commodore

There are a lot of other threads on this, but I'll go ahead and talk about Yale. Yale has a pretty relaxed atmosphere, and the usual attrition is 1 (max 2) per year, out of a class of about 22. Until this past year, that is. In a real shock to us, 4 of our 21 will be leaving. I am inclined to think that this is a one-time deal and not a regime shift. Overall, the pressure we feel here is fairly low, I'd say.

If at all possible, retake the GRE. To get into a top 10 place, you're going to need a 780 at least, I'd say. I'd worry less about the B in graduate micro. I mean, most grad students get a B in graduate micro! I think the signal that you took it and didn't get pounded is the important part. A couple of lower-ranked good devo schools to consider are Brown and Cornell.

This guy did his routine at the Yale Christmas party last year, and it was a big hit. He's a pretty funny guy.

econphd.net has such rankings, though I don't find them that reliable. Still, maybe they could give you some basic idea.

I'm actually stunned to find that some people don't use study groups. I love to work by myself, and if I could do the problem sets on my own, I would. But there's just no freakin' way you can do first-year problem sets on your own...or at least I can't. I didn't "study" much with a group last year, but I did problem sets with a group every day. I would have never passed my comps without those group partners.

Yeah, 2nd year obviously varies by school. Here, we don't TA until the 3rd year, and the fall of 2nd year is pretty light, whereas it picks up in the spring with oral exams and preparation for actual research. Still, even on its busiest day, 2nd year is nothing like 1st year. I honestly don't know if I'd take a payment of $100,000 to go back and do the first year over. It's that big a difference.

Macro is useless in everything. Or maybe I'm just useless in macro :) But yes, the previous posters are correct.

Second year study hours: 30 max per week, counting class. This is nuts. I don't know what to do with myself. Note to first years: pass those exams, and life gets a lot better :)

Jesus is a great economist.

I think this is right. Yale, for example, puts a probability of attendance on every person it admits, and I presume that it's based on this list of other schools. Also, some schools (Duke, for example) are known to turn down students they think will get into top 5-10 schools. Others may do this, too -- Brown turned me down even though I got into Yale and NWU.

I say don't sweat it. Make sure your statement of purpose is written well (have someone good in English proofread it), and I don't think the verbal score will be a big deal.

That's good to know. I had a friend who visited and still got the impression that it was rough, but it may not be. Either way, southern California is hard to beat.

The scene is my professor's office, 2 years ago. I walk in and hand him my list of schools that I'm going to apply to. Prof: Why UCSD? Me: It's a great location. Prof: Do you want to be a time-series econometrician? Me: No. Prof: Then don't apply there. So that's my advice on UCSD. Northwestern is great for theory, but not so great for development. Penn is the worst location of the four, in a rough part of Philly. I'd go with UCLA.

Hey, the stand-up economist is going to need a successor someday. Keep up the good work!

double post