eulermilan

Probably SFI is still too mathy for most economists. Interestingly, a lot of econ stuff are actually done by physicists there.

I doubt if this opening still exits. I saw this job posting around last summer. And I heard rumor that the decision was already made, and some Harvard guy got it.

Physicist. Astrophysicist, to be precise. Or photographer, film maker, lyricist, playwright, poet, and something along that line.

I was about to ask... still haven't seen the email.

Wow! I was told that THU's strength was more on management-business side, but it's great to know that THU is building up a strong econ program.

Not in absolute terms, but having econ major makes it comparatively much easier to get into the financial sector, fortune 500 firms, the big four, and even the public sector (including state owned enterprises).

Speaking of grad school application, what I feel: (1) Chinese econ departments have long ignored math. Moreover, a large fraction of Chinese econ majors are "wenkesheng", or "humanities students", in high school (due to the weird Chinese college entrance system), who lack rigorous quantitative training since grade 10 or so. (2) LOR from Chinese economists carry little weight, if any. Economic study in China is way behind the world's frontier, and consequently Chinese economists are less published. I've heard the PKU-UC tie as well. Someone told me that Qian Yingyi's LOR helped a lot in sending students from PKU to Berkeley. (3) It is too easy to get a decent job with econ major in China, and that reduces the applicant pool. The number of Chinese econ applicants is much fewer compared to other areas (for US PhD). I partly agree what softsquirrel said above, but I think there still used to be a bias against Chinese students of economics. It seems that things are getting better. PKU is doing pretty well this year so far, with at least two UCLA offers, and a few PSU, UCSD, etc. I am looking forward to seeing more Chinese in top econ departments.

PROFILE: Type of Undergrad: math/econ; physics minor; Dartmouth College Undergrad GPA: 3.8+/4. 3.99 Math; 3.9ish Econ Type of Grad: none GRE: 800Q, 750V, 4.0W (Gee I got straight 4.0 writing score for TOEFL, SAT and GRE) Math Courses (undergrad): Calcs; diff eq; linear algebra; probability and measure theory; real analysis; abstract algebra; graph theory; combinotorics; advanced applied math; stochastic process; topology; statistics. Mostly honors. Econ Courses (undergrad): intermediate and advanced micro+macro; game theory; public; trade; open economy macro; finance; intermediate econometrics Other Courses: a bunch of physics and computer science courses Letters of Recommendation: 2 econ profs: MIT phd with whom I took game theory and advanced micro, and UCLA phd with whom I took intermediate micro; 1 math prof with whom I took real analysis and worked as TA for intro calc. Research Experience: has been RA in biology (lab work with cancer cell), physics (simulation and numerical analysis of interstellar plasma interaction), and finally, economics (dataset manipulation and econometric analysis). Did two major summer researches on econ (one on micro-level organization and the other on early industrialization of China). Published papers on astrophysics, political science, and econ in minor periodicals. Teaching Experience: TA for intro calc, classical mechanics, and abstract algebra. Research Interests: micro theory (general eq dynamics); institutional. SOP: mentioned research interest and linked past research experiences. not super specific. revised by econ profs. Concerns: a few crappy grades in the first year (general requirement courses). have not taken grad courses. my profs worry that pure theory track (which i intend to do) would not be that welcomed by many programs nowadays. Applied to: Harvard, Princeton, Berkeley, Stanford, Chicago, MIT, Yale, Penn, Columbia, Cornell, LSE (Msc EME).

The 10% GPA cutoff of the graduating class of Dartmouth is historically around 3.8. Grades of intermediate-higher level humanities and social sciences are inflated like crazy, with median grade of A- or even A a common scene. Math and physics departments are super strict on this. I had several physics classes ending up with only one or two A's with a class size of around 20. I've heard math classes with no A's at all as there was totally no curve.

The two questions are not equivalent. Undergrad math is way more important to graduate study than econ. Actually I know someone who got into Berkeley, like, ten years ago, as a physics major from China. Given the crappy course election system of Chinese universities back then, I'm pretty sure he had little, if any, econ background. I think mathematically sophisticated person with common sense could definitely do well as econ phd with no prior econ courses taken.

My real analysis prof said baby Rudin is only for ambitious high school students.

What I feel is that agent-based modeling has very limited power in doing this, both due to insufficient technology and possible fundamental flaws in the way we think of the social dynamics, or economic-philosophical problems.