macroeconomicus

Your GPA seems ok, tough I don't know what it means on "UC Merced scale." GPA is not the only factor in admissions. For example, the statement that you write or the letters of recommendation could help a lot. I have some friends who said that they got into UCB with a relatively lousy GPA but a solid statement letter, while the reverse was true for some friends who got into UCLA. I just wanted to point out that UC Berkeley also offers a whole lot of majors in international and area studies: Overview | IAS As you can see, there are several possible majors there, and most of them are very interdisciplinary. For example, Prof. DeLong posted this tentative list of concentrations in the PEIS major: Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong

I could concede that a lot of PhD programs at relatively unknown state universities are filled with foreign students who view their PhD course as a necessary stepping stone and possibly a necessary evil on the way of becoming a US citizen. However, if you're smart enough to be admitted into a good US PhD program, there are far easier ways to get into the united states and obtain a good job compared to going through the whole Ph.D. ordeal.

Well, the value added in real terms comes from the fact that both math and economics courses at those universities or LACs tend to be more rigorous, there are more undergraduate research seminars taught, and you can potentially take a graduate course. Some of those institutions have very strong undergraduate student body, so you need to work hard there to get good GPA, so that sends a signal as well. I don't want to overdramatize things though. I think schools outside the top 25 or so are not as snobby and if you can still try to get into the top schools after completing a masters degree at a good masters program.

Yes, I think it kinda doesn't matter much as well. I would give the last three the edge because they have bigger, more famous departments than Iowa though.

Just look at the profiles of the job market candidates at the schools you're interested in. Among the top 20 American departments, you can clearly see that most if not all of their American PhDs got their undergraduate degrees from well known research universities (either private or public) or well known LACs. This bias becomes even stronger at the top 10 departments. I am pretty sure that this bias exists among the adcoms in lower ranked departments as well (say those below top 25 departments), but their applicant pool can be considered slim pickings in relative terms, so they more readily accept strong applicants from less distinguished institutions. My personal view is that Georgetown is a well recognized university, specially on the east coast, and its economics department is well respected, so I think you'll be in a good shape to apply anywhere you want if you go there.

I don't know that is exactly a typical MA in economics that makes it a must have for getting a finance job. MBA is still a better degree if you're aiming for the following careers: 1. Investment banking (I am talking about investment banking in traditional sense, not quant jobs at investment banks). 2. Stock picking and/or valuation. 3. Pension fund management. 4. Corporate financial management. 5. Venture capital investing. Also, not all MBA programs emphasize "soft" skills. There are some MBA programs that offer a good amount quantitative skill courses (maybe MIT, Purdue, UCSD), just right for the job but not necessarily at the level of econ PhD or MS in quant finance.

If your goal is MBA and the jobs that come with that degree, you might as well skip the economics MA because it doesn't bring much to the table. Just get the best job you can get now, work for about three years, get a good score in the GMAT test, some good letters from employers (in addition to your professors) and go for an MBA degree at a business school with the best reputation you can get into.

Little or no exposure. You'd have to take a financial economics field course or a seminar for that. Finance is a huge field that can roughly be divided into asset pricing and corporate finance. Each one of these has can be broken down further into subfields. For example asset pricing can be roughly divided into theoretical and empirical. Financial econometrics, related field, can be considered a subfield of empirical asset pricing. The mathematics of pricing derivative securities can be also considered as a subfield of asset pricing, although mathematical finance is such huge subject now that it can be pursued as a field on its own right within some mathematics departments. Besides theoretical and empirical, research in asset pricing can also have behavioral and experimental dimensions. Market microstructure is another big subfield in asset pricing and it deals with the micro-analysis of how exchange takes place in financial markets. Faculty rosters in finance departments often include people who work in international finance. Corporate finance also a very big subject on its own right. It deals with financial decision making within a firm and it has closer links to the theory of firm, I/O, and, like in asset pricing, the research in corporate finance can be theoretical or empirical, with behavioral and experimental methods becoming popular. The biggest difference between finance and economics phd programs is that if you're in a finance phd program, you essentially have to complete courses in two fields: corporate finance and asset pricing (in addition to first year economics and econometrics courses, and other electives) and you have to write a thesis in finance or a related subject. Economics PhD students are usually free to complete three fields where one can be chosen from finance department. If you have an intention to pursue two fields from finance departments, then it makes sense to apply directly to Finance PhD program. If you're economics PhD student, you can write a thesis on asset pricing or corporate finance as long as you can find an adviser. Some economics departments have asset pricing people or econometricians, others don't. In the later case, finding an adviser might be tricky because finance faculty might or might not want to work with economics phd students (personally, I think it totally depends on your interests and whether you have any good ideas for research rather some bureaucratic technicalities. If they see benefits of working with you, they'll work with you.) Some economics departments teach their own asset pricing courses even though the department of finance also has them (e.g. UCLA, Berkeley, UCSD, USC, Minnesota). One notable difference between the asset pricing faculty in the economics departments vs people in the finance departments is that people who work in economics departments tend to focus on theoretical asset pricing, international finance, or macro asset pricing while people who work in finance departments usually tend to work on the empirical side, but that's not always true. From the employment perspective, I think the academic market for corporate finance types is bigger (think of all MBA programs that need corporate finance faculty) while empirical asset pricing people tend to face very good prospects in the private sector. Financial econometrics and mathematical finance are probably the most lucrative fields to work in industry although I am sure people who work in say international finance or market microstructure could still find very good employment.

Duke's department of economics seems to have more of "superstar-like" personalities than Rice. I constantly see people talking about professors moving in and out of Duke on the "Big Market Moves" thread, but I never see Rice get mentioned there. If you can obtain a strong letter of recommendation from someone who is well recognized, then I think that could make one's case for being accepted into a top 10 PhD program much stronger. That's the only clear advantage from going to Duke, IMHO. Size factor is probably not a big deal from classroom size perspective because Duke is not that much bigger than Rice. However, Duke's economics department and the business school dominate the ones at Rice in terms of size and research output. Still, such differences are extremely important for graduate students, but they're kind of dampened at undergraduate level. Both school seem to be a good place to be an undergraduate student.

Well, obviously, you have there the University of Chicago, Northwestern, and UIUC. These are the only IL universities with nationwide recognition. And then there are the rest of schools all or most with limited recognition outside of state boundaries. Northwestern and the University of Chicago run some of the finest MBA programs in the world. Nothing else come close in Illinois. The next best IL school would be UIUC-Urbana Champaign, which is tier below those two, but nonetheless a well respected program and university with nation-wide recognition. Loyola, DePaul, and UIC have MBA programs and might be a good universities to attend if you can't get into the top schools but want to work on an MBA degree without leaving Chicago. If you're willing to travel just outside of the boundaries of Illinois, then that would open some other great possibilities, like University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Notre Dame, University of Michigan, Purdue, Indiana University. Some of these are no farther from Chicago than Illinois's own flagship University of Illinois campus at Urbana Champaign.

Ivy league is a sports league that includes some of the most prestigious and oldest universities in the northeastern United States. Ivy League includes some of the finest universities in the world. At the same time I'd like to point out that neither all of the top universities are Ivy League members nor some of the Ivy League schools are exactly completely dominating non-Ivy league universities in most dimensions (Brown, Cornell come to mind). For example, private universities like MIT, Caltech, CMU, Nothwestern, University of Chicago, Stanford, Duke, Rice as well as some great public universities such as UC Berkeley, UCLA, or Michigan are not Ivy League schools, while they're certainly just as good in many if not most dimensions as the Ivy League schools. Now, if you compare the fees of the Ivy League schools to comprable non-Ivy league universities, the fees are about the same for private universities, but lower at public schools. Ivy league, as well as most of other universities I mentioned, have very good financial aid packages for undergraduate and graduate students. Regarding the prestige factor vs departmental ranking, I can see the former being more important at undergraduate level, but departmental ranking, and more importantly the faculty interests, becomes far more important at the graduate level.

I have heard a story that if you're coming from China and you want to got to a top US phd program, you should probably get a masters degree from an institution that has an established record of placing its graduates into top US PhD programs.

I think any large, densely populated city with lots of walkable communities and functional public transport system should be a good place to live without a car. I suspect the usual suspects are Berkeley, Boston, Boulder, Chicago, NYC, Seattle, etc. I think having a car in some of such place could actually be a significant liability (need to look for housing with parking, pay high parking and insurance fees, etc).

The car insurance figure sounds excessive. I think someone in mid 20s who's never driven in the united states before can get a minimal insurance contract for under $700 for six months when living in an expensive coastal state or a large city. This figure will go down considerably after two years of driving experience or if living elsewhere. If you attend a university in a large, densely populated urban area you might not need to have a car, but if you live in some small isolated college town, having a car could be handy to feel less isolated. And then there are a few, recently grown, sprawling large cities where you basically have to have a car, like it not (like say some large cities in Texas or Arizona, fortunately, most of good schools are not in such cities)

My understanding is that the theory of asset pricing is linked to macroeconomics (e.g. dynamic representative agent models with incomplete markets and their implications for asset markets) but I don't know how much the macroeconomics course that you take will actually emphasize the finance applications. I think the finance seminar is certainly better from application perspective. It will help you to figure out what issues you're interested in, pick the PhD programs to apply to, have something intelligent to say in the application essay, come up with a good paper to send with application, etc. But yes, it may be hard. In fact, it is expected at the top finance departments that you should know econometrics, time series, and the dynamic optimization methods used in macroeconomics before you take a PhD finance seminar. However, the lesser departments allow less prepared students to take such seminars. You should talk to the professors to see which course is more manageable for you at this point.