of labor and the theory of the firm if you don't apply it? :tup:

Well, it depends on the chair. This story cracks me up to no end. U. of Missouri Finds No Takers for Kenneth Lay Chair

Thanks. I didn't mean to imply there wasn't heterogeneity in the three areas I mentioned, I was more saying that the three areas I listed are valuable yet probably are not most schools' top priority, and I was interested in what schools were successful and how they pull it off (and whether the manner they do it can be feasibly imitated :) ) I agree entirely with the comments made regarding MATLAB, work etc. though I think having more transparency with RA job availability would be really helpful. I felt that way at my undergraduate institution as well. It does not seem like efficient labor matching to just keep emailing professors and taking the first that replies to you, which is what I've known people to do. Regarding the MIT advising system, what are the incentives for professors to be advisors? For instance, is Ellison's role one that he maintains every year, and that he has fewer obligations elsewhere because of it?

I believe so. Yes, these are called "endowed chairs." Collaboration and money are certainly two main reasons. Geography is another reason, people may just want to be in a certain area for whatever reason. I don't think professors are a whole lot different than other people in that respect. One difference though, is if you're a professor at, say, a top five school and want to get away from your dept. for whatever reason, your other options are going to be limited -- you can't just get another job at the tech firm or retail outlet or whatever down the street. As for Athey, she's been at three schools, and been at each for 5-6 years. I wouldn't call that moving a lot.

I agree it's a great list. Three questions that stood out in my mind: Are there any graduate programs out there that do a good job with any of these three things? They all seem like a lot to ask for. The last one in particular, formal faculty advising for first or second-years would be especially desirable.

The one thing he says that I would STRONGLY disagree with is that talking to your professors is going to necessarily be more valid and useful. I do agree you should talk to your professors, but you have to consider the source. (Of course, if your prof's have inside information, i.e. they know someone on an admissions committee and have spoken to them recently, that would definitely be useful) Problems with trusting your professors include: --They like you and have overly high expectations for you (in some cases this is a result of them exagerrating the weight of their own recommendation) --They may be out of touch, and not basing their information on anything current, or on too small a sample of their students --They may ultimately be speculating just as much as people on this board are. In that case, I'd prefer a wider sample of opinions.

That was my experience as well. I think it depends on a lot of things, such as the degree of segregation between people who excelled at sports and people who excelled at academics. I had a class size of 400, which was definitely large enough to have a lot of segregation. If you surveyed the top 10-20% of the class, you'd have gotten a lot different yearbook superlatives than what we had. Within the division of people who took a number of honors/AP classes, there was no social cost to good grades. Not every school is like that though -- for instance, one of my college friends was at a smaller school where he was able to excel academically and be captain of the football team, whereas had he gone to my school, he probably wouldn't have been able to do the same.

I don't think the EconPhD list is at all out of date. I can't think of one statement on that list that I feel to be inaccurate. Certainly there are professors here and there that like newer books, but I think the books CR lists for the first-year subjects and subfields are still the most popular.

From the paper: I'd also add that I wouldn't expect a whole lot of variation in the GRE scores of top five matriculants, so it would be tough to be pick up anything significant.

Fun stuff from the AEA meetings, and our pals Levitt, Athey, Katz, Krueger, Poterba: http://www.aeaweb.org/annual_mtg_papers/2007/0105_0800_0603.pdf The lovely news from their results from top-five schools the 90s -- admissions rank totally fails to predict future job market success, while having attended a top 15 undergrad or top 5 LAC does (though the R2 in these models are quite pitiful). I'm sure many here will be thrilled to see these results. :crazy:

This is really important point. Another issue is that your peers as an undergraduate are probably more likely to distract you from your problem sets and what not, while your peers as a graduate student are as asquare has described above -- a lot more mature. I went through this my senior year, taking a grad school class, starting off strong, and then I tailed off badly down the stretch, simply because there were so many other demands on my time, and ended up with a B. My second semester taking a grad school class, I had learned my lesson, and I did much better. But overall, I probably didn't help my admissions chances. (p.s. I didn't realize it at the time, but the grad students also have easier access to solution manuals, past solutions sets from older students, and past exams.)

I think grades are a bad example. I'm more talking about choosing extracurricular commitments over, say, a senior thesis. There are ad coms who would then foolishly look at that as a lack a commitment, even if a student had plenty of other evidence of ability in independent research, perhaps research work after graduation. A sensible committee should not consider a senior-year value function to be a strong indicator in that case. In my opinion, Econ grad programs need to be a little more (but not too much more) like undergrad schools in taking well-lopsided students that are a little more well-rounded.

I would clarify this statement in the following way -- admissions committees do the best job they can relative to the information they have, but the nature of it is that plenty of good students will slip through the cracks. Obviously, the committees look for certain signals, and if you have the ability to send those signals but don't for whatever reason, you are going to get underplaced. For instance, someone who devotes a significant portion of their undergraduate time to an extracurricular activity that the ad-coms do not value, someone who knows real analysis but didn't actually take a course called real analysis, etc., etc. I would also guess that the correlation between funding and performance within a given class is not particularly high.

I haven't read this yet, but I certainly will before the end of summer: Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations It's a top-20 selling economics book on Amazon now, and probably the only one other than Freakonomics that is actually focused academic research as opposed to investing/"pop"-economics.

bump at LEIGH's request.

Ditto... probably all the topology you need you will cover in real analysis. Go with SP.

Agreed. Though if you feel you want to do activities that can improve your application, go ahead. If you can find some way to enjoy yourself and improve your application, that's the best of both worlds. Up to you what you value most. I've been out of school for three years now, and I certainly opted to enjoy myself at the expense of helping out my application for the most part. The thing is, things you do just for the sake of helping your application might not necessarily pan out. You're more likely to be successful at trying to enjoy yourself.

Getting back on subject (though I'm sure we all have our opinions on the decision you've made, it's not what you requested) If it's possible, in addition to working as an RA, I'd also suggest enrolling as a special student or some such and taking more advanced coursework, or (to be vague) just do anything outside of being someone's RA that will allow you to explore your independent research interests and improve your SOP and possibly LORs. It's hard to go into any more detail, esp. without knowing anything else about you. And if you do the best you can given the situation, you can be happy with yourself.

If you care about the result, you should always contact someone at the school. I know someone who accidentally put the wrong year for his permanent address to go into effect, and a school sent all the materials there, and his family was all out of town for the winter. Good thing he emailed the school, because he found out he was in with full funding and ended up going there.

From the announcement... My interpretation is that my NSF GRFP applying career is over. Now, you're telling me that someone has completed two semesters of a phd program is still eligible as long as they don't take summer classes? In other words, a class is only "completed" at the end of the semester? If that were the case, then wouldn't they say that it was more typical for people to be eligible in the second year? I wish you were right, of course. :) Ok, it says in the FAQ: So people do typically apply in the fall of their second year?

We had a discussion on this a week ago... http://www.www.urch.com/forums/graduate-admissions/46487-monetary-intenational-economics-program.html People mentioned a mix of higher and lower ranked schools.

Here's a nice primer on applying... the only thing I'd add is that I'd even more emphasis on the proposal... http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~gamble/nsfadvice.pdf Here's the program announcement if you didn't find it on their site. http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2005/nsf05601/nsf05601.txt I thought it made everything pretty clear. You're eligible for the most part as long as you're american and haven't started a second year of graduate study. For instance, since I did a four-year BA/MA program and am starting a PhD program in the fall, I won't be able to apply again.

One thing I'd add on the NSF -- this is stating the obvious, but you can't underemphasize that the research proposal is far and away the most important, and there's no close second. I wasted way too much time polishing my other essays, and looking at the comment sheets yesterday, I don't think one of the reviewers even bothered to read them. Absolutely get the research proposal done and polished first, perhaps before you do anything else (and BE VERY SPECIFIC and be sure to don't be subtle in addressing the selection criteria). Make sure the other essays also address the criteria, and if they somehow tie in with the research proposal, that's even better. Simply having solid all-around leadership experience or extensive research experience (the first two essays) will get you nothing.

Another one of interest... The Wealth of Networks : How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (Hardcover) by Yochai Benkler http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300110561/ref=ase_downandoutint-20/104-0256633-0590354?s=books Already in the top 300 in sales on Amazon and it's not even out until mid-May. And it's available online in its entirety. http://www.benkler.org/wealth_of_networks/index.php/Main_Page

Such a thread already exists: http://www.www.urch.com/forums/graduate-admissions/25098-faqs-future-economics-phd-students.html And to answer your question, honestly I think I was adequately prepared for the process by reading sites like http://econphd.net and Chris Silvey's site and forum's like this. It's just mostly a matter of execution. And a lot of what I learned I found out too late, or it was just advice I rationally preferred not to follow (or I should say, I don't think there's any information that would have changed my choices). I have no regrets.