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AREStudentHopeful

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AREStudentHopeful last won the day on May 26 2011

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  1. Thanks for the responses so far everyone. I'll address the questions individually: @PhDPlease - I did "median" work my first quarter. Not bad, but around the middle of my cohort. There's only one professor that would probably be willing to talk about my circumstances, but it might be worth a shot (one of the others is now in Europe and the third generally won't give you the time of day unless you're the top student in each cohort). I'm really not sure what level of PhD program I'll end up aiming for. Obviously I would like to get in as highly-ranked program as I can, but I realize I can't too picky at this point. The top 75 school where I'm working with one of the professors places their top students at unranked PhD-granting schools and their median student at directional state schools. My hope is to eventually work at a PhD-granting school (though I'm not heartbroken if I am at a school with good masters students). @mcsokrates - I agree - communication and collaboration ability are both needed skills in a PhD. If nothing else, the private sector has helped me build those skills by working on a data science team. Maybe if I can get in touch with the one professor I mentioned above, I can get a letter that shows improved communication. Also, I do plan on finishing the masters to show that I have, indeed learned to finish what I start and I have learned from my mistakes. @Econhead - I, too am hoping that they will reply to this thread :). Their advice could be very useful. @tm_member - I definitely dug myself into a difficult hole. To be honest, even doing the unpaid research assistantship has been a breath of fresh air though. The enjoyment I get from reading great research, thinking of efficient ways to solve problems and finding new knowledge in data is vastly better than what I have found outside an economics PhD. Having the freedom to pursue my own ideas means a lot to me. I know the road will not be easy by any means (even beyond the normal challenges for an average student trying to get into a PhD), but I think it will be worth it.
  2. Hi all, I tried to make a new account to post this (and delete this account) but the cogs seem to turn slowly around here so I figure, what do I have to lose :). If anything, others can learn what not to do from my story. My current situation is that I am working in the private sector after exiting a PhD program. I got a bachelors in econ from a regional state school and then went to a masters program in ag economics. I have an ABD for the masters degree (which I could finish - I defended the thesis, I just had minor edits left and then final submission to the graduate school) due to getting an acceptance from a top 40/50 econ PhD program and thinking "I don't need that masters now, I'm in a PhD program!" Stupid move, I know. I began the PhD program but during my second quarter I sustained an injury which didn't allow me to write for a long period. At the time I was "going it alone" by not being in a study group and rarely seeking help from professors. To further hurt my case, I did not do a good job communicating my difficulty with the injury to the department and I wasn't even able to attend class during my final quarter. I ended up withdrawing from the program without taking first year qualifiers (but still having the failing grades from the 2nd and 3rd quarters due to the injury). I realize that the fault was entirely my own. I did a poor job communicating with my professors and with my fellow students - something I had been told was essential for the first year of the PhD program. I am now 2 years removed from exiting the program and I am trying to build a plan to return to a PhD program. There wasn't a moment during the 2 years when I wasn't reading economics papers and wishing I could do my own research in academia. I know it was my poor communication skills rather than intellectual ability that caused me to fail - I have been greatly humbled from the time when I thought intellect was all that mattered for a PhD. I don't have much in the way of references since I didn't communicate well with my PhD program (and I ABD-ed my masters) so I'm currently up the creek without a paddle. My current plan is to take some higher-level math courses (RA, Mathematical Stats) and maybe a PhD econ course, if I can get a program to allow it. Hopefully from these courses I can get recommendation letters. Additionally, I've been working as a unpaid part-time RA with a professor at a top 75 program and I hope to continue this arrangement for the next few years in order to gain additional research experience. Given these circumstances, is there any advice anyone can offer? I realize the situation is rather unique and grim but if anyone has had similar troubles, I would love to hear what they did to get through it. Additionally, if anyone has suggestions for a better plan, I would be grateful for those as well. I would love to hear from some of the other old timers here who may have seen some unfortunate situations in their respective PhD programs that might offer insight.
  3. Hello, I would like to delete my account: username: AREStudentHopeful word: save11
  4. What kind of resource questions are you interested in? By answering that we can tailor the list to your interests a bit more. Some good authors to generally try are Kerry Smith, John Loomis, Michael Hanneman - those are some good ones that come to mind.
  5. Just wanted to comment on this based on what a former student there told me. Most of this attrition issue is due to the new professors they have brought in. As ASU gets new faculty from higher-ranked schools or better quality new AP's, they are simultaneously trying to raise the standards of their students. Unfortunately they seem to have made the bar a bit too high initially and thus the high attrition rate. I don't think they expect that rate to be a continuing trend if they can help it.
  6. I would say take a look at ASU, UCSD and UCSB for the specific interests (dynamic resource consumption) you mentioned. I can't comment on the non-US universities as I know much less about them.
  7. I wouldn't say that they place better than Berkeley econ in an average year, but it wouldn't surprise me that they might in an off year for econ's placements. ARE placements are somewhat different (as discussed earlier in this thread) because there's a selection bias due to the desire to place at certain institutions by ARE-type candidates. A placement at UCSB's Bren School might be desirable by the candidate even though he could place at a top-30 econ program (which, by most economist standards, would be considered better). That being said, I think Berkeley's placement should definitely be considered top 20/top 15 when compared with normal econ programs. In good years, they could definitely compare with top 10 schools.
  8. In response to your worries mandcrut, a full-time TA/RAship does not mean 40 hrs/week for a grad student. It's usually 20 hr/week for full time 10 hr/week for halftime. Those are just the official numbers as well, many actual TAships (for example) do not require the full 10 or 20 hours - much less, in fact. Many grad students TA or RA their first year and it often gives you a chance to meet other grad students or professors that you might not interact with in your first year. I've also seen a study that showed there's no effect in terms of program completion for students that TA or RA first year.
  9. At the upper end of the spectrum of ARE programs (Berkeley, Davis, UMD), I'm inclined to agree with nat_resource that a lot of it is selection effect. Most students there have a bit more of an interdisciplinary bend to them and don't really intend to go the straight-econ route to begin with. I think the issue with this is that this selection effect on placement may create a bias that they couldn't place better rather than that they choose not to. With the lower-ranked departments, I think it's a mix of both effects where in some cases you actually do have students who go to an applied program because they want to do econ, but can't get into straight-econ programs and other similar reasons. No offense to any of you going this route (I did it to an extent, thought I would say that I was a combination of both of those categories), it's just a common route that some choose to take. For example, I know it would be a pretty good deal if I could work with U Wisc. economists but I know I would never make it into the Wisc econ program. Nothing wrong with that :). I will add the note though that I think that at some of these schools I definitely wouldn't consider the ARE department a backdoor to the econ department. Each school is different, but at some schools you don't have as much access to the econ professors as an ARE student.
  10. There are some of us here lurking in the shadows :). As an addition to my previous post, I want to note that while I think it may be advantageous for the "average" member to stay anonymous, I don't know that that advantage holds once you get admitted and you've made your choice. I think the points I raised about being a non-anonymous moderator also hold for the post-admittance member as well. I, like many others who have been here for a while, could probably be traced down if you looked hard enough at old posts and I see no problem with this.
  11. While I think the debate on privacy/anonymity here is interesting, I'll go back to the OP's main question. Whether or not anonymity is useful for a moderator of this forum. The point has been made that anonymity is necessarily good for the average member of this forum and I agree with this. From a pure bargaining position, it might not be the best thing for adcoms to know what schools you've applied to, where your rejections are, ect. (I'm sure someone here much better at game theory could prove/disprove this notion and feel free to do so). However I think this is a different case for a moderator. Knowing the true identity of a moderator can generally only help their position. It gives users more confidence in their opinion, their actions and their interactions with members of this forum. They won't have to worry about "outing" themselves when citing specific experiences or advice from their past, which is one of the helpful possible duties of their position. Overall, I don't think anonymity helps a moderator; I think the opposite is in fact true.
  12. For what it's worth, Charlie Kolstad at UCSB (well-known environmental economist) has his PhD in Economics and Operations Research from Stanford, so it's definitely not unheard of.
  13. While I can't really suggest good programs to apply to for the fields you're looking at, I will mention an encouraging note. I know of at least two members of this board in the past who have taken their first two years at community colleges and gotten into top 5 schools. That being said, they were both extremely intelligent, hard working and went on to accomplish good things in their training through undergrad/masters, but just know that it is not an automatic strike against you.
  14. I wouldn't necessarily classify this as a good strategy in most cases. Most top 50's that I've seen don't take transferring to their program all that lightly. You often either have to go through the normal admissions process as other candidates do with seemingly little advantage to applying fresh or in the case of masters programs, they limit the potential number of students who get in (or have a general rule against it). I know UCSB as rule does not accept people from their masters program (I only know of 1 person they accepted in recent memory) and I believe Duke has a similar system. That being said, there are many programs that focus on a specific field that take courses in the econ grad departments that would be a good fit for many nontraditional (or even traditional) candidates. Health econ programs, business programs, political economy programs, even poli sci or public policy programs often include economics grad classes as part of their training. I'm not saying that these are good routes to try to backdoor into an econ program, but I do think they are legitimate options for those interested in those fields who may not be able to get into the school of their choice, but still want economics training.
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