tennisboy85

well most professors rank chicago that hight because chicago has such a great history in economics, they won so many nobel prizes in the past, however, they do not know how much their program has been suffering lately.

haha can't believe Miaataro got rejected from UCL and is going to MIT. Do you know why they rejected you?

Here is mine: 1, Harvard 2, MIT 3, Princeton 4, Stanford 5, Berkeley 6, Chicago 7, Yale 8, Northwestern 9, Columbia 10, UPENN 11, NYU

Other than those, none (not even Warwick imo).

I do not think it is worth taking out a loan to attend UBC. Just go to McGill, the brandname does not mean much after all, no matter where you attend if you can stand out, you can get good admits to PhDs.

Based on these placements, it looks like you guys are going to be forced to go to princeton, poor bastards

Well I think the most easily understandable books are the the Steve Shreve books, mainly the Continous Time Finance II and Rennie and Baxter: Financial Calculus: An intro to derivatives pricing. These deal with derivative pricing, which is what graduate level finance is mainly about. I do not think that on the graduate level you would ever use a book like Bodie and Kane, its just way too basic. Duffie is way too advanced, just for advanced PhD students, def. not recommended.

Actually you can switch even after 1 or 2 month of courses, so do not worry about it, just take EME and then you can figure it out later.

I just checked that girls CV that you mentioned, Goldenrule. Wow, I mean wow. Here is the link if anyone is interested: http://econ-www.mit.edu/files/3715

If you do not want to go for a PhD than go to Duke. LSE is a lot of math, and if you have not done much of it in the past, then the course will be very challenging. LSE has a strong prestige in UK, however, getting a job in the US from here would be very hard. Especially since most US companies seem to ignore online applications and are more interested in getting your CV in career fairs etc. Plus I feel like LSE's reputation even in the UK lacks behind Oxbridge by a mile. Moreover, the campus (well not sure if we can call it a campus) at LSE is total crap, not comparable to Duke. I would go to Duke. By the way I am currently at LSE.

So I talked to my friend today and yes he is rejecting, he is probably taking Harvard instead and still waiting on Chicago GSB. He was top of his class at Moscow State.

Yeah Financial Economics, not sure if he already declined it or not, I'll ask him tomorrow

My friend got an offer a couple of days ago, after having the interview about a week ago. He is not going to take the offer though.

My friend is currently interviewing for MIT (Fin. Econ) in Cambridge. They flew him over from Europe. Just in case anyone is interested.

MIT admission process makes no sense whatsoever

They actually had a placement from UPF masters in econ to LSE EME among their 2006-2007 placements.

UPF has crap placements, just look on their website. There are even many people who did their undergrad at very good school than did masters at UPF and still could not get a good placement. That is a very bad signal for me. Actually for EME you do not even need distinction to go on to PhD at LSE, just something close to it. However, a lot of the material taught in the course is anything but exciting or easy.

I think you might even get into Michigan, however, I think you should have applied to more schools in the 10-20.

Well the only problem with that course is that it is partly taught by Leonardo Felli, whose lectures are anything but exciting.

Well Miaataro, the thing about your profile is that you already have two masters degrees and amazing GPA (top 1% in class I assume). Plus the finnish education system is considered very strong. However, I still do not think you will get into any top 10 (especially top 5 school). So I think the conclusion should rather be that even with a perfect profile (aka yours) from a less known school you cannot get into top 5.

Swarthmore is top 3 LAC, which is on par with some of the Ivys in terms of competitiveness. People outside the US do not know much about LACs, but some of them (many) are truly amazing and have better teaching than most famous research universities.

I am doing Finance and Economics at LSE right now, and I can confirm that the placements so far have been terrible, meaning only about 10-20% got jobs so far. Only a couple in I-Banking (meaning IBD), only one that I know of who got an IBD job in London. Most jobs people have gotten jobs outside of the UK, usually in their home countries. London seems to be the worst place right now to get a job. However, I have to tell you that the LSE degree does help you to get interviews, interviews for jobs that I could have never dreamt about with my undergrad. However, no success for me yet. A lot of people in the program actually have not even been applying for jobs. Do not really now what they are planning to do.

economics: the acceptance rate is more about 25% and not 5%

Those are the PhD placements and not the masters placements, read it more carefully, it says it

Well I have not applied for PhD this year and I do not think that I am going to able to get a distinction at LSE (it is a hellot of harder than it seems), thus I cannot continue to the PhD. I do not know what to do than between now and next year, when I will apply for PhDs. Thus, I thought a one-year master would be a good idea.