israelecon

my understanding is that this course is given both as a condensed course before the semester begins and as a regular course during the semester. if you don't do the one that begins august 25th, you will probably have to do the one that is during the semester.

this was exactly my point, i think. you would have a hard time explaining to graduate schools why you studied at NOVA and didn't try to go to a 4 year university. by using it as a stepping stone to a 4-year university you give them a pretty good answer.

:tup: while much of what pevdoki says is true, i think it is out of context for the OP question. Sure, you don't need to be in a top ranked school in UG to get into a top ranked phd program. but there is a huge difference between stony brook and NOVA. NOVA is not a research institution and doesn't offer graduate degrees (i think), and would probably be ranked much much lower than top 100 and there is probably absolutely nobody teaching there that can write you a worthwhile recommendation, because the people there are probably not research economists. so i would have to say that you should definitely transfer if you can. there is also another problem with having gone to a community college, although it may not be fair. the problem is that it signals to adcoms that a student is less serious academically, or was unable to get into a better university. so although this is not fair always, the adcoms have to go with the information they have and with the odds and the odds are that the average community college student will not be as good as the average university student. obviously, transferring to georgetown will show them that you are serious about your education. and one last thing, although you indicate that the studies at NOVA are challenging, the adcoms do not know this. again the average course in a research university is harder and more in depth than the same course in a community college and therefore doing well in community college in not such an informative signall of your academic ability, whereas if you take courses in georgetown the adcoms will hav an idea more or less of the level of the courses you took.

it seems to me that if you can get faculty to review your SOP, then you can also get them to give you an estimate of your chances of acceptance. this will be much more informative than anything we can possibly tell you.

golden rule is obviously right. nobel prizes are usually given to people way past their prime and often retired (with some exceptions of course). also, many schools try to hire nobel prize winners, so that they can make exactly italos' claim, even though in terms of actual current research they add little value. maybe a better way to use nobel prizes for ranking is how many future nobel prize winners there are in a department, but that ranking obviously won't help us now.

i would think field courses like game theory or mathematical economics are pretty useful. basically as was said before, the importance is probably in how technical the course is and less on how "basic" the course is in terms of economics education.

i agree that most field courses are not worth much for the adcoms. but i would go even further and say that macro undergraduate courses are not very good signals either because they are usually taught on a very low level (at least from a technical aspect, i.e. it is taught by moving curves up and down and pretty imprecisely). i am not saying that it is totally useless, but if you had to choose whether to ace a micro exam or a macro exam, i think the micro exam is much more important. this is of course not true for graduate macro where the models are already well defined (more or less).

i am not a legal expert. but, i can tell you that the applications usually ask you if you have been convicted of a felony, other than a minor traffic violation. it seems to me that you were never convicted of anything, you got a speeding ticket. and you weren't convicted of not paying. if i were you though i probably would pay the ticket if i want a visa. i find it hard to believe that this is what will prevent you from getting a visa, but then again i don't hand out the visas. you should call the schools if you are worried, most of them have departments that take care of visas. you can call anonymously if you want, no need to give them any information about you. you can probably also call the consulate in whatever country you are. after all, keep in mind, you didn't pay a speeding ticket, its not like you murdered or robbed someone.

i find it hard to believe that the things you mentioned will factor in to the admission process, unless you give them other reasons to doubt your character. maybe you should have your LOR writers stress also the character aspect. i think it affects international students more because if they have a criminal record then they may have trouble obtaining a visa.

this is just not true. i know several economists who have published a few articles in AER while they were professors at pretty low-ranked universities.

i don't think this was the point. the point was not that people's efforts are on the same level as garbage. the point was that basically such a publication is valueless as research. i.e. if it can't get published in a better place its not worth much research wise. this is how he evaluates it. nothing wrong with that. just because someone put a lot of effort into something doesn't make it good. we aren't little children in school anymore that get evaluated based on effort. people going into academia have to realize that they are entering the big-leagues now where they will be evaluated on quality of output regardless of the effort input. and i don't accept the notion that people brought up here that good research sometimes ends up in such a low rank journal. yes, good research can get bumped down the journal rankings for all kinds of reasons, but there is a limit to how far down it is bumped for technical reasons. there is an amount of bumping that is simply a result of not good research. btw, nobody will build a good academic career from publishing even 50 papers a year in low ranked journals. in other words even if you are a single hitter, you won't make it unless you do hit a home run every once in a while.

why unprofessional? why is trying to keep a high level, and accepting only the best unprofessional? rather, i would think publishing junk just to get it published is unprofessional. it seems you think professional = mediocrity.

i am not saying all good articles are in top journals. this argument can be made for some difference in the rankings, but come on guys, SEJ is way down there in quality. the probability that it is a good article and could not be published in any of the 50 or so better ranked journal is infinitesimal. i don't mean to sound not nice here, but it is likely what you consider a decent article today you will consider garbage once you have more experience and after you do your own quality research. not everything "interesting" is good research. many newspaper articles are interesting and include things i have never thought about, but they are not research or worth anything to anyone who does have a deeper understanding of the field. so we inexperienced people should not be the ones who say "we learned something new, so its a good article", because frankly we still don't know anything, so many very mundane things are new to us. obviously some referee, or if it was published in such a low ranked journal, many many referees deemed this article not very worthy. in any case, i actually asked a professor of mine about SEJ (because of this discussion and he said: "i would rather throw the article in the garbage than publish it there". i think this does say something about the article.

princeton's math camp begins august 25th (my last exam here is august 19th)

this could be true, but since you have a limited amount of time you are better of searching in the top journals than looking for the one good article that may or may not have been published in a third-rank journal. besides, when it comes to getting tenure, promotion, etc, what matters is the quality of the journal you publish in, not the quality of the paper itself.

my father is a tenured professor and he is decent enough (he has 7 publications in AER (and non of them are co-authored), i think we can agree that that is not bad), but he is definitely not passionate about economics. he enjoys the intellectual challenge, but i think he is much more fascinated by say, general relativity theory. he got his phd because the government from the country he was from offered him a fellowship to do a phd in the US, he didn't know what he was getting into, and then by inertia he got an academic job and continued in this way because he didn't want a private sector business type job. so yes, i am sure he enjoys it more than he would, say accounting, but its not like he thinks his work has any influence on anybody (other than his own bank account), and he is definitely not passionate about it.

i have to disagree. many people work 10-12 hours a day and they are certainly not passionate about their work. accountants work more than 12 hours a day sometimes, i haven't yet heard of the accountant who is passionate about filling out tax returns. also, there is a big difference between indifference and passion. i find economics interesting, i find many things interesting, some of them even more than economics, b ut i think i will be best at economics thats why i chose economics. so while i am not indifferent to economics i certainly would not say i have a passion for it, whatever that means. besides, i am still not sure why you need to be passionate at something to be good at it, or want to spend time on it. maybe i just don't want to work a 9-5 job, and that is enough incentive for me to be as creative as i need to be. another point i want to make is that in order to do research i don't think it is passion that you need, it is more intellectual curiosity. i.e. the ability and will to think about and (hopefully) eventually solve interesting problems.

the question of whether it is a respected journal is subjective, but a top department will probably not consider such a publication to have much (if any) value. however, the quality difference between an article in SEJ and a top journal is quite significant (just read and compare). i know some economists who wouldn't even bother sending an article there. i.e. if thats the best place it can get published, its not worth publishing.

i don't see why not. i think what you need the passion for is maybe to give up the big money you can make in the private sector and earn decent but not as much money in academia. but even for that i don't really think you need to be passionate. i just don't think you need to be passionate about something to be good at it, just like being passionate about something does not necessarily make you good at it.

harsh, yet true

even before 2004, these are not the standard rankings

i think that it is acceptable, but i don't really think it will make that much of a difference. if they don't ask for it, they are likely not to read it. besides i think that course descriptions and books aren't that useful, because the same material can be taught at different levels. a lot the same things are taught in calculus and real analysis, but the syllabus won't necessarily reflect the fact that those same things are now taught rigorously with proofs etc. i think it is more valuable to have the LOR writers describe the level of your math ability rather than a syllabus which is not always clear or reliable for that matter.

i actually think that unless you know exactly what your recommender is writing, sending too many might hurt you. who knows, maybe the fourth letter was the one that got you rejected. the way i see it is that you 1 or 2 best letters add to your chances(if they are good), from the third one on they can only hurt (i.e. they have a non-positive marginal productivity). the point is that you get accepted based on your best letter, but you can get rejected based on any of the letters. so why increase the risk when there is nothing to be gained?

non-academic LORs are usually not very helpful and they can also hurt you.

the three points they make in the abstract are nothing new, i think. but, i would like to see the rankings they use.