chris_tyman

1. For your range of schools, recommendation letters are the most important. If two of your undergrad letters are from professors who can only talk about your grades, then might as well forget them. I would be direct and ask the international and financial economist about the rank of schools that you should aim for, and whether they would be supportive and write a strong letter. If they are really top and like you, two such letters and perhaps even some direct phone call would significantly increase your chances. 2) You have done enough courses. Repeating analysis is at most marginal.

I would not say this kind of topics are impossible, but it would be extremely difficult to get admitted let alone do well on the job market 5 or 6 years down the road even if you get admitted. I would be extremely cautious. Sorry. The truth may be harsh. But it's not as easy as you think for getting accepted into UC Davis PhD Econ. It's actually decent enough so there are lots of competition. The fact that you are from Davis would not help, or even hurting. Every one has good GPA and GRE. Research experience and recommendation letters are what differentiate you from others.

As of now, you have no chance in the programs that you mentioned except may be the UCLA Masters in Applied Economics. But the nature of a terminal master is not the same as a research degree. Good news: Time is on your side because you still have about two years to figure out your dream. What kind of topics are interesting to you? Why do you want to do graduate school? Besides the obvious (improve GPA, GRE etc), if you are very serious about research, you should start (Now !!!) doing RA work for some of the professors in your department with the ultimate goal of getting a good letter from them. The alternative route is to explore some RA positions such as JPal, Federal Reserves, Treasury etc, depending on what you like. These will set you back for a couple of years but often for your own good. Pretty much all UC has good PhD programs in economics. UC Davis is especially strong in its agricultural economics program (ARE). If you are into these areas of research, you can also apply to the ARE programs which are relatively easier to be admitted.

Chill dude. Just make sure that you don't fail these courses but the focus should be on research papers and ideas. The courses does not matter at all at the end.

1) My bet is that admission to Top 30 program would be long shot. What kind of letters are you getting? 2) Recommendation letters matters the most. Applicants for top 30 programs all have pretty uniformly strong GPA and math courses anyway. 3) Job market is tough, especially if you are coming from a lower ranked schools. Finance jobs have some salary premium relative to Econ jobs, but it's far more difficult to get into a finance program than a econ program. And if you can always find a finance professor as your adviser if you are in econ anyway. Unless you are sure, econ is safer bet. If you are in top 30, then you should be fine on the job market (private, academic or government). And there's no such thing as your ability is far too abstract and theoretical. Well, I have to warn you that it's like 10 times harder on the job market if you are planning to do theory though....

Research expectation does increases as the school rank rises. Another thing the committee will look for is a match in research interest. When you apply, take a few minutes to skim through the faculty profiles to see in what field do they specialize in. Ideally, your research experience is aligned with the strength of the group of faculty. This is more important as the rank of the school goes down (because the departments tends to be smaller and more specialized). Don't need to read and cite their paper. Just get a sense of the department. This will not only help your admission but also your experience down the road if you get accepted...

No one expects you to publish prior to your Ph.D admission. So research experience basically comes from your RA work that should be shown on your writing sample, or preferably, a faculty whom you have extensive interaction with. This really counts if, say, Milton Friedman recommends you to a top program because he thinks you are technically sound and have great economic intuition/ideas etc. The example is obviously exaggerated but you should now have a sense of what the committee is looking for. They look for potential where you can be a job market star five years down the road.

Perhaps let's start by asking why would you want to do a Ph.D? It's no small decision because it will be take at least five (more likely six nowadays) of your twenties.

Let's not argue about the first part of this sentence. I agree with you on the later part - remember here the catch is that the OP is talking about top 20 schools, and of course the implicit assumption that OP does well in his program, regardless of ranking. I agree, again, the OP is talking about top 20 schools. Connection opens the door for you, but after that it's all yours. Only true gem will eventually shine. Here I would add the rate of convergence also matters because of time-discount factor.

The first question I would ask is whether you are satisfied with you current offer. If you are not willing to go anywhere but top 5 schools (with funding), then working as an RA for 1-2 years is not a bad bet. Otherwise, I would to straight for a PhD. Remember, all that matters at the end is the quality of your dissertation, but not because you are from MIT or Harvard. Will working improve the chance of getting into a better program? As Kronecker and Asquare pointed out, IF conditions such as getting good quality work and getting great LoR from a well-known economist are met, then the answer is certainly yes. You can minimize the uncertainty by knowing in advance who you are working for, as 2010app9357 suggested. A positive experience as an RA at the Fed will benefit more than just your application package. You can work with established economists, learn invaluable programming skills, attend academic workshop, take classes at nearby colleges, and more importantly, what you do and don't like. Barring from a few exceptions, what would be your reaction a fresh undergraduate claims that her research interest is, say, econometrics? RA is an opportunity to understand economic theory more in-depth and why they are useful. For example, at the Fed you will learn how macroeconomic theories are applicable to policy debates. Is being an RA always fun? No, not even if you are fortunately enough to work with the most friendly and famous economist. There are always menial tasks such as collecting data, making crazy graphs, checking references, proofreading. But only in a dream would you find a job that pays well and you can do whatever you like. Also, menial tasks is also a learning process. For instance, collecting data teaches you how to construct a database, and proofreading allows you to read the early draft of a publishable paper. Negative experience due to external (e.g., assignment of bad economists) or internal factor (e.g. insufficient work because one is lazy and careless ), however, does exist. In this case, people usually get paid well and leave after a year. Now, with both up and down side, their priori probabilities, the variance of these probabilities (uncertainty), a utility function, and your subjective time-discount factor, I trust you can come up with a good model for your decision. :D

Interesting. Many of the staff economists are not U.S. citizens, so I do not see why citizenship is required for RAs - unless, of course, RAs have access to secret data(e.g. green book forecast).

This is not certainly not the case for all Fed. I know multiple full-time research associates at a regional Fed who are neither US citizens nor permanent residents.

In this case you should add it's first come first serve and valid until you have no money left. Otherwise isn't this how the big banks collapsed? By overextending themselves.

Research related work definitely helps. During my visit, a professor said my application stood out because of my experience. I would like to point out, however, the benefit of related research experience is more than just helping one's application, especially for a person who is fresh out of college and do not have a clear idea about what research really is. It's more than just scoring As in exams!

Berkeley without question. So congratulations and see you there this coming Fall! :D

This is unfortunately true (as I learned this year) because each finance program takes only 3-6 people per year, i.e. Chances for a top 20 program is still admittedly slim as possible_phd mentioned. If this is your career goal and you have enough support, however, why not go for it? Door will open when you work hard enough, even if it is not the desired door.

Publication is not a requirement for admission in Finance. Your GMAT score is impressive, but the lack of rigorous math courses may hurt your chance at top schools such as Kellogg, Anderson, Columbia and HBS. Your 3.3 graduate GPA could suggest a below average performance in some of the applied math courses you listed, which may further hurt your chance. I would have to agree with possible_PhD, unless you have three stellar letters of recommendations from renowned people.

OK. Let's discuss when there is a real profile.

If you have recommendations from three Nobel prize winning economists and publication(s) from top journals, you can get into any schools you would like to.

Delicious!

Hong Kong University (HKU) was once my dream school when I was a kid (I moved to the U.S. in 2003). It is, overall, the most established and the only top 100 university in Hong Kong. With USD$ 50,000 / year ~ HKD$32500 / month, together with its relatively low tax rate and tuition fee, you would have lived like a king there. That said, I think you made the right choice. While HKU does have a world-class medical school, its economics department is not even the best in Hong Kong. (HKUST, on the other hand, has a tier 1 and rising finance department, whose rank tends to correlates with the economic department.) It all depends on your career goal. If you would like to stay in Hong Kong and work in private sector or government agency (e.g. Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the equivalent of Federal Reserve in U.S.), this may be appropriate. If, however, you would like to stay in the U.S. with returning to Hong Kong a possibility, I believe you made the right decision. The direct evidence can be found on their faculty list - most of their faculty have a PhD from a tier 1 U.S. university such as Rochester and UCLA. Therefore, when you make your final decision, you may want to pay attention to the university's international reputation as well. My experience was that people in Hong Kong pay a lot of attention to the brand name of a university, even though many of them can't even recognize the like of Caltech, Wisconsin, and UCSD (or worse yet, Northwestern). By the way, Congratulations on the admits!

The email I got from her says in addition to admission, I was also nominated for fellowship. Hence, technically, I am "nominated" but not yet "given" a fellowship, especially when the rate of success is less than 100%.

I got an email from Ms. Lee about the fly out. It seems that UCLA will only reimburse those who choose to accept their offer...:whistle:

Can't believe that you are only "slightly" relieved :D

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