good_tea

I personally found Jehle and Reny to be excellent for self-study. It is written in a simple, clear and precise manner. The math appendix is also very good. I also liked Romer for Macro.

You got an i7? :)

As Caesarxxiv correctly noted, I forgot a 0, it is 4000mb (i.e. 4gb) not 400mb. Definitely don't get 400mb RAM. Actually, I don't think there are any laptops on the market with only 400mb RAM.

I just ordered a new laptop and it will be the only computer I have when I am in school (I'm about to start first year), so it will have to serve as both a desktop and a regular laptop. I got an HP 14 inch screen, core i3 processor, 400mb RAM, 500gb hard disk for $620 from amazon. I don't know much about computers but I was reading around before buying and I get the impression that it is best to get laptops with core i3 or core i5 processors b/c these are brand new processors which perform very well (there is also a core i7 but I think its more for strange people).

Peter Kennedy's econometrics book says: "How large does the sample size have to be for estimators to display their asymptotic properties? The answer to this crucial question depends on the characteristics of the problem at hand. Goldfeld and Quandt (1972, p.277) report an example in which a sample size of 30 is sufficiently large and an example in which a sample of 200 is required." The reference, from the bibliography is: Goldfeld and Quandt, Studies in Nonlinear Estimation (1976). I haven't seen this book myself but it seems like it may have what you are looking for. I assume that they came to this conclusion using some kind of MC simulation.

Over the past few weeks, I have covered 4 chapters of Jehle and Reny (those on consumer choice, special topics in consumer choice, producer choice and game theory) and have found the book to be excellent. It is precise and has useful explanations too. I also did some of the exercises (except for the chapter on game theory which I just finished reading) and found them to be very good as well. There is a mix of more concrete questions with specific functional forms and more abstract questions (usually about duality-properties).

To add to what Nanashi said, these are the standard course names (just in case someone doesn't know): Calculator I: Simple calculators Calculator II: Scientific calculators Calculator III: Introduction to graphic calculators

I don't know how good this is and whether it is what you are looking for but I noted this website when I came across it: Yet another, yet very reader-friendly, introduction to the measure theory

"Let's all guess what school the OP accepted! My guess is Columbia." Since the OP says top-10ish, this should mean a program whose top-10 status would be disputed. This should knock out Yale, Berkeley, Penn and NW, which are clearly top-10 and not top-10ish. Since the OP says top-10 in the title of the thread, it seems to me that he/she means a program which is not uncommonly, though only arguably, considered top-10 (as opposed to one that is merely close to the top-10). This would probably leave Columbia, NYU and Minnesota (it is uncommon for Michigan to be considered top 10). The OP complained that the weather was particularly bad/depressing, giving the impression that it is worse than what it would be if he/she got into a top-5 program. While the weather in NYC is not something that most people in the world would consider great, it is better than Chicago and Boston and about the same as southern NJ. So unless by top-5, the OP means Stanford specifically, it would not make sense to complain about the weather in NYC. Since Columbia and NYU are both in NYC, I conclude that the OP is talking about Minnesota as well.

One thing to keep in mind is that not all placements at the IMF/World Bank are the same. For example, the World Bank has the young professionals program and also has consultant positions for fresh PhDs each year. The latter are designed to be a temporary position whereas the former is meant to recruit permanent staff.

"They've published etiquette articles in respectable scholarly journals. I mean seriously, it actually said not pick your nose during a dinner meeting. Creepy huh?" This may not be such a trivial thing, in fact people have been known to do this even live from parliament: gordon brown picking nose - Google Search

"I don't mean to put down the academic value or rigor of these disciplines, far from it, rather I doubt the short-to-medium run returns to economic growth from studies in these areas are higher than they are from the study of, say, economic growth." Ah this reminds me of a quote from Yes Prime Minister, which I reproduce here: [Jim Hacker = PM, Bernard = PM's private secretary, Sir Humphrey= head of the civil service, the cabinet secretary.] Jim Hacker: Bernard, Humphrey should have seen this [sudden financial crisis] coming and warned me. Bernard: I don't think Sir Humphrey understands economics, Prime Minister; he did read Classics, you know. Hacker: What about Sir Frank? He's head of the Treasury! Bernard: Well I'm afraid he's at an even greater disadvantage in understanding economics: he's an economist.

Most grad students live in the area west of BU (Allston/Brighton), where the rent is cheaper (the area thehurricane mentioned is part of this). If you are interested in classical music, BU freely gives students a college card for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which is one of the best in the world. You also get free access to the Museum of Fine Arts with your university ID (this is true for other universities in Boston too, btw). It often has really good exhibitions.

"in my experience, economists can be pedantic dicks ... especially theorists." Why is that the case especially for theorists? Some options: 1. Theorists are more intelligent on an average and intelligent people are more obnoxious on an average. 2. Theorists are more removed from the human world and develop poorer social skills/restraints. 3. Theoretical research is more idiosyncratic in terms of the modelling choice it affords to the researcher and so it is easier to criticise others without it affecting oneself.

Also, if your professor are colleagues, it would be weird for them to wear the *same* cologne...

As an interesting aside, a political scientist won the nobel prize in economics last year (Ostrom).

I think the reason for the "lift-off" may be that preparing for an econ phd requires coursework (particularly math coursework) that is very different from what a typical econ undergrad takes or even knows about (this is usually true of very good students too). As a result, it is much less obvious what classes one should take and how good one's profile is (i.e. just a high GPA is in advanced econ courses counts for much less than it might in other fields), etc. Most people who start posting here seem to start with "what math classes should I take? is this real analysis?" or "evaluate my profile."

"The MBA's, regardless of how many of them there are, get the best private sector jobs." I don't have any problem with this being true but I would like to see evidence. We seem to have good statistics for MBAs (though as has been pointed out, interpretation is sometimes difficult since many people have pre-MBA work experience) but not about economics PhDs.

Is it true that PhDs entering the private sector make ~100k? I always thought that it was at least 120-130k for most consulting jobs and more than that for transfer pricing and I-banking. Then again, having no interest in the private sector, I never looked into these things properly.

In general, I always found it it hard to believe that MBAs make that much money on an average just because there are so many of them and it doesn't seem so hard to get admitted and do well in an MBA program. I searched on google and I found this: MBA Pay Through the Years It seems to me that even if one goes to a very good business school, the median salary is not likely to be more than what an economics PhD from a good program in consulting, transfer pricing, investment banking, etc. makes. In fact, the starting salary for a good economics Phd private sector job (something that presumably shouldn't be so hard for people in a top 30 department to find) seems to be what a median MBA from a top 10 program makes 5-10 years after getting their MBA. Also, keep in mind that the median MBA is likely to have a lot of experience pre-MBA (since 3-4 years are considered minimum, I am assuming the median is at least a bit higher). That said, I also think that an Economics PhD is much harder than an MBA and trying to get one without an academic/semi-academic interest is probably an excellent recipe for dropping out at various stages of one's PhD.

Thanks for the information!

It seems like whenever people talk about how hard first year is, they cannot do so without saying "MWG" at least once. In terms of difficulty/workload, is micro much worse than macro/statistics/econometrics? How do they generally compare? I am sure it depends on the program but it would still be interesting to get a general idea (and if asquare were answering, it would be particularly interesting for me :)).

I think it would also be interesting to create a ranking based on what admitted places are preferred over which other admitted places. Thus, if someone gets into Harvard, MIT and Stanford and chooses Harvard, then that one data point would put Harvard ahead of MIT and Stanford. I am not sure how we would create a ranking out of this information. If we could get the probability of going to x given admission into y for each (x, y) and these probabilities are transitive, then we would easily have a ranking. If we do not have the expected probability for some (x,y) [in practice we wouldn't], we could probably still create them by assuming transitivity and using the information we do have. For example, if P(attends Harvard|admitted to LSE) is greater than P(LSE|Harvard) and P(LSE|UCL) is greater than P(UCL|LSE), we could assume that P(Harvard|UCL)>P(UCL|Harvard). I am not sure if there is any way of getting around any absence of transitivity in the initially ordered programs though. Maybe untitled has the data to do something like this though I imagine it would be quite hard even if possible.

"Yea, I will go in to meet them soon, but want ur takes on this, since the international office (at least at my undergrad institution) does not seem to know everything." Thats is true, the international student's office (in general, I don't know about MIT) often knows a lot about standard cases but less about more special cases such as yours. You might want to check out this page: ICE Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS)

You should call the international student office at MIT; that seems like the best way of getting information on this.