Corneconomics

I (at Cornell) did poorly in class (in no order, A-, B+, B, B- in intro macro and micro sequences-I spent a lot of time in Chicago with my girlfriend), and I was a bit immature in some of my actions with respect to the program. In the end, I failed the quals (I'm suspicious that failing was more of a comprehensive performance/behavior thing than based solely on my test performance, but either way). Cornell grades the quals Pass +, Pass, Pass-, Pass Masters, and Fail - pass masters means you fail, and I'm not sure if they give masters degrees based on it any more, but they did once. After getting my qual results, I didn't really hear anything from the department, and got myself work based on other connections (for instance, your undergraduate program might have news about lecturing positions, and professors might have consulting side jobs that you can work on). The moral is, as an economist, you are a business onto yourself. You need to start making connections as an undergrad, and in your graduate programs. These connections can help ensure a "soft landing" (or favorable grading of your exams and eventually maybe a more glorious career). You should also practice writing using the higher powered tools you learn in graduate level courses (especially econometrics), and know that if you fail out, you may need to chop a first-year paper into a concise, clear writing sample to pass around with your resume (which should include statistics software experience).

Wow, that sucks. You could always use a different proxy (google search brings up dozens of hacks). By the way, there are quite a few good online music recommendation and playing services these days.

Does anyone here use pandora and/or last.fm (or, like me, pandorafm)? If you don't, you should check them out. Pandora, for instance, lets you enter in the name of a musician or song, and it spits out songs that are similar in style. The algorithm is so-so, but the songs it plays are often unexpected, so its enjoyable. Also, if you always wanted to get into some style (say, jazz or alt-country), enter in a musician of the genre you know (Duke Ellington or Townes Van Zandt), and it will play you a bunch of stuff so you can get to know something new.

We're economists, so the answers should be math rock (maybe we should count "Q and Not U", although they aren't quite "math rock") or minimalism (Phillip Glass is the most prominent, I guess, but he sucks). My Top 10 ; ) Manu Chao, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Mojave 3, Souad Massi, Nitin Sawhney, Yo La Tengo, Legião Urbana, Fugazi, Café Tacuba, The Dismemberment Plan, The Roots

To Young Economist, It depends on the other graduate students, and every year is different, but don't worry. For Example, our group is pretty social, but we like to say that the year before us were much less so (who knows if it is true). As a department, we play soccer once or twice a week, go out on Friday evenings (to a grad school campus bar), and have pizza party socials every month or two. In smaller groups, there are poker quartets, guys watching sports, people who go to NYC often, etc. If things aren't working out, go to some seminars and introduce yourself to students in other years.

I think this is the misunderstanding for students who come to Cornell versus students who go to the top schools. Schools are highly ranked because they have good students. For undergrads, a schools rank is measured more by how good the students are than how good the professors are, and sometimes there isn't much value added even by top schools. The same is, I'm sure, true for graduate schools. MIT students are used to teaching themselves as much or more than the professors teach, but I came from Midwestern state schools (read: good teachers, much hand-holding) and was surprised by how much we are expected to teach ourselves (see: Karl Shell, Larry Blume). Now that I'm used to it, I see those two as interesting and creative teachers (my estimation of Blume's teaching has skyrocketed in the last few weeks, although his lecturing isn't great, his course building and question writing are great). Our TAs have done a great job complementing our professors' styles, and are willing to hold our hands and walk us through problems, but that doesn't mean that the professors should. Other issues aside, I wanted to mention that the social environment here is my favorite part (with lectures my least favorite, and I used to love lectures). I've found that relations between the east Asian students (mostly Chinese) and the rest of the students to be healthy. I don't think sally11's complaints about the accents and accessibility of the non-English-as-a-first-language students or faculty are widely held here or at other US schools with similar demography. If you a student who is worried about being uncomfortable with the accents and idioms of professors or other students, most schools will probably be able to help you. At Cornell (and other schools) we have conversational English classes, multi-ethnic TAs, students who are willing to help, and professors who will supply a reading list of books and papers which can fill in whatever gaps there are (this was key for Shell's macro, and his English is fine). Obviously, Econ2006 and I are a bit upset by that comment about understanding professors and other students, and I just wanted to voice and additional dissent to the idea (and not just at Cornell).

Both those answers are insightful, the masters is a nice resume pad, but won't cut time to phd in terms of satisfying phd requirements. To cut time to phd, you need to lower your chances burnout/exhaustion, ie cultivate other interests that will help you grow as a person etc. On the other hand, using your undergraduate degree to quench your thirst for knowledge outside your future specialty will reduce the temptation to take extraneous electives (be it art history or industrial organization - assuming that you're interested in that, but you don't want it to be your specialty) in your phd program, which could cut time.

There are two good ways of getting housing, using the website douggator mentioned in the next month or two, or getting something last minute on craigslist. craigslist is the cheaper method, but it is risky. As for location, it depends on your preferences. I'm downtown-ish, and I like it quite a bit.

I hope so, we regularly get averages in the 40-60 range in our core. I understand that there is often a bit of a jump between bad scores and obvious failures on final exams. So if you go in to the final understanding enough to answer 2/3 of well, and you can show economic intuition on your disaster of an answer to the last 1/3, you can be ok even with a final exam score below 50%.

At Cornell, they always fail (

I wouldn't avoid Chicago due to crime. My gf's neighborhood, Humboldt Park, has a bad reputation, but is as safe as, well, as anywhere. The south-side has the worst reputation in town, but there are plenty of saferplaces, even on a budget. Crime on the Uchicago campus is comparable (a bit less actually) to that on Cornell's campus. I think the difference might be that Cornell's campus is larger and less well lit. I would consider both as safe as my UG and MS schools (large Midwest state schools), and safer than my sisters (small urban private school in St. Paul). This is mostly because there are students around in the evenings at larger schools, so you aren't often "completely alone in the dark". University web pages usually have information on crime statistics: In the Hyde Park Area (not perfect, but it is improving, and is probably comparable to Cambridge, MA): http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/070301/crimestats.shtml uchicago campus stats: http://commonsense.uchicago.edu/crime-info.html[url=http://www.cupolice.cornell.edu/CrimeStats.html][/url] Harvard campus statistics (check Cambridge campus, seems a bit high): http://www.hupd.harvard.edu/crime_statistics.php Cambridge, MA statistics (larger population than Hyde Park -> more crime): http://www.cambridgema.gov/%7ECPD/reports/statistics.html Cornell campus stats: http://www.cupolice.cornell.edu/CrimeStats.html

A google search for economics PhD rolling deadline (or rolling admissions) pulls up quite a few, also some tangential programs in things like economics and social statistics or something. I know the University of Illinois-Chicago has a rolling deadline, and the program is fairly good, with opportunities to take classes at UC or NU for PhD students.

You have to weigh things, but I'd be open with both schools, and look at how one goes about breaking the "April 15" rule. Doing so won't be the end of the world or your career (although you will probably never be able to get a job at a certain school). If the costs of doing so don't outweigh your dream, then if you are forced to send that dreaded email at 4PM on April 15, you will still have one thread of hope in your dream left. Its bad again this year, as April 15 falls on the weekend, so there will be some confusion as to whether it is ok to wait until the 16th (it was last year, I think), and administrators will have to wait until Monday to know how many last second waitlisted students they can extend invitations to.

In picking schools in which to apply, I choose schools in the Northeast and a couple in California, because I wanted to get out of the Midwest. Then I choose schools in the 10-50 range, but which were ranked higher in development, because I wanted to get in and work with faculty that were "above average" relative to the quality of school I could easily get into. So it was location that formed the underlying basis. Had I been smarter, I would have chosen larger cities, so that my SO could find something to do nearby, which is my only regret about the location, now that the weather has turned.

Location.