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moneyandcredit

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moneyandcredit last won the day on February 21 2014

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About moneyandcredit

  • Birthday 06/22/1982

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    PhD Student and GTA

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  1. Trouble there is some schools (including my undergrad) won't let you retake a course for a grade if you didn't fail it outright.
  2. The others here will probably be more helpful to you if you post the range of PhD programs you'd like to eventually attend. It could very well be the case that there is very little marginal benefit at all in an MA for your purposes. Kansas State has an MA program that offers funding (albeit less than for the PhD students). You would likely do very well in it. Your first year would consist of MA-level classes in the first semester and start the PhD core sequence in the second semester in time to get good letters by the following winter's application season. Keep in mind, however, that the coursework here is not exactly at the level offered by higher-ranked universities. For example, it looks like Macro I at Tufts covers material we don't get into until Macro II here. High performance in an MA from Tufts, Duke, etc. would be a far better signal for your PhD applications, and for good reason.
  3. You shouldn't take me too seriously given my lowly status, but since nobody else is chiming in I guess I will. Since so much of your previous coursework and work experience is in Finance, you may be better served by a PhD in Finance or Business Economics. Two of the schools you mentioned (USC and Arizona State) are to the best of my knowledge better known for their Finance programs. USC in particular seems to have more of a microeconomics-heavy PhD in economics (one of their placements last year was an IO researcher here at K-State), but Marshall offers a PhD in Finance/Business Econ that may be more what you're looking for. I know you're also interested in Monetary Policy and Macro, but if you pursue a PhD in Finance or Business Econ you'll also get a pretty heavy grounding in both of those fields (especially insofar as they relate to asset pricing). I guess it just depends on which of the four fields you listed are your strongest preferences.
  4. I can't comment if you're already working on an MA at an LSE-level university. For the benefit of those coming from a lesser-known MA program, however, I'll chime in and say that the difference between the first year of an MA and the first year of a PhD can be pretty wide. Even at a low/unranked PhD program like the one I'm attending, the difference is pretty substantial coming from my MA. I understand that the difference would have been even bigger if I had been admitted to a more highly ranked PhD program.
  5. Considering the school where you got your Masters is very well known among all the schools you are likely applying to, I'm sure they will all know about the cross-listing. At the very least, when you're filling out the application you could say something like Course Number: FIN 515, Course Name: "Portfolio Theory and Asset Management (ECO 462)" or something like that. Good luck and much respect.
  6. OK, I spoke too broadly there (and was overly snarky as well). One does have to have something else in their profile to impress the graduate admissions committee. As far as I've asked, the students who were admitted with funding despite only a semester or two of calculus had Masters degrees in Economics (since they're from other countries) along with work experience for a government agency in their home country. Applying with nothing but the minimum economics and mathematics course requirements would not likely yield more than a minimal admission.
  7. False. Kansas State Economics does not have a strict requirement for funded students to have multivariable calculus or linear algebra. Students without such classes do have more difficulty handling the material, but they get by without too many problems if they learn the essential prerequisites as they go. In fact, I think that one of the best students in my cohort took only Business Calculus as an undergrad. It's helpful that instead of diving straight into PhD-level material we begin with a semester of MA-level microeconomics, mathematical economics, and statistics where all of the most important topics are drilled into incoming students pretty well. Not that our PhD program has the level of prestige that typical forum members aspire to, but I think it's worth knowing that there are options for those whose math backgrounds are not at the level of a mathematics minor. I still strongly recommend the mathematical core suggested by chateauheart (as well as the elementary analysis so commonly recommended), however, as it makes *everything* a great deal easier and will likely allow you access to more prestigious programs where graduates have more lucrative placement opportunities.
  8. I don't know about the career benefits of one over the other, but I'd certainly choose the school where there are more faculty members who are interested in the fields that simliarly interest me. Even if one school opens more doors, I'd rather attend the one that opens the doors that were most appealing to me, i.e. USC if you feel that they're the best match regarding interests. Regarding location, yes, USC is in Los Angeles. It may be one of the greatest cities in the world to live in as a multi-millionaire. However, as a PhD student, you'll be near the left end of one of the industrialized world's most mind-bogglingly vast wealth discrepancies. Nice enough place to visit, but after 4-5 years you may be a little burned out. I know I did after spending most of my adult life before there before pursuing my PhD. Just take that into consideration if LA's glamorous image is possibly swaying your decision. Regardless, though, you'll be in the library/lab/office most of the time, so I still think you should follow your research interests.
  9. I don't really post a lot anymore since there's very little useful advice I can offer to prospective applicants (not that I ever had any informed, useful advice before). I'm still around, though. KState is a bit of an anomaly regarding program structure at the entry level compared to the other programs I applied to, so I don't yet really consider myself a bona fide "first-year" per-se. The courses in the first semester of the PhD program here are taken by all students in the MA and PhD programs of both the Econ and AgEc departments, so the first semester is more of a "gateway" semester, after which the genuine PhD courses begin for each program. Prelims for both Micro and Macro are thus almost always taken at the end of a student's second Fall, so I'm not yet overly occupied by such concerns. I'm having a blast, though. This semester has filled in many of the gaps that were left behind by my less theoretically-rigorous MA program as well as the time I spent in marketing, so I feel a lot better prepared for PhD-level coursework than I likely would have been had I gone somewhere else and dived right into MWG. Looking back at my panicking last year about whether I got into the best program for me, I really think that such worries were misplaced and that things really couldn't have turned out any better. I guess the only remotely useful advice I can offer to those applying this year is that worrying about your admissions isn't productive after you click "Submit," and that once you secure one funded spot you should stop worrying entirely about getting any others. Only if one gets multiple funded offers should there be any concern, and that's what I would call a good problem to have. Anyway, my first final is in 8 hours so I probably ought to hit the hay.
  10. I had a similar problem regarding transcript sizes when I applied to UNC-CH last year. Just contact the assistant to the DGS and let her know your transcript is too big. She invited me to email her a PDF copy of my transcript without worrying about the size. Relax, this will all pass. You will soon be able to move on to panicking about admissions and rejections. Not that there's much purpose in worrying about that either.
  11. I didn't know this was possible. Were you at all worried that you may go on a wild goose chase with your research without an advisor who's able to tell you things like "no that's been tried already and there's nothing to see there" or "someone already published that method in the Journal of Esoteric Obscurity"? Or do I still just not really understand the PhD research process?
  12. I concur. It's pretty rare to find mathematical material that's also exceptionally well written. The trick is to find an explanatory text that complements your mathematically rigorous text. A&P and Kennedy are good books to start with if you don't already have them.
  13. I'm guessing a lot of these types have family and friends like mine -- people who overencourage to the point of almost being harmful. I'm a mediocre economist who will be lucky to land a $70k teaching post after this is all over, but I have family and friends who are convinced that I'm going to "do great things" and "show Washington how to solve *all* the problems." They seem genuinely offended when I remind them of how unrealistic that is. I guess not everyone reads EJMR before applying to PhD programs. I'm sorry you had to find out so late.
  14. That wait must have been torture. Congratulations!
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