boldwolf

I'll also add that it seems this is a very personal decision. You should look deep within and really ask yourself whether you prefer policy work(KSG route) to 4-5 years in a PhD program. Me thinks people here can help you with which of these PhD programs is better and that sort but such career questions demand your own assessment. Ask friends family who know you personally. That will be best IMO. Good luck. Congrats too for the admits.

Institution: Rochester Program: Economics PhD Decision: Rejected Notification date: 3/5 Notified through: E-mail Comments: Insert your choice 4 letter word.

Institution: CMU Program: Ph.D. Economics Decision: Rejected Funding: -90(including gre report) Notification date: 2/26/09 Notified through: Checked ApplyYourself Website @ 9.15am Not looking good at all...

^^I think asquare said something like you can blacklist a particular poster in which case you can't see his/her post... maybe you should do that quickly before your pc suffers... I'd follow my own advice but I have a strange sense of humor

delete

Definitely something to feel cheerful about if you get rejected: even if it doesn't fund a student at least the fly-out attendees can count on more pizza.

So any hints on when Rochester might start releasing....I called a couple of weeks ago to check if my recs had been received. No one picked up.... I guess they knew it was some pesky applicant.

Wow! Great admit! Congrats! Is that the Fellowship admit TMers are waiting to flood in? Is that you on gradcafe?

I have a feeling that adcoms prefer to give out decisions on Fridays. Let's wait and see. The first major wave will likely come Feb 13-20. This wait is mind-wracking.

You should aim for higher ranked schools. Your undergrad is UoC. Lots of Math. Hard major. If you have intermediate micro and macro I dont see why you're not applying to higher ranked schools too. I will say add more top 20s, and more reaches too.

If you have a border-line profile(that is, strong but not a clear competitor at top schools) then I think taking a risk with an excellent paper at the schools which encourage sending in excellent samples is sound. But if your profile is already strong then don't risk it, other than for the required ones. What I mean is if you're a quarter-back and you're 6 points down with 1min to end the game, then throwing risky end-zone long passes is a good idea. Anyway that's what I think, but remember I'm an applicant just like you.

wustl

I dont know if I really get it but at least a few schools let you scan copies of your transcript and upload it for review. If they admit you then you send official copies. I think it is to streamline the process, and personally I wish all the schools did that instead of asking for 2 sometimes 3 official transcripts for whatever they're gonna use it all for.

The first one seems good. And also look at recent dissertations, like over the past 2-3 years. The third one, I wonder how many professors will bother to reply(If you're thinking of professors). Most likely they'll quickly look for the delete button.

Mercenary school... or find a headshrinker(if I can afford it after all these application costs)

I've seen a coupla job market candidates with MS from different(but higher ranked) schools on their resume. Now I know those schools dont have a stand alone master's program. So I think it's quite a good idea to look to applying to some lower-ranked schools. Also there was an old thread in which some posters gave examples of people they know who've done this and done well afterwards. I couldnt dig it up.

All the top 30 schools and the top business schools are preparing their students for academia(they might not state it, but that is their goal) so your concern should be whether and which ones you're going to get in. Also business schools especially finance PhD are harder to get in than econ programs. For NYU, Chicago GSB I will expect their finance PhD to be harder to get in than the econ programs at the schools. CMU their econ program is in their business school and small too so it's harder to tell.

You want to retake and risk your quant just for 10 points on the verbal? Not worth it I'll say. 590 is good. Am sure the percentile will be in the 80s. And nobody cares about the verbal as long as your score shows you can read. As for the multiple times most schools I've seen say they'll consider your highest scores. But I wont trust them that well.

Most schools say your GRE shouldn't be more than 5 years old so if the 'several' doesn't mean more than 5 years then you can use it. And anyway I dont think ETS reports scores that are over 5 years old. That said the GRE looks a tad more impressive. Your overall GMAT suffered because of the verbal section. But I think business schools seem to place more emphasis is placed on the overall GMAT score which could hurt you. Heck, they even prefer to combine both sections of the GRE when stating their cut-offs and what nots, unlike econ programs which don't seem to care about the verbal section. So if I were you I will report the GRE instead. 790 is hardly different from 800 for the Quant. And a verbal of 600 is good to as the percentile says.

I will say retake. It will surprise you how far down the ladder you have to look to feel safe with a 680Q.

This looks like a post I saw on marginalrevolution :D Quote: I think what we tend to forget is that math is just a language. Its logical discipline keeps as in check. Intuition tells us where to go and hard logic(of which there is no better than math) completes it. Literal arguments are not concise and complete enough. As for the complaints about some people seeing the models as the ends well I'm yet to hear or meet such people. I always hear of some invisible 'evil' economists who think the models tell all there is about the world, but where are they...Of course there are mathematicians clothed in economics, but should we curtail their work? Some economists write their math-filled papers but they dont tell anyone that hey this is the world. It is a science in development. We are trying to understand the world and ourselves using whatever tools available. The quants, and their managers, on Wall street knew the limits of their models but if they still bet billions on beyond what the models told(aided by a worldwide mania), then whose fault is it? And I think that human behavior is quantifiable. Pehraps we are not smart enough, or we may never be smart enough. But that doesnt mean we should stop trying and say well human behavior is too complex, so let's keep waving our hands. We say something is random when he don't fully understand it. But "The truth is out there". I wonder if Adam Smith is the Jesus Christ of economics and the Wealth of Nations his gospel that all pastors(economics PhDs) should read it.(No disrespect to Smith or the Wealth of Nations). I also wonder how many physicists have read Newton's Prinicipia. If there are some people there ready to bore their eyes through some topomeasuregraphanalyis decision theory why should we stop them? Who knows what may come out of it. Maybe the reductionist methodology of economics(done to make the math and intuition easier) is what leaves things out. As for literal argument economics I think there are enough heterodox programs out there doing it. Adam Smith's Invisible hand has provided something for everybody. I also wish there were more frustrated mathematicians/physicists like Nash, Vernon Smith and Engle. My :2cents:.

A course like history of economic thought in undergrad or master's program can be valuable. I've taken such a course and I found it great in terms of giving me some wholistic perspective. It's nice to know how people have grappled with the epistemology of economics before Alfred Marshall. But if you haven't taken such a class you can always read Todd Buccholz's "New Ideas from Dead economists", a good but not exhaustive summary. At least it's also a hilarious read.(I loved the way he bashed Karl Marx). Or Thorstein Veblen. As to whether it should be a an actual field in PhD programs, it's beyond my pay grade. But if a gun were put to my head to choose I would say No. Life is too short. Write math proofs instead.

Yeah jeeves you're right. But I was more concerned about notacolor's "correction": Quote: Generally, I think students of economics are relatively arrogant. It might be true but I dont see it as bad given the nature of the profession.

Now that is funny! Maybe it's the nature of the profession. You need to have strong blocking skills and fast jabs to survive. I doubt if some other profession has as many disagreements and fiery debates like economics. I've also seen math students/professor making fun of engineers...

What of Eugene Fama? These people think so. But 2008 should definitely be for financial economics...heheheheh