bojangles42124

I would definitely send Leora an email Wednesday morning detailing your options if you haven't heard from her by then. I got funding the morning of April 15th last year, exactly 60 minutes after sending a similar email to the DGS.

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The TA award is standard and is the minimum you will receive if you get funding. Some people have only that. Others have an additional departmental fellowship. A few of us don't have to teach the first year at all... I don't know how much those people got, but I would guess somewhere between 18k and 26k (according to the website... but my guess is that 26k is rare) But Charlottesville is ridiculously cheap... Combined with my subsidized Stafford *zero interest* loan, I have about 18k, and I live pretty comfortably. BTW, if you're a citizen, you should apply for the max amount of Staffard subsidized loans, which is 8,500, whether you need it or not. I didn't this year, but I regret it. It's zero interest until you graduate (in 5 years), and then I think the interest starts accruing at 3.2....

About funding... The department makes only a few initial offers, but mainly to the people who are unlikely to accept (because they also got a funded offer from Yale). As people reject those offers, the department will offer funding to more people. It's not like admission decisions where they anticipate a certain percentage to decline. My understanding is that the department only makes offers such that if everyone were to accept, the department would be able to afford. Last year, there was a flurry of offers just days before the April 15th deadline. I didn't get a funding offer until literally the morning of April 15th (and it was pretty generous... don't ask me how/why). My advice would be to just stay in contact with Leora. She's pretty nice. I would doubt that attending the open house would increase your chances of getting funding, but one never knows. I don't think it had any effect for me. I definitely wouldn't stress too much if you can't make it. That being said, I'm looking forward to meeting the people who can!

The entering class this year is mostly international.

you know that the certainty equivalents are not equal, so try this... apply u1 to both sides of the inequality (c2 u1(c2) then apply g on top of that, to both sides... g(u1(c2)) then use the fact that u2=g(u1)... u2(c2)=g(u1(c2)) and then use definition 6.C.2 to first turn it into something that resembles a form of jenson's inequality (probabilistic form)... it involves integrals that I can't type.... page 185 for jenson's.. depending on how rigorous you want to be, you could stop there, because by jenson's, g must be concave I guess that doesn't get at what you wanted to get at.... jenson's works the other way too, so if you reverse the inequality, you can show functions are convex...

The advice I've heard is to basically not mention it in your SOP. It makes sense, because really, what could you possibly say (save medical reasons) that would correct the situation? Your transcript will tell the story, so saying anything more would be redundant, not to mention a waste of valuable space on your SOP (IMO). I'm pretty sure that adcoms put more weight on the more advanced courses anyway, like real analysis. On the other hand, I'm not entirely convinced that most schools even read the personal statement. But even if they do, I bet it wouldn't be until after they've seen your transcript and deemed it worthy of remaining in the applicant pool, so bringing it up and reminding them of your bad grades in your SOP probably wouldn't be wise. It would be a different story if your more recent grades weren't very good - that would be a terrible situation to be in.

Last year, one of my letter writers submitted his LOR for Virginia a few days after the February 1st application deadline, but it didn't seem to matter. In fact, I got accepted February 8th.

hey guys, I'm a current 1st year student... here are some numbers for UVA that may be useful... I heard that 66% of last year's class passed the cores on the first try (up from 55% the previous year), which is considered high for our program. For those that failed but stayed around, they will have one more chance to pass them in January. I think they expect at least a 50% pass rate for those who are retaking them. Apparently, last year's class also had a median GRE score of 800. Our class seems to be no different, but that's just a guess. I don't think they've updated their website FAQs in at least a few years. For the most part, everyone in my class is now funded (either by the department or an external source). I think pretty much anyone who was on the wait list for funding when they were admitted have it now. Our class size is now 25 people.

If you are only considering dollars/yen, I think you will find in a cost-benefit analysis that it simply does not pay to switch from engineering to economic research, in both the short term and the long term. What you should really be deciding is whether your overall contentment in life by going back to school will be better than your overall contentment staying an engineer and making more money. Ask yourself - would you rather be a poor researcher or a wealthy engineer? (I'm not saying that you will definitely be poor as a researcher, or wealthy as an engineer, but it's certainly more likely that you will make more money on your current path.)

this is what I've been working on... Development as Freedom - by Amartya Sen The Geography of Bliss - by Eric Weiner (Hilarious, thought provoking) $urplus: Spinoza, Lacan - by A. Kiarina Kordelia (this one's for pevdoki1)

...for mathematical and quantitative methods, I think that's pretty reasonable. I've heard that UCSD and Yale are THE places to go for econometric theory.

It seems like this paper is being discredited by people on this forum. But what do you guys think about the ranking for the "Mathematical and Quantitative Methods" JEL sub-category? 1) Yale 2) UC San Diego 3) MIT 4) Northwestern 5) Harvard 6) Wisconsin 7) Princeton 8) UC Berkeley 9) NYU 10) UCLA Isn't this pretty realistic?

I heard on one of these threads that GW only funds 2-3 people a year... I would check that out though. You should definitely call them and ask. Isn't there a faculty member listed on the acceptance letter?

totally.

I have a friend who works at one of those think tanks, and I asked him about this. My understanding is that they start out at the competitive rate relative to other academic placements, at around 80k-90k USD. I don't know at what salary they max out, but I would think it depends on the institution, and probably varies greatly among and within them. I would bet it's comparable to the salaries at well ranked Economics departments, but I don't really know... The maximum salary question is kind of irrelevant though, as by the time one has the top salary at a reputable think tank, he or she has had a long and successful career in research - people don't get to be the best at RAND, Brookings, Urban, etc. because of the money, however large it may be. ...but before we start worrying about the compensation of the very best positions available in the field, lets first worry about entering the field. Right?

Yeah, I wouldn't contact professors directly. If you look closely at the websites, many schools say outright that this practice is taboo. It's strange your friend got rejected from all schools from 5-35 considering his strong GRE and GPA. How was his math background? There have been a few people from this forum who have done well coming from a LAC below the top... One person even got into MIT from a small unknown liberal arts college - she did win the NSF, however.

At the open house, some one asked a grad student about what social life we should expect to have. After telling everyone to look around the room, he then said, "these people will be your best friends for the next 5 years." I've been thinking about that a lot. Kind of scary. I hope you guys are cool.

Thanks for the info mogelsworth! I wonder what happened to that list of first-years Patty said she'd send out...

Thanks reason! UVA got to see my 800Q (their deadline was Feb 1), which is why I think I was admitted. I accepted their offer and will not re-apply to more schools. Ideally, however, I would quit my government job and take more math classes. I did NOT get an A in real analysis (at my school, it's called Advanced Calc I), and so I would love to retake it, and also Advanced Calc II. I have little doubt that I would be able to get an A the second time around. I would also love to take some more differential equations classes... However, I can't do any of that because there's no scholarships available for non-degree seeking students. Life is expensive. Taking another year off to take classes while accumulating a massive amount of debt is just not a viable option. It would probably increase my chances to be accepted at a higher ranked school, but it's just too much of a risk - besides, UVA has a quality program, and they're funding me entirely. Here is an excerpt from a letter I received this very afternoon from the Director of Graduate Studies that could be useful to those viewing this thread:

I strongly agree with YoungEconomist and TruDog. Adcoms won't care about that D you got freshman year in "Intro to Shakespeare." My overall GPA was terrible (3.23), but since I had A's in key courses (like advanced linear, transform methods, econometrics II, and other 400 level math classes), I was admitted with funding to a decent program. And as far as real analysis is concerned... it's probably the number one most important grade you'll receive as an undergrad, so definitely take it if you think you can do well. My understanding is that adcoms consider it a very good indicator of success in graduate school - so a bad grade will probably prevent you from getting admits from all top programs. If you think this could be the case (getting a C or lower), my advice would be not to take it, as not having real analysis is probably better than having a C in it. I've heard this from a few different professors. Likewise, having an A or an A+ in real analysis can really boost your application. And if you're not coming from a top undergrad institution, having an A in analysis will probably be your only chance at a top 10 program.

People still plagiarize at that level? I would think that a person would have to be mentally ill in order to try that. What happened to the perpetrator? I hope (s)he got fired and charged.

that's PRECISELY my point!!! YES!

Like I said, I think that the two lists would be very similar, and that is why the one that currently exists is a good one. But yeah, I can't wait to see where Wash U ends up. I think that's true to some extent. But, in my opinion, trying to compare the "added value one receives" among schools, controlling for prestige, is not an extremely useful activity for the main reason that most top fifty schools will train sufficiently well, and therefore, the percent difference of "added value one receives" between any two schools in the top fifty will be marginal.* I think that had David Card gotten his PhD at Cal Tech instead of at Princeton, I believe he still would have won the Clark Prize. Haha, but that has to stay an opinion for now - unless we can somehow force some of the incoming Harvard students to go to Maryland and see where they are in 2028... *As long as one doesn't specialize in that school's weakest area - e.g. specializing in Econometric theory at UVA, something the Dean warned perspective students at the open house NOT to do, should they decide to attend.

"Talented and capable people historically come from here." vs. "Talented and capable people are currently coming from here."