Terra Firma

TBK: Thanks alot for the infos on office space. Let me jump in abit since you guys are discussing about AMS courses. I am also interested in taking the sequence at the AMS too. However, I am still alittle bit cautious of adding more course load to those required so likely I will keep this option open until before the classes start or something but it is good to think about it early. It seems that you recommended taking AMS 205B in the first year??? Also, for the upper years, usually, when you do you guys start taking more AMS courses beside AMS 205 in the first quarter when there were no Econometrics yet. I am interested in Monetary Macro stuffs so Bayesian statistics is indeed the popular tools at the moment it seems and hence, I hope to take some more Bayesian courses such as AMS 206 and 207 down the road but would you recommend taking them early as in the first year beside the fact that 2nd year course load will be heavier. I am not trying to look past the first year courses in econ or anything but just thought that those AMS courses might help my research later on as well as the field courses and would be nice to streamline them with the econ classes. Also, I am also looking at housing and it seems that it probably comes down to GSH and off campus. I think you had experiences in both as alluded to at some points in the thread. Since there are chance that the environment at GSH might change quickly depending on roommates what about nearby off campus apartment in the Santa Cruz area. I am willing to be off campus abit but not too far as San Jose to have better and quiet study environment. However, the 8 AM econometrics is gonna hurt two days a week but it would not be that bad if commuting by bus within the vicinity of Santa Cruz??? On craigslist, the price variation for apartments in Santa Cruz is pretty large and the hard part is that rent for Aug or Sept will not likely be up and advertised until july or so since the landlord will not know until then??? Any suggestions.

It might be the case that no funding is indicative of your standing ex ante matriculation but once you start the program I think that your actual ex post performace matters more. Sure, this all depends on your ability, motivation and preparation compared to your classmates but you could certainly have the chances do well there otherwise the ad com committee wouldn't admit you. Jeeves made a good point about possible higher variance and risk for unfunded students but the potential is certainly there. I think it probably comes down to your expectation of your performance there when you start the program. It might not be clear cut and alot of grey areas here since there are no perfect information. You certainly are in the best position to judge since you have the info on motivation, preparation and other factors about yourself while you have to form expectation about your classmates.

Recently, I was told that there are 25 :hmm:, and sounds like the dept is quite suprised by the number as you alluded to earlier. I am not sure how Profs could teach without TAs help with grading???

My Congrat Jeeves, glad that I was correct; you stayed positive through the roller coaster ride and it worked out for you in the end. The way I see it: Important life experience, stay positive and never give up.

Do you know where he is going to? Yeah, if it is permanent then it is definitely not good. Faculty moves around but it does take time to hire senior faculty so not sure how they could replace the loss. Structural things??? You mean how the program is changed without the field comps OR expanding the program inline with the traditional Economics Ph.D. with many subfields. "very few"???

My Congrat :tup:. It never ends until you say so, yeah. Anyway, I think a few years ago somebody on this forum was in similar situation with MIT and NSF, if I understand your situation correctly. Hope it'll work out for you so keep it up. So Minnesota is out of the picture now???

Sir Ceterus, I didn't mean to overlook the fact it will be competitive for TA so it might be possible to get just Tuition Waiver, in state or out of state, but not getting the stipends. However, TBK mentioned that TA does cover tuition, health and stipends. swwas355, I agree that if top 5 or 10 is your ultimate goal then getting a terminal master in Econ/Math/Stat will probably prepare you better for your next challenge since the learning curve is less steep. Don't take this as a slight over your ability but it would NOT be a good idea to underestimate the competition at the Ph.D. level not to mention competing to be the top of the class. I think that this point is well discussed in this forum so keep that in mind. There could be alot of highly capable students who could have got into top schools but didn't for some reasons that made their profile not so attractive. In any event, this will be made worse by the increase in the number of application this year. Hope this helps. TBK, thx for the info again. Yeah, I agree that more students could be beneficial as we will have more opportunity to learn from each other as well as from professors so there could be positive spill over effect there. I think that as long as the department have sincere effort to help keep the environment as cooperative as it has been then I think it would not be that bad. Plus, the number between 15-20 does not sound so out of this world even though it is high compare to your year. I think that it would be too much but not possible if it could get to the range of 30. Also, were there TAs in your core classes in the first year? mysorelboots, UCSC officially has 19 matriculation???

I think that if the matriculation is in the range of 20 then it should affect next year acceptance too if the department still intend to keep the overall number of students more or less same. I think this happend at Johns Hopkins last year when matriculation almost triple of what the usual incoming class size and hence, this year I heard discussion on this board that it is really hard to get in there than usual. Plus, high matriculation + budget cut might probably mean that there will definitely be more competition for TA/RA next year for those unfunded offers. Hmm difficult but it is life. TBK, you might have mentioned this somewhere already but how many students were there in the last 2 or 3 years. Thx.

It would be great if those who were at the flyout could give some comments and helpful information. I think CU is recruiting senior faculty too this year so any idea? Thanks.

Yeah, I agree. This sounds really suspicious of the prospect of funding after the 1st year, hmmm, interesting. Sounds like, getting subsequent year funding with no initial funding depends both on performance of classes, comps and dept too.

Still no news from Vanderbilt for me. I emailed the grad secretary and got the same response as above. It said that March 31st is the target date for mail, not sure if it is email or regular mail. I don't really know what to make of "no news" so far since there were both rejections and waitlist particularly Dr. Who on GC. Any opinions?

mosfro, I just got offer without funding. I got external funding for the first year but need to get dept funding afterwards. From what you said, it seems that even with satisfactory progress in the first year it will be hard to get funding in the subsequent year. Living in DC is expensive so it would be close to impossible to fund myself all the way :). Any more information? What proportion of the first year students usually get funding and in past experience, are there any unfunded first year student got funding afterwards?

Thank for the information TheBrothersKaramazov, really appreciate it. For the removal of the field comps, exams sometime cause unproductive stress although they do make us to learn the material better in some way or another. It seems that the dept is more keen with encouraging students to start focusing on research early on, I think this is great ideas and encouraging news.

It's goot to hear that there are many opportunities. From the grad school website, international student who wants second year funding also need to get the out of state tuition waiver too. Does the TAship position cover this or just the stipends? How hard is it if there are many international students in the same class? since there will be more competition plus given the budget cut across the state in California this might not be good but this assumes another budget tightening in Cal next year. There seems to be no official visit date but from previous threats, people did visit and had good impression of the arrangement from the dpt and I think jhai did this. I will have to debate on this since it will be out of pocket :2cents:.

Thanks to veroniquaz and TheBrothersKaramazov for the response. The information is very helpful. If I go there then the monetary sequence would be awesome if offered. Anyway, encouraging news related to macro. As a side note, on the department website, it mentioned recruiting seminars. Do you know what areas are those in TheBrothersKaramazov? It is impossible to know from outside since there is no further information. UCSC's strength in international finance is quite well known and well discussed in this forum but I think that their Macro esp Monetary side also has the potential to be good so it would be great if they are recruiting for that area too but that may be just wishful thinking since I am interested in Macro too :).

Sorry to hear this. However, good luck with all your future plans, hope all goes well for you and stay positive, please :tup:.

I am wondering if Prof. Walsh is still active advising students. It seems that none of those on this year job market has him as an advisor. I am interested in international monetary stuffs so it would be great if have the opportunity to work with him. You said Prof. does not really stress class performance but I guess TA/RA assignments are based on first year grade, at least my perspective after reading the dept website. Did you arrange the visit with the dept? From what you said, it seems that there is high probability that non-funded first year students could get funding in the second year. Do you know the statistics on this? I think this is important given the high living cost in the area. It will be very hard to pay for the first 2 years from out of pocket money.

What happens if I accept an unfunded offer? Does the resolution still bind? In particular, I got unfunded offer from one school but waitlisted in another with high possibility of funding if there is there is open spot. If I accept the unfunded offer then can I take the funded offer, from waitlist school, and withdraw from the unfunded offer one then.

Anybody planning on visiting UCSC? I don't think they have official visit day though. So have to pay out of pocket money.

AhHa, that explains why some posts seem to be very knowledgeable and may be with a bit of unusual inside information.

Yeah same here.

Yes, me too.

"Mistakes are only a part of the process of becoming who you really are" Coach K at Duke.

I think UMD might be done too since I noticed that only rejections were posted on GC lately.

Very good point. I second that. At the end of the day, you'll have to compete again and show.