Olm

It's been said many times before: if you want to go for a PhD, do not get a Master's in the US. The ones in Canada are cheaper and have far better placement records. If you took the GRE without studying and got a 740Q, you should probably be able to hit 800 without too much trouble. You should definitely take it again.

Top 15 schools, about 15%, and it slowly goes up to almost 50% as you go down the list.

There are a lot of people in your shoes, believe it or not. I would study hard for the GRE, try to get a good quantitative score. If you want a shot at a top school, you should probably get a Master's in econ first. Otherwise, you're probably looking at something outside the top 20.

Outside the top 20, and I would apply to many schools. I had a similar profile and failed to gain admission to any of the schools I applied (and I had backup schools ranked around 40-70).

mathecon classes cover the usual calculus and linear algebra topics. You have succeeded in grad econ classes, so I doubt any adcoms are going to be all that concerned with your lack of standard math courses.

What matters is that you have a sufficient technical background, and enough advanced courses in micro and metrics so that you know what you're going into. Public Policy? I'm not sure how much of a help that is going to be. Engineering is math-intensive, so that's a very good bet.

You should be careful with "safety" schools. People have been rejected because their profiles are too good.

His post was a response to the initial post of over two years old, not a new request for help. The OP is long gone. Could you please clarify your comments?

I applied in the 08 cycle and failed spectacularly. I'm going to be applying again this year... if I again fail to get into PhD programs, I'll settle for a life as a professional bureaucrat.

GRE is what they use to screen out people that have no business applying. 770+ is fine. 760, I would retake.

Hemalas, your very first post was a "necro", i.e. you bumped a very old post (the thread was from 2008). Please check the dates of the posts you are bringing up.

As others have said before, your actual grades do not count. Your relative grades do. 79% in the Egyptian system, I do not know how to interpret that. Adcomms do.

760 GRE Q won't keep you out of any good MA programs. Your profile looks good for schools outside the top 10 if you can perform in an MA. UWO Toronto Queen's UBC, you should apply to those programs as an MA for sure. I would also include McGill and others here have said SFU.

If your TOEFL and other english test scores are all right, you should be okay as well as your AWA is 4 or above.

Fortran.