Jake S

Just to add on a few reasons why the OP does not need a Master... Your first year maths is all the maths you will need in terms of undergraduate preparation. You would have already done linear algebra, real analysis, vector calculus, metric and topological space by the end of your first year undergraduate in Cambridge, if the syllabus hasn't changed much. Most adcoms in the top 20 have heard of the Maths Tripos and will tell you that you do not need a Master degree. Alan Taylor, Gregory Clark (both are Professors at UC Davis now) and Stephen Morris (Prof at Princeton) were all in your position many years ago and they went straight from the 3-year tripos to do econ PhD in the US. Granted, Taylor and Morris were wranglers in the tripos (a status achieved by Keynes himself), so the best thing for you to do now is to study hard and do well in the tripos. And if you keep that up in your third and final year and become a wrangler, I can imagine that opening doors to the top 5. It is true that nothing will guarantee an admission into the top 5 but I can imagine being a wrangler is one of the closest you can possibly get. I would imagine if you stay on the program and perform reasonably well, you can easily outdo me and get into the top-10 without any research experience. The fact that you are actually thinking about this 2 years in advance means that you have plenty of time to do those extra stuff and get a decent exposure to economics and research. I really wish I can go back two years in time. :(

OP, if you want more info, you can pm me and we can meet up for a chat. I can tell you that you definitely do not need a master. @chisquared, if the OP has a Part III and do well in it, he stands a good chance for Harvard PhD in math, not just econ. If you ever follow Michael Mitzenmacher (a CS professor at Harvard)'s blog, he is a fan of the Part III Mathematical Tripos and says this on his blog: "I encourage interested math/CS students (who can get one of the fellowships for Cambridge) take the Part III Tripos, which provides a solid mathematical background for any future research career." Doing a Part III is overkilling for a econ phd. Note that Part III will be substantially more difficult than LSE EME simply because it is aimed for postgraduate study in math, not econ.

If you don't manage to find anyone to share a taxi with you, you can always take the Super Shuttle from LAX. It will drop you off the campus if you let the driver know... Although it is cheaper, it also takes a lot more time!

Really ;)? That's very controversial. Oxford has a better night life if you are into clubbing and all that and it is a slightly bigger city compared to Cambridge. But really, outside of this small island and in North American terms, Cambridge and Oxford is really just a part of London. Well the IDEAS ranking is still very imperfect at the moment and there are many many subfields classified in IDEAS. Check it out yourself. I don't think Cambridge is strong at all in macro despite IDEAS saying that Hashem Pesaran is the second ranked author in macroeconomics. In the UK, LSE > Oxford > Cambridge for macro. Cambridge's ranking in these fields is driven by the presence of Pesaran but apparently he doesn't care much about Masters students. By the way, I think the department is doing quite well in micro theory these days (in addition to econometrics) with some new hires. Cambridge is wealthy, they recently raised about $1.5bil for their 800th anniversary. But the econ department is poor. Most of the endowment belongs to the colleges and I don't fully understand the archaic relationship between the colleges and the departments. My impression is that a large amount of the endowment is being diverted into the sciences and math. Cambridge prides itself in the sciences and math (comfortably ranked top 5 in the world) and while the math department occupies the most expensive building in the city (and who knows how much the dept. is paying Stephen Hawking and several other Fields medalists to stay), the econ department is situated at an unremarkable corner of Cambridge with no one particularly famous. The reality is no one in town cares much about economics, the legacy of Keynes, Marshall and Pigou has ended a few decades ago. But I am confident that things will get better for the department, it is after all Cambridge. I suggest emailing the department to get a better sense of things. Especially if you are interested in Macro, you need to ask if they are planning on beefing up on the macro-front with a new hires etc. I think they are quite weak in Macro at the moment, maybe they will snatch up Dean Corbae from Texas??

Within Cambridge, it is known that the econ department is a bit of a black sheep of the university. The department used to be very good and was the place to be 30 years ago. At one point in the early 70s, they actually have James Meade, Richard Stone and James Mirrlees active in the faculty (they are all Nobel laureates if you don't know that already) with Kenneth Arrow and Peter Diamond visiting quite frequently from the US, which is pretty impressive those days when the faculty had only 10ish people. I think the department has been on steady decline since then, culminating in the departure of Amartya Sen for Harvard in 2004. But of course the rest of the world is pretty oblivious to what has been going on in the academia and most people outside the US will be genuinely surprised to learn that Cambridge isn't as good as Berkeley in economics. Actually I would be more surprised if asking around in a career fair in the UK, anyone has beyond a vague notion of what Berkeley is... (how ridiculous is that?) To give an anecdotal evidence, a friend of mine from Southeast Asia gained admission into both Berkeley and Cambridge for undergraduate but his private sector sponsor (we're talking about Shell and the likes here) only wanted him to attend Cambridge as part of the deal then. My point is that if you do not intend to stay in the academia, Cambridge's reputation in the private sector is absurdly strong, especially if you intend to work in the UK, Europe and a big part of Asia. The same applies to Oxford. But Cambridge's name is stronger in China for example, and Oxford is more well-known in the US. And if you care about research, go to Cambridge if you want to do Econometrics (5th in the world according to IDEAS). They still have decent people around (Harvey, Pesaran, Smith) in that field. Energy Economics is also pretty decent (2nd according to IDEAS). More bizarrely though, according to IDEAS, Cambridge is also 1st in financial development and growth, 5th in Industrial Organization, 9th in Public Economics and 8th in Microeconomics. But I wouldn't be too sure and to err on the side of caution, I would say time series econometrics and energy economics are the strength of the department. Oxford has a better econ department overall.

Leprechauns

Dubai

I am sorry but I am going to have to take you up on this point. The 3-year undergraduate degree in the UK (at least where I am doing my undergrad) is comparable to the 4-year undergraduate in the U.S. My school regularly does exchange with MIT and I have made a few friends from MIT currently spending their junior year abroad in my school. Let me quote from the MIT website: "It is important for MIT students to realize that [the third year at ***] is really the equivalent of the senior year at MIT, because the fourth year at *** (referred to as ***) is equivalent to our M.Eng. Therefore, MIT students should expect that some of the courses offered at *** may be more advanced than junior year courses at MIT. "

Yeah BU sent out the fellowship offers about two weeks ago. There could be more, but the rest of the offers is likely to be unfunded.

Not at all I guess... things would be moving quite slowly until at least after the fly-outs anyway. I am guessing for UCLA, they are in a much better position to give some sort of definite answers regarding funding after the 2nd April fly-out.

If you have other fellowship offers, I think it is quite possible to bargain for at least a tuition waiver? I think she is incredibly busy and her answer will probably be short and unhelpful (although she replies very promptly). Well you can try. Good luck!

Yeah in Europe (at least in the UK...), you can't apply to do a PhD with a Bachelor degree. Basically you apply "twice", you apply first for entry into a Master program and then during or after your Master degree, you apply to do a PhD (which is about 3-4 years long). I think it is more "efficient" in the sense that it costs the department a lot less but the drawback is it discourages people to do a PhD and potentially making UK PhD programs less attractive. Incidentally, LSE introduces the MRes/PhD program not long ago in an effort to emulate the top US universities and attract a better pool of PhD applicants (that is what they told me during the Social Science Open Day)

I interpret OP's message as... Why not separate the MA and PhD like what they do in Europe and Canada? I think OP is asking if it is in fact more efficient if the US adopts a 'two-stage entry' system. Is that right?

America

Oh BTW, the title of the pdf document labels me as a non-resident so I am guessing there are two sets of such letter. Not sure if they are released at the same time. Did any non-CA resident receive both stipend info and non-resident tuition waiver info today? The letter also says that I am expected to declare CA residency after my first year. Is that even possible for non-domestic students?!

Reading the letter carefully again. It really did say that stipend info will be released after the flyout (2nd April) but before 15th April. It says in the letter that I am highly ranked for a departmental stipend award which they will allocate after the open house weekend. This is really weird of UCLA... Does anyone know if this is a normal procedure for UCLA?

Yeah I just got an email from Sara Lee about the fellowship offer.. They said earlier that we will hear from them by 15th March about funding.

It means that you did not go through the first round of offers but there is a chance you are being waitlisted and will be given an offer after some of their most preferred students reject them. It is also possible that you have been rejected but there will be some delays before you hear about your rejection.. If you don't want to wait patiently then you can give them a ring and ask for updates?

I doubt if that is the case here. Many of the posters here are already in grad school at some other places (you can look up their profiles). I don't really see the point of students already enrolled in a grad school actively trying to convince first-round offer holders to attend their schools. The benefits are really trivial versus the amount of time you need to spend to convince someone. While you can say that they are not disinterested and some of the opinions are bias, I don't think it is the case of people being manipulative. But most opinions outside this forum are hardly disinterested, which is why forum exists anyway, for you to sample and aggregate opinions.

Coldplay

Haha! TM is fast becoming a force to be reckoned with. The expansion of information set among applicants is reaching an uncomfortable level for the Adcoms. They are now aware that every time they give out one acceptance, they are sending implicit rejections to all other applicants around the world. I expect in the next cycle we will see something like this in the application form: Describe your relationship with TestMagic: [ ] Lurker [ ] Over 50 posts [ ] Over 200 posts! [ ] Will share anything and everything with fellow TMners/Member of the TM inner circle

I apologize for being irrelevant.. but UCLA has Terence Tao in the math department, just being in proximity with him increases one's intelligence

carbon

Thatcherism