cooper

I agree that a study partner can make all the difference. He and I worked individually on problem sets over the weekend, then met SUnday nights for 5-6 hours to discuss them. We would also meet occasionally during the week if we had things to discuss. For instance, after classes we would discuss things we had questions about from lecture. This really kept me on track and not falling behind. Also, I tried to take naps (say 20-30 minutes) during the days. This makes a world of difference for me. Sleep is very important when trying to keep sharp. I would also recomend eating well. I dont wnt to discuss diets, but maintaining your health requires a good diet. I think I am one of the few who made it through the first year without the help of ccoffee. I almost always had three meals a day. I tried to make a schedule the best I can. Some days I had classes half the day, then discsussion (with our graduate TAs) and I TA'd myself. On these days I could not get much stduying in so I would work on one of the "easier" problems from homeworks at night. On my not-so-busy days it was down to business.

I had a 770Q and 370V when I took the GRE. To answer your question as to whether the low V score will affect you...well probably. I think that one school rejected me because of this (I spoke to a Professor that was not on the adcom that year but he was on the adcom in previous years and this was his speculation). Whether or not this was indeed the reason, it certainly raised question marks. Also, two schools (to which I was eventually acctepted) contacted my letter writers and asked about my ability to speak English. I am a native speaker so that probably leviated some uncertainty. But I am assuming you are not a native speaker (please correct me if I am wrong) so you may have to improve this. Take a look at the results 2007 sticky and see the schools I was accepted and rejetced from. I did not retake it since I did not have enough confidence in raising my V score enough. If you retake and score low again, then this may confirm any doubts.

I studied LP as an undergrad and it was one of my favorite classes. However, it is not so useful for grad school as others have noted. But it did help me build intuition about optimization in general. I particular for first semester Micro when you think about utility maximization when objective functions are not differentiable. But so far it has had not direct applications. Oh yeah, one application of LP that is interesting is on solving zero sum games though. NLP on the other hand will certainly be useful.

Finishing in 4 years is not very usual although it is possible. But the people who finish the PhD in four years most likely have at least some Econ background and get started on research very early on. Given that you have not taken any courses in Econ this may be difficult to accomplish. Of course, working at a bank, you may have some research ideas of your own already so this can be a plus. If you haven't done this already, then you should look at some articles in academic journals in areas that you are interested in. This will give you a sense of what will be required of you in grad school. Of course this will be after you pass qualifying exams (which means you will need to get some exposure to intermediate level Econ). Also I am confused. If you are truly interested in pursuing an Economics PhD, then I don't see why 1 more year should matter (30 or 31). A lot of students, especially foreign students, get a masters before beginning a PhD which means they usually start the PhD around 25 or 26 years old. Did the economist you talk with explain why this is the case? I have heard that I-banking jobs favor young people, but I can not see why this is the case for pure research roles that require a PhD. So If your goal is research I don't think you should worry about your age. If you are interested in other areas of I-banking, maybe the PhD in Econ is not the best choice anyway. Based on your post. it is not so clear as to why you want the PhD.

This might be more a matter of correlation than causation but the point is taken. I too have obviously never served on an adcom so I guess the OP will have to digest both of our opinions ;). Either way, the OP is in good shape so far and should not worry too much at this point.

You have a good point. I will agree that if everything else is exactly the same, then the GRE Q could be used on the margin I guess, but the other parts of the application in fact are never exactly the same, while the GRE Q is often the same as many others. With respect to the OP's concern, my disagreement is the fact that the studying should be 95% Q and 5% V given that they already scored a 770 Q. Now, if a 480 is good enough everywhere then maybe this can hold up. My concern is whether 480 is considered non-questionable. If so, then there will be no need to improve this, but also a 770 might also be good enough (of course 800 is full-proof). I personally studied about 95%Q and 5% V but the outcome clearly reflected this. The point I am trying to make is that the OP should be thinking what to do on the margin. Assuming (s)he will get 770Q and 480V without studying anymore, what is the optimal mix for the next 4 weeks. I say even 50-50 mix would be good enough to improve both. Especially since 770 is close to 800 so it will not be too hard to get this up to 790 or even 800; while there is much more room to improve the V. But of course, this depends on whether you think doing better than 480V will help at all. Just my two cents.

I do not entirely agree with this. Firstly, as we all know, verbal is not as important as quant, but a low verbal can raise question marks. I know this for a fact. My letter writers were contacted by adcoms about my ability to communicate english well (I am American by the way). My V score was 370 so maybe that was extreme. Adcoms might feel more comfortable with a decent V score. I am not saying there is a difference between a 600 and a 700 verbal score, but a "low" score may have adverse effects. Now is a 480 considered a low score? I do not know. Also, I think most would agree that GRE Q is only used as a threshold and not really considered at the margin. That is, once you meet the minimum requirement, say 760 or 770, then this just means your application is not thrown out. I would find it very difficult to believe that they would use this score at any point after this in the admissions process.

To the OP, You can always do finance at some Econ programs. For example, Duke and UNC are very flexible as far as Econ PhD students taking finance courses and allow you to work with finance faculty and both have great finance departments. Also, there are PhD programs in the b-school of universities such as Northwestern (MEDS). Even these departments rival top 25 Econ departments and you should be able to do Econ/Finance work in these places (this is only my conjecture you should check the faculty). Places like this might be just what you are looking for. Also, there is always the option of going to a straight Econ PhD at a place that has faculty doing finance. Also you should keep in mind that Econ guys that do good Finance research can end up either in Finance or Econ as an assistant prof, but a PhD in finance typically will not become an Econ assistant Prof. This of course only matters if you want to go into academia. I don't have any data on this but it seems to be my impression based on previous debates and I have observed this a few times as well. In summary, you should at least consider places I mentioned above and also pure Finance programs. Then go to the best place you get accepted to. Check your PM.

Surely you mean physicists not physicians unless he is having conversations about the human body as a complex system--no pun intended ;). As far as computational calculus, meaning computing derivatives, integrals, etc, integration by parts pops up in auctions (allthough this is really calc 2) and I remember seeing this other places too but can not remember. As others have mentioned, in macro, multivariable differentiation should be second nature. Allthough its not necessary to get through first semester Micro (using Mas-Collel et. al.) you should understand gradients to build intuition when utility functions are differentiable.

In addition to regular studying, I found one method really helpful. For example, during lecture the Professor might mention an interesting example, and tell you to work on it at home. While it is not part of an assigned problem set, I think they do this for a very good reason. It gives you the chance to really make sure you understand the material. Also, the Professor thinks it is important but probably just does not have time to cover it. I always made sure I worked these, and they make for good topics for study group and test preparation. Usually these problems are a slight generalization of a model covered in lecture. Or sometimes, the Professor might prove a theorem in one direction and ask you to prove the other direction. It seems very difficult to justify spending time on these when you think you already understand the topic and have real problem sets to work on, but as has been mentioned by other posters, you should not worry too much about grades on problem sets, and really make sure you understand material before moving on to new topics. As I found, I often thought I understood something until my study partner would ask me a question. I realized I don't understand it so well when I can't explain it. The point is, if you can't explain it clearly to someone else, then you don't really understand it yourself. And on qualifiers, you must explain your steps. So you should keep studying until you are able to do this. Without going off topic, I found these side problems I mentioned earlier to be great exercises for doing just this.

Thanks TruDog. In fact summer classes are back in gear this week although some buildings have water damage. However, we had plenty of warning so important equipment in labs and things like this were able to be moved to high ground before the water came. I would think by fall most of this water damage will be repaired and all buildings will be fully operational again. Otherwise I cannot imagine the logistical nightmare they will have with scheduling class rooms for lectures. Another thing is some dorm buildings are damaged and a lot of university owned apartments. Anyone at a big 10 uni, or any large state school for that matter will understand this. So I guess we should be thankful this disaster happened during the summer. But for now, a lot of places where people go to hang out (restaurants, bars, stores, etc) are closed and need a lot of repair.

There will be a second attempt in August. Each student will only have to retake the exam that they did not pass in June; that is, if you pass Micro and fail Macro, you need to retake only Macro. I would like to think that after August the pass rate will be above 50% but who knows; pass rates have been less than 50% for the past couple of years at Iowa.

Well I just got internet access back due to all the flooding out here. Luckily my place was not damaged and as far as I know nobody was injured and my classmates did not lose their housing either. Anyway, I am pleased to say I just found out that I passed both qualifiers on the first try. It is a huge relief, they were pretty tough and I was positive I failed Micro. For those who are interested in numbers, 11 students sat for the exam and 3 passed BOTH on the first try. I don't know how many passed say only Macro, or only Micro though.

I used Fitzpatrick for Adv Calc and based on my experience it is probably better to do this before the Grad analysis course. You will still have to prove things rigorously which is important. Given your background, you may find it extremely difficult in the grad course since they would assume you are familiar with the 'epsilon-delta' arguments from Fitzpatrick. Also, in Adv Calc, you will learn basic topological concepts on the real line, which you should understand before generalizing to more abstract setting as you would in the grad course. Plus, there will more likely be a higher standard in the grad course since most students have studied analysis at the undergrad level already, while Adv Calc is usually the first course in Analysis, More importantly, the Adv Calc course will provide the rigor that you need from an analysis course. You will have to think logically and you will get good practice constructing proofs so I think it is sufficient for first year Econ. In first year econ, you may have to think about function spaces or measure theory concepts, but not at a very deep level, and if you do well with Fitzpatrick, you will have the tools to handle these more advanced concepts on your own. After the first year, you may need to think about more advanced math courses depending on your interests, but you can worry about that when you get there. Also, from a point of view of risk, it is probably better to get in A in Adv Calc than a B or even a C in Analysis.

At Iowa, first years typically TA principles courses. However, some will be graders for advanced undergrad courses but will not lead discussions or interact with students. Then students past the first year will either TA grad courses, teach their own course or TA principles courses again. Of course, there are opportunities for RA work as well. The program requires each student to teach their own course at some point before going on the job market. I am not sure how they decide how to allocate TA jobs, but I think the grad TA jobs go to the best students. They do not ask your preference, but I think if you tell someone that you prefer to TA Micro as opposed to Macro, then they will try to accommodate you but I have no evidence of this. The TA jobs for principles courses assign 3 sections to each TA. Each section has 30 students. The TA is responsible for leading discussion once a week for each section, holding office hours and grading homeworks and exams. Personally, the first semester I attended lectures regularly since I needed to brush up on my principles anyway. In the second semester I attended only occasionally. Some Profs encourage their TA's to attend at least once a week while others do not care. As far as intermediate courses, as I mentioned, there are no real TA's per se, but just graders. Usually these are given to students whose english is not proficient enough to lead discussion so they do not interact with students and will be assigned three upper level undergrad courses for which they are responsible for grading. Those class sizes range anywhere from 20 to 60 students each.