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Harry Lime

2nd Level
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Everything posted by Harry Lime

  1. What do you mean "actually"? You fin' to get downgraded.
  2. I think popular/unpopular opinion is easily the most common reason. Though I may have dinged you when I was drunk, we'd need a time stamp to know for sure. I take no responsibility for anything that happens after 6pm my time.
  3. Oh, I missed that memo, I thought it was set up with the assumption that people will use it irresponsibly. I figured asquare was running a controlled experiment. Oh come on.
  4. Then isn't your beef with the fact that downgrading causes that inconvenience, or with the system generally, and not with people who did the downgrading? I mean it's not like we all had any orientation about how to "properly" use this power, it just appeared one day. If you give a gun to a baby, you don't blame the baby.
  5. I can't remember but I may have downgraded the OP (i cant see the post in order to see). I thought it was pretty unhelpful to talk about some lectures as if we all know what he or she is talking about, no introduction, no link. I've often downgraded posts after seeing posts already downgraded for no reason. It's mainly because I hate the system and think it's silly. If that's considered "trolling" in your book, you haven't been around the internet very long. It's funny that it's a huge issue "why are my posts being downgraded.. how am I being unhelpful??" as if being unhelpful has anything to do with it.. ever. 99% of the posts on this forum are technically unhelpful: people shooting the sh*t, talking about lectures they saw assuming we all watched them together, whining about downgraded, etc.. If I could downgrade my own posts I would, but I'm not allowed to.
  6. "Game Theory for Applied Economists" by Gibbons.
  7. I've been privy to Ok's free books for a while, and I can say that he does update the probability book. I downloaded a copy a while ago and then again six months later and there were a lot of revisions. So if you're into it, download it regularly for the most up-to-date version.
  8. WorkingHard: Do you think the OP's SOP is a winner?
  9. Real recognize real. Let's not talk about Harvard and MIT for a couple of posts and see if we get the shakes. OP, I don't know if I can give much advice other than the usual stuff you read here. Just apply to a lot of programs as well as masters programs and full time RA positions, then see where you stand and decide from there.
  10. Yup, that's the killer. If you're getting a PhD in Rocks for Jocks, yeah I'm sure the professors are stoked to get emails from students who say they are interested in working with them. In econ I think it's a whole other ballgame, especially since if you stand a chance for an NSF, you had better be telling them you want to go to a top school which entails emailing professors at top schools. I work for an econ professor who doesn't read more than 3 lines of the emails that I send him about his own research, and I'm his RA.
  11. You must be really new to this place; half of all posts say "analysis," regardless of the context.
  12. ..or at the forefront of.
  13. This is pretty shocking. Anyway, good luck.
  14. Haha.. people always forget/choose-to-forget this qualifier.
  15. You're right, but the only information I have it's what's around me. All the professors I work for are family people who never go out. Whereas with Fed folks, I can have long conversations about types of bourbon and where to get the best bloody mary. With professors I'm like, "Yeah last night I was drinking some Macallan 12 year...", "Oh! What was the occasion?", "Umm.. it was 7pm?"
  16. You're welcome. I imagine adcoms are inundated every cycle with LORs from both Fed economists and LSE Msc professors on behalf of the swath of candidates who are in your position. The main difference I see is that you pay for LSE and the Fed pays you. Also, although I can't speak for LSE, people at the Fed are the only econ people I've met who are regular drinkers. In short: this is a no brainer.
  17. My bad, Zeno. In all honesty I actually didn't read any of the other posts, I just assumed. Full disclosure: I've had a few.
  18. One point that no one has brought up yet: this is ridiculous and will never happen.. ever. Transfer to MIT? Wha?
  19. This is absurd, I was not derisive or mocking. My post is something I tell my heterodox friends all the time, and they laugh like hell. I swear every time I read you post helpfulier-than-thou stuff like "grow up" and "have respect" it immediately conjures an image of Hermione Granger tapping her wand in disgust with her head tilted and lips pouted. Yes, I could have written, "In my opinion you will not make much money if you follow this path, think about your future children." But that's not my style. I'm sorry. I would suggest to you: 1) Stop taking yourself so seriously. 2) Don't assume that just because you are well meaning that the advice you give can't harm those who choose to follow it (a corollary to this would be: don't let the Jeeve's Award go to your head). 3) Have some tolerance for at least a small range of diverse behavior exhibited by people who post on this forum, even if it falls outside the cult of Pollyannaism that often grips this place. I imagine this is will be an exceptionally unpopular post because of the pressure to conform that's pervasive on TM. But if anyone expects conformity from me, they picked the wrong human outlier. To the OP and anyone who is seeking similar advice with regards to placements and salaries, or anyone who is looking beyond where you are going to spend the next 5 years: talk to your professors; do not listen to advice from undergrads regarding post-PhD placement unless they can back it up with a reliable source. I can tell you I have had conversations with former members of admissions and hiring committees at top-2 and top-10 programs, and a great deal of the unsolicited advice I was given ran completely counter to some of the advice considered canon on this forum. To paraphrase what a former top-2 adcom told me, "Students have no idea how much a 5 minute conversation with a professor can help them in planning their future if they choose to listen, and you won't believe how many students just don't bother to have that conversation". Find out, from those who know, what the rules are; play the game; WIN.
  20. The road to hell is paved with good intensions, ellie. If you think my reply is worse than telling the OP that there isn't much difference between a mainstream PhD and a heterodox one in the private sector.. well then, we agree to disagree. OP, my reply was, in fact, 50% serious. I'll tell you a true story: I knew an econ PhD from UMass Amherst who was a professor at a community college. He was a really nice guy and a true believer too; total Marxist. And you know what he told me? He said if he could do it all over again he would have studied quantitative finance. And I'll give you some general life advice: All that glitters is not gold.
  21. You're preaching to the choir. I was extolling Python as the preferred first language to learn in the "Comments on Admissions" thread just yesterday. I just don't know if singmeat's school offers a class in Python.
  22. Definitely agree, I took a Java class two years ago and have never used. In fact when I joined a project as an RA, in one our first meetings another RA who had been working on it for a while asked me if I knew any languages, when I said "Java" he smirked and shook his head. But if that's all there is and you have never taken a programming class, you should do it. If you learn Java you'll be able to pick up Python quickly. I would think if C is available that would be better than Java though since it's a lower level language, and generally for math/stats programming the lower level the better.
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