thehurricane

The Vanderbilt Law & Economics Ph.D. program may be a good fit for your interests and background. They are one of the premier programs in Law & Economics, and they accept JDs seeking PhDs.

Mostly Harmless Econometrics is a good intuition builder, but OneArmedEcon is right that it is light on the theory and will not help much with that particular aspect of what you encounter in the first year. So if you just want to motivate the concepts that you will learn in the first year, I would recommend Mostly Harmless Econometrics. On the other hand, if you are looking to get a head start on the material, there are better options out there. I am not familiar with Peter Kennedy's book.

I'm surprised you all care so much about down-voting, and I hope you realize that you have only been encouraging the trolls by complaining about it. Complaining only exacerbates the situation, because what could be less helpful than complaining about unhelpful post ratings? I've down-voted some of the bitching in hopes you would figure it out how useless you are being, but it hasn't worked. Long story short, don't feed the trolls. Downvoting should probably be restricted to users with over some number of posts (like negative rep), but until a change like that is made just accept that it will happen periodically.

Ouch...that is pretty meager. But if I recall correctly it is on par with what they offered last year. It might be worth trying to bargain with them if you have better funded offers. I'm not sure about San Diego in particular, but I know of cases where this has worked at other UCs.

Outside of lying to make it happen, I see nothing inherently wrong in entering a Ph.D. program with the intent to leave after receiving a masters degree. Accepting a fellowship with this intent is a little dicey, but there is a direct benefit to the department if you are working as a TA or RA. Would the department prefer to weed out this type of student in the application process? In most cases yes, but the departments know a percentage of their matriculated students will not make it through the program. It's just the nature of the admissions game. To answer some of the OPs questions: The main difference between a Stat MA and an Econ MA (Econometric focus) in the eyes of prospective employers is that the Stat MA is generally better versed in the subtleties of statistical theory and methods, whereas the Econ MA is better versed in economic theory. Depending on the job, either one could be more desirable. For the kind of job it seems you are interested in, they tend to prefer Econometricians, because most of their modeling draws on economic intuition, which a Stat MA will have little of. So your best bet would likely be an Econ program. You could take the econometrics field courses, and possibly some graduate statistics classes to supplement your knowledge. Keep in mind there are some downsides to trying to sneak your way into an Econ Ph.D. when you really want just a MA. First off, you will need a better profile to gain admission ceteris paribus. Secondly, unless you are a standout within your program, it will be difficult to pull off straight A's in your classes. Your future employer likely WILL care about your grades (since they will be comparing you to a bunch of terminal masters students), and the grading tends to be less harsh in the terminal masters programs. But if these downsides don't deter you, your plan might be worth a shot.

I'll second what baffourakoto said. The good news is, since you are not interested in forecasting or the long term relationships, your fix will likely be as simple as differencing your dependent variable once.

I think of "Top X" not as a measure or cutoff, but as a notational convenience. Not many, if any, here are using a hard cutoff of X. But instead it is a way to convey "I am interested in schools roughly of the caliber found at X", which is much easier than typing out a large list of institutions. So, basically, I'd argue that you are over-thinking things.

The test is not desired to assess teaching ability per say. Rather it is a free (for the school), standardized, rough metric that they can use as a safety net to minimize the risk of admitting a TA who struggles with basic speaking tasks. Many schools, especially public schools, are bureaucracies looking for blanket rules to expedite the otherwise slow approval process to admit a candidate. In fact, I believe the minimum TOEFL speaking requirement is something established on the University of California system-wide level. Maybe in your case it is a bad rule, but it is a rule they are stuck with, and it does help occasionally in situations like yours to out a candidate who cannot really speak English. You bear all the costs here, and at least to the administrative assistant fishing through applications to make sure material has arrived in order you might as well be from Mars. The average american is not going to know much about your country or care to know much about your country. If you didn't know this already, get used to it, because the US is a very self centered country. Also, requesting an exception is different from granting an exception. If you were on the fringe already, this could easily land your application in the reject pile. In the UC system it takes 4 administrative people just to move a class from one room to another. As simple as your request seems, it will be a hard sell and the person ultimately making the decision will have no affiliation with the economics department.

I have a hunch that this has to do with the speaking section of the TOEFL. Some schools have a minimum required score on this section for an applicant to be offered TA funding. These schools tend to be cautious with multi-language countries (Canada being the exception) because in some cases the regional accent is thick. One of my classmates is from an Asian country where English is an official language, went to an English speaking university, and speaks immaculate English, yet was still required to take the TOEFL. @Ellie certainly any Quebecker who fits your description should take the TOEFL because they do not meet the requirements to have it waived. Whether they could get away with not taking it I do not know.

The ides of march marked the end of most of the admissions game last year. But as others have mentioned, the loose ends can drag on past April 15th, especially with wait list decisions.

Columbia does not have a terminal masters program. Also it is not necessarily true that attending the masters program and doing well will help one gain acceptance into the same school's Ph.D. program. NYU for example is notorious for not admitting their masters students into the Ph.D. program (occasionally they will admit one in a given year). But I do think your current strategy is the right one given your profile. Masters programs and low ranked Ph.D. programs are your only realistic options at this time. I'd suggest looking at the following list to give you ideas for where to apply: Alphabetical List of U.S. Graduate Programs in Economics Best of luck!

:) Texas - Austin, Arizona, Kentucky :luck2:UNC - CH, Iowa :( UIUC, Cornell, Duke, Michigan State

Duke Masters is one of the more competitive ones in the US and we've had candidates with much better profiles get rejected in recent years. I'd characterize Purdue and Iowa St. as far reaches, and I have little knowledge about your chances at Oregon. The rest are hopeless. I'm not sure where you stand in your application process but if you still have time to make changes I'd suggest scrapping applications to: mich st. u wash seattle ohio st. u illinois boston col. penn st. u iowa u virginia and applying to a few more schools outside the top 50. You run the serious risk of not getting any admits with this list. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news :( (or predictions at least)

That seems like a steep price to pay for a domain name. If someone wanted to resurrect econphd.net or even just wanted the domain name to make a buck, why would they pay $25,000 when they could just buy something similar such as phdecon.net for much less? It might take some time to attract the same level of traffic, but if the owner put the word out in the appropriate places, the traffic would come.

The returns of waiting a year are less clear when one is locationally constrained. OP's profile/math grades are such that he/she may not even be a lock for SB or Irvine. It really depends on the strength of the letters and quality of the R&R pub. If OP isn't already a fringe candidate for UCSD or UCLA waiting a year probably won't change that. It is different when one is willing to apply all over the country, because spending a year profile building has the potential to improve admissions results SOMEWHERE in the rankings. According to US News UCLA and UCSD are tied at 14, and Irvine and SB are tied at 42. There is a big enough spread between these that the admission returns of waiting a year could be zero.