Equilibrium

I will be mostly likely attending a top 25-30 PhD program this fall, and probably have a sufficient, although not stellar math preparation, paired with what is probably an above average Econ preparation at the undergraduate level. I am usually pretty good with concepts in Math, although I will not be the best by any means except for a few classes in math I took as an Undergrad. Given the following background, and being admittedly only slightly above average at math at the college level, should I be scrambling to review a ton of math this summer? or even try to pick up some more work in stats or something? I know I will be reviewing at least a bit of the calculus and basic linear algebra. Econ Stats I A+ Econ Stats II B+ Intro Econometrics A- Calculus I -A+ (online while in High school with handwritten tests) Calculus II- B+ Calculus III B Calculus IV(Green's/Stokes, differential forms type stuff) B- (A on final) Linear Algebra(with some proof) A- Stats/Prob I(upper level undergrad) B Introduction to Proof A- Intro To Real Analysis(probably running B+/A- in this class right now) Recommendations from anyone, especially those having been through a first year PhD progam would be appreciated.

Application website hasn't changed in a long time, has anyone gotten a letter or email?

congrats on the admit, hopefully you get funding

ditto to what asianeconomist said, with those GRE(nearly identical to mine, i got 600v) I already have a top 25 funded offer, I didn't apply to top 10, but should have. I would have gotten through the initial screening and my LOR were probably absolutely amazing which means I would have had a shot even with my 3.6 gpa.

congrats! hopefully this is some inspiration to those who haven't heard, if you haven't heard, you haven't been rejected yet. If you haven't been rejected, you're probably still in the running. I would imagine it is not over until schools see how many people accept during the first round.

this thread is entirely separate from admissions crunch some people are feeling, it is an econ forum after all...anyway, more on topic, given a day or two I might be able to look up some papers that some IO and Game Theory people are doing at my undergrad, a few very good researchers, I just don't have paper titles offhand Good Luck

completely an elective at my rural high school, only half a semester long, got me interested in the subject(great teacher) and after going to Future Business Leaders of America's National competition in that subject I started to consider it as a major going into college. Aerospace won out on the application forms, but after a year of that I switched, now here I am and I'll probably be attending a top 20-30 phd program this fall

Following up just like a few others, be reassured, they won't rescind an offer unless you don't graduate with your BA or unless they had some other condition(ie you finish all of your in progress classes with good grades) mostly they'll just make sure you graduate, it's just a numbers game, they know from the past that so many of their acceptances will probably get in and go to other schools so they accept 30-40 figuring somewhere around half to 2/3 of those will actually attend. No worries.

Yeah crunch time for Astral and Olm, best wishes

just because a thread doesn't go exactly where it was aimed at doesn't mean most of the content isn't still useful to the viewers. sexist or not(i think no big deal on this one) the information about the number of females admitted, plus the rest of the information about the school was actually pretty helpful, the rest is just the peanut gallery's intercessions which are pretty normal to a lot of threads. No disrespect to the moderators, thanks to the OP for the posts regarding information I found useful. Lets not turn this into a war over authority, it's not a democracy, but that doesn't mean you can't voice the reasons you found something useful rather than just bashing the establishment. One is productive, the other isn't

yeah good stuff here, you people rock!

Usually, at least for undergrad, student health insurance falls under the fees portion of things at UIUC, so I'm pretty sure that when they say they are waiving tuition and fees that includes the fee you would otherwise pay for student health insurance coverage, that's like 95% sure on my part, I'm sure an inquiry to the graduate director(Deltas, who signed the acceptance letter) would clear that up.

as for more recently, mostly there is just links to current job market papers and such, if I learn more about any data available I'll let you guys know, probably something good to be asking when you visit

I could as a few prof here, Larry Samuelson did his PhD here, went from FLA, to Syracuse, UW-Milwaukee, to now Yale I think

congrats!

If you don't feel that it would allow for a feasible standard of living, but you feel UIUC is an option you would like to pursue, I don't think it's out of line to simply tell them that their offer would not truly allow you to consider going to their school, whereas you might actually prefer their school over others you will/have been admitted to. Along these lines just let them know you appreciate the offer but you can't actually even consider it even though you feel honored to be found adequately qualified for admissions. Maybe they'll send you back something along the lines of, we wish we could offer you more, in the event others turn down offers, funding may become available. If you're not spouting numbers and demanding say exactly what OSU offers you I don't think you're making enemies if you're simply saying you can't see yourself making a living wage out of 8k a year and no funding in the summer or whatever.

I would go with No_Time on this one, if they are truly interested in seeing you possibly going to their program, all they need to know is the general range of offers you're getting, and not specifically who each one is from. That way if you're on a waitlist, they can give you a better idea of what sort of chances funding and a place would become available for you as certain people decline and accept. In this sense they just want to be able to ask you to sort of delay making your decision and that it's feasible you get a comparable offer from their school later on. If it is necessary for you to tell them exactly which schools offer what, I think that's a bit unfair considering they don't owe you anything and you'd be giving them a whole lot of information that would be valuable to them. If they can't otherwise get this information from the other schools already I would just as well figure you'd be doing way more than you are obligated to in order to keep the communications open. If it were standard practice, they would already have this information more likely than not

You're definitely going to have to own up at some point to having dropped out of a PhD program, ethically and on principle alone they can't avoid rescinding your acceptance if they find out after the fact. AND, if they weren't going to do that if the found out, then they would have let you in in the first place had they known it during admissions. So if your LOR are truly better(and I'm assuming these references know that you dropped out of a PhD program), then they are probably willing to attest to the fact that your situation has changed and that this prior history should not be counted against you to such an extent that you should be barred entry to the PhD program the second time around.

also bertthepuppy... do you have a profile posted anywhere?

As small as the admit group seems to be so far, I'm surprised you only got offered 8k a year to TA at UIUC since they pretty much tell you on their website they almost always fund domestic students at a higher level than this. It doesn't really seem that they want to admit people if they can't offer something. Take into account also that the 15k or 16k offer from UIUC is equivalent to some offers in the 25-30k per year after Cost of Living adjustment between how far those 15k dollars would go in say New York.. Did you by any chance take a look at their website about the PhD program, and/or possibly ask why their offer was at that level rather than the higher level that I think they explicitly state as their "general" funding package?

congrats to everyone who got in!

congrats dreamer, great offer

have you applied to any MA programs? Jumping straight into a PhD sequence to show you can hack it would probably be only as good as just doing MA econ as the extra preparatory work in econ that you feel you might be lacking for admissions, and would also solve the problem of getting into better places than Temple the second time around...just a thought

Not too many RAs although there are for sure a few spots that I'm aware of, just depends on which faculty members have grants/funding at any particular point in time. The department seems to be putting most of their money into TA ships, and basically funding as many people as possible, i would imagine almost all of the PhD students are funded because of this. Part of this is the business side of things because UIUC is a nearly 30k undergrad institution with like 12-15k or something like that in the college of LAS which is where ECON is placed(used to be able to choose econ in school of business and econ in LAS) I will be in the last graduating class to have had that option(I chose LAS, and fulfilled my elective hours with a math minor rather than a bunch of business since my preference has always been more towards the academic side of things) This just means that there are A LOT of sections of intro econ and they can very easily justify giving out a lot of solid offers for TA ships rather than just exhausting discretionary funding by giving more lucrative RA ships. I'm pretty sure all RA positions are decided upon by individual professors, so at some point they'll probably be a shot at something like that. The fellowship allowing us to just do school and no TA for year and a half is nice because we can get through core course work, no prelims! just B+ average in macro, micro and stats sequences.

the website will tell you that funding is generally 13k+ with tuition fee waivers etc... depending