decide_aposteriori

hahahaha, ever read "Why Talent is Overrated?" A lot of it has to do with how much (quality) time someone has put into thinking about economics, mathematics, or - to a lesser extent - academia in general. I will concede that being at a top school may signal you're more intelligent but that intelligence explains a smaller amount of why they're their then most would have us believe. If you are willing to suffer (ie put incredible amounts of time not only learning economics, mathematics, and how to do research but spending time getting better at your weak areas) I think you can do great things. Much of why those students go to great schools is that they have spent a lot of time doing these things already. They have signalled as best they could that they want to be great economists. Those students at lower tiers could have a bigger drive (or spent as much time on quality studying) as someone who got into MIT but maybe they didn't signal it well. Or maybe they haven't been as driven and are actually 'behind' those at the top schools. The reason not as many lower tier students get the best jobs is they, on average, are disadvantaged on two fronts. 1) The quality of professors, resources, and opportunities may be limited to them while in graduate school and 2) they need to 'catch up' on the quality time spent studying relative to those at the top-tiers. Although the first point may influence a student's drive to succeed most top 100 departments will provide enough resources for the student to succeed if that student wants to (I'm sure their are cases where this isn't true, so remember "on average"). As for quality studying time, it's taxing so many people don't want to do it. If a person isn't in the habit of doing this it's difficult to start, especially when their habits have gotten them as far as a PhD program. It's like this pro cyclists who spoke to my cycling team in college said, "It's often not the strongest, fittest, best guys who go pro, it's the guys who stick with it."

I'm going to University of Arizona, PhD, forgot to post awhile ago. Congrats! For reading week you get 2 weeks off because of the Olympics instead of the normal 1.

I would donate in order to keep the domain from expiring

yep i'm currently at UBC. I'll be there till July 10th. PM me if you want

PROFILE: Type of Undergrad: Large State School in the US Undergrad GPA: 3.69 (overall including math and econ majors) Type of Grad: MA Economics (Canadian Uni) GRE: 760 Q, 670 V, 5.0 W Math Courses: Calc III, Intro to Proofs, Abstract Algebra, Numerical Analysis I&II, Differential Equations, Analysis, Probability, Linear Algebra Econ Courses: Micro (grad), Macro (grad), Econometrics (grad), IO, Topics in Micro, Econ history Other Courses: Java Letters of Recommendation: Math PhD Duke, Econ PhD LSE Research Experience: None Teaching Experience: None Research Interests: Experimental, Labor, Neuro, applied econometrics SOP: Standard RESULTS: Acceptances: Uni Arizona, Uni Hawaii Waitlists: Rejections: MSU, Purdue, OSU, Pittsburgh, UCSC What would you have done differently? I would have started the process earlier. Since I couldn't make any December deadlines I was constrained on the places I could apply to. I'm really happy with Arizona, it fits my interests really well.

Arizona is a better fit for my interests.

That list moves a lot. There are many people in the program who are very happy with living in Marine drive. I'd really recommend living there.

Institution: Purdue Program: Econ PhD Decision: Rejected Funding: N/A Notification date: April 18 Notified through: Email Comments: Finally

At UArizona it's called math camp and it runs 3 weeks before classes start

Yea, Krueger's website (choose macro theory for graduate students). My math background was good - I was a math major - but there are people with a much less math intensive background who did fine. Some even did much better than me! It depends on how much time you're willing to spend with the material. I actually think coming in with a strong math background disadvantaged me since I thought this was going to be "easy". By all accounts, study hard first semester!

UBC is tough! First semester is hard, depending on your math background and how tough your economics program was in undergraduate. We barely used Romer for macro. Most of our macro was from "Macroeconomic Theory" by Dirk Krueger. We covered discrete and continuous time mostly in infinite horizon settings (ie dynamic programming stuff) Micro we used Jehle and Remy. But the class was more centered around Yoram Halevy's notes. Just so you know, you cover more in the masters micro then in a first semester PhD micro, it's just less in depth. We did cover some cool stuff like recursive expected utility, rule rationality, subjective expected utility, and some crazy game theory stuff that I'm still in aww that people came up with this. For econometrics check out Economics 527 Econometric Methods. I agree that the first semester was taught by relatively new professors. I believe that's a reason why the placements weren't as good as Queen's. However, I think the people that are applying next year from my cohort will have really good placements because, like you mentioned, you can take classes by more well-known professors and get recommendations from them.

Vancouver is notoriously expensive for food. I've actually only lived one place that had cheap food, North Dakota! Maybe you can give me some shopping tips, I'm going to need them!:p

these people who say they eat like a king on $30/week, I really don't see it happening for me. I easily eat 2 boxes of cereal, a gallon of milk, 4 hamburgers, 5 chicken breasts, 2 heads of lettuce, 7 apples, 7 oranges, a box of pasta, half-box couscous, etc, etc. This is all eating in my house, $75/week is bare-minimum (I'm only 155 lbs too). I'm usually hungry most of the time too.

I'm still waiting to hear something from Purdue. I called them last week and the secretary said they still haven't "reviewed" my application. That means, I'm guessing, that they still need to look through applications. Hopefully, I'll hear this week :/. I applied to Tinbergen late March and I don't expect to hear anything from them until May. I checked my OSU status and it says my application is incomplete so...

yep it's raining in Vancouver