mathemagician

Hi all, I'm just popping in to say hello. I came across the site again and I'm glad to see that it is still somewhat active. There are still profiles and results being posted every year - although not at the same volume as before. It's nostalgic to see some of the old threads still stickied on the front page. It's now years past my PhD graduation and I'm going up for tenure.

Nope!

I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean international students that did their undergrad in the U.S.? If so, adcoms don't treat them any differently than native students from the same institution. On the other hand, international students from abroad are dealt with differently by different departments. Ideally, the adcom would have someone familiar with European schools and someone else familiar with Asian schools, etc... However, some departments almost specialize in certain countries or regions. If you look at the grad student list of a school, you can often see one country being over-represented. This usually happens when a faculty member has good connections to a certain country and are able to determine who are the best students and ultimately convince them to come.

I'm not sure which school you're talking about (I actually moved in the middle of my PhD studies). However, I imagine you are talking about the first place I was at. I don't know the actual financial condition of any department other my current one. You can ask around during visit day but as I said above, grad students also don't really know what direction of the department will be.

The first year I did masters admissions, the committee ranked the candidates one-by-one (all the committee members were new to masters admissions). This year, we realized that was a waste of time so instead we just eliminated the bottom students who are ill prepared and admitted the rest. So honestly, we don't spend much time on admissions. That being said, I don't think the masters students are much worse than the PhDs (at least where I'm at). We look more for hard skills for masters students and don't really read the recommendation letters. PhD admissions look closer at the letters and intangibles but there is still a lot of noise. Due to revenue sharing, the econ master programs are often very important to the departments money-wise. We usually get no direct money from the undergrads since their tuition goes to the general fund. On the other hand, departments usually can keep a portion of tuition from master students. To get the most out of your education, you can figure out as a group what you want and inform the director of master studies. I think most DMS would be pretty responsive to your needs. However, demanding master students are quite rare.

Hi everyone, Sorry, I haven't been a very good moderator. I thought I would remain active on this site after I became an Assistant Professor but it didn't pan out. Although I am incredibly busy, that isn't really the primary reason I became inactive. I think the overall repetitive nature of the threads and the fact that the concerns on this site became more and more distant to my own pushed me away. Anyways, this will probably be my last burst of activity. I was on the masters admissions committee for the last two years so I know how that works (here at least). Do you guys have any questions? Even though I was not directly involved with PhD admissions, I pretty much know how it's done as well. I will say that I've seen a lot of talk about the financial conditions of various universities discussed Ad nauseam on here. However, I think most people don't know what's actually going on. Even if there are financial difficulties at the university level, the economics department might be fine. It depends on many factors such as the support of the Dean, Provost, and/or President. Grad students and especially undergrads are not really privy to this information.

Of course - it's not as well known as Polytechnique but well known nonetheless. There is usually a faculty member who specializes in European schools.

I think Americans can be particularly myopic in their worldview. Americans make up less than 1/20 of the population of the world. Most people don't go far away for their undergraduate education. American undergraduate education is not vastly superior - there is perhaps the biggest gap in faculty and student ability in U.S. schools. This often doesn't translate to better education. For example, how I can make my class rigorous without suffering terrible teaching reviews if a significant fraction of the class have trouble with exponents? However, Americans do have an advantage in Ph.D. admissions. We will almost always take the student from the U.S. over a foreign country if the profile is similar. There is more or less reverse affirmative action as a whole in Ph.D. admissions. I think the idea is there is less variance associated with taking an American student over a foreign student. Also English ability is a concern. But English education is improving worldwide and at some point won't be as much of an issue.

That is not what people are saying. Don't put words in other people's mouth. There are plenty of people that get into top 5's from all over the world. But do you know how many institutions there are all over the world? Is it unreasonable to suggest that you have to be among the top of your class to have a shot at admission? As an undergrad in an American university, you are competing with top students from Europe, Latin America, Asia. Can you even name the top 3 schools in each country on these continents? There are certainly more potential students than the number of spots at top 5s if we just chose the best student from each university (of course I know not all of them apply). I am a faculty at a top 50 - our graduate students are not the best. They are still vastly better than a top 20%tile student from a school like the University of Michigan. A school like Michigan probably graduates 200+ econ majors a year. There are at least a dozen similar state schools. You do the math. Yes, if the rest of a student's profile is similar to that of a typical top 20%tile Michigan student, then he/she would have no chance at admission even in my LRM institution. We would rather choose a top 5%tile student from a top 5 university in China, South Korea, or Japan. Trust me, there are far more of these guys than you may think and they don't usually post on this site.

I don't think you should have too many safeties. It's better to target more schools in your expected range which is dependent on how well you do on your GRE retake. But you could get in anywhere and be rejected from anywhere ranked 15 to 60 with that profile. However, do you know what George Mason does? George Mason is more of a different career choice than a safety.

That is actually really good placement from a top 5 and an atypical year unless it is MIT. Only MIT consistently places that well - Harvard does it every other year or so. The rest of the top 5 (Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Chicago, Berkeley) would probably place five or less students at top 30s on average.

People are antagonistic towards you publicaffairsny because you express strong opinions on the admissions process without much credibility. chateauheart's rule of thumb is not something I agree with entirely but it is reasonable. A lateral placement into grad school involves competing with students worldwide while the undergrad mostly draws from the state. For comparison, after grad school, a lateral placement would probably be top 5% or less of students on the market from the same school. That is, 1 job candidate out of 20 on average might receive a lateral placement. Finally, for the B+/A argument, it really does depend. Some of my A students have near a 100% average. A top student most times would not even be close to the A/B+ cutoff. B+ students can have a poor understanding of the subject (barely satisfactory understanding to my standards) but most places grade on a curve so these students get B+ as long as they are 25-30%tile or so.

1) Well to start off, you should do well in your field courses. 2) The best thing to do is to focus on a field rather than spend your time equally IMO. Do the minimum amount of work for fields that don't interest you so much and get really good at the stuff that does interest you. Field courses are often set up in a manner that it is nearly impossible to do all the suggested work (reading, problem sets, etc...) for all classes. Professors understand this and like to see several people excel in each field course but won't severely punish people that do the bare minimum.

Well I'm fortunate that my new department has several active seniors working close to my field. My field is actually different from my advisor's though I use similar methodology so I plan to collaborate more with the new folks.

Honestly, it seems that you lack confidence and you are depressed. I don't think either option is worthwhile if you don't get your head on straight. Look at what your upper year classmates are doing and see if that interests you - the first year is a poor indication of what the rest of grad school will be like. Going back to your undergrad institution won't fix anything. You should decide if econ is for you. In the private sector, there isn't much of a difference between having a masters or not. Once you pass prelims, they don't matter anymore. It doesn't preclude you from doing certain types of research. There are plenty of people who failed prelims and decide to do theory or econometrics.