saucyapples

The GRE isn't the only way that they can see how good your english is - just make sure that your SOP is extra well written and grammatically correct and then no one will even notice your verbal score.

I mentioned presenting a paper in a tiny conference, and it was mentioned as something impressive in my NSF feedback. So yeah, I'd certainly mention it. You might not want to put it on your cv once you're a PhD economist, but when applying it can only help.

... why did you tell them that? My guess is that you'll be fine - schools probably don't go around talking to each other about who they're taking off their (implied) waitlist. They have enough to do already. Plus, it's not like an email is a binding contract (while an accepted offer of admissions sort of is, I think) Where things would get complicated is if the school that you apparently don't want to go to accepts you because they think you've promised to attend.

I disagree, lots of people with Business Econ PhDs teach at regular econ departments - a reasonable number of HBS people, almost half of Stanford GSBs class 07-09, etc. I'm not even sure that they all did applied stuff.

Sorry - I didn't mean to mischaracterize your job. Since I'm a complete ingrate, in my head anything having to do with finance is "banking," even though that's obviously wrong. You could take a one-year RA position this summer and apply in the fall without losing any time, right? Seriously though, the best advice that I can give you is to call (not email) your thesis advisor and ask him/her. S/he'll have contacts with professors looking for help, and if s/he likes you s/he'll help you find something worthwhile. And if your advisor doesn't like you, your application is in trouble regardless of what you do. My experience is that the professors I talked to were thrilled that I was applying to PhD programs and tried to help me as much as they could. It's the small-school advantage.

People with backgrounds similar to yours (banking experience) have bailed from academia in the past, so you need to explain why you're different that those people (if you've always wanted to go into academia, why didn't you go to graduate school directly? Don't you like being able to afford nice things?). Saying that you want to research finance and wanted to first understand how people work in finance seems like a pretty compelling story to me, but I have no idea how finance professors would look at it (I spent my time after college doing development research, and wrote about how that experience would help me in graduate school, but fieldwork is much more relevant to development. In fact, it's probably the only reason why I got in to any top-15 places). People get in from non-research backgrounds every year. It's not a deal-breaker, but something that admissions will consider and therefore that you should address. I got my RA job through my thesis advisor, that seems like a good place to start. Many econ departments post RA offers on their public websites, that might be another thing to look into (Job List for Economics Undergrads, Harvard Econ Department - Job Opportunities and Funding in Economics, Employment at NBER, etc.) There isn't too much difference between the business econ program at HBS and the regular econ program at Harvard - the course offerings are the same and the professors barely (if at all) know who is in which program in terms of their advisees. I ended up picking HBS because if I choose to I can take a field course instead of the second semester of macro, and in the third year students get (are forced) to take a semester of MBA courses, which I think sounds cool. There are several B-schools that have similar programs, I would highly recommend looking into those, both because they probably look more fondly on experience and because the stipends are higher.

I don't know what a good GMAT score would be, but given your GPA and background it seems like you'll probably do really well on the quantitative section of the GRE, so your profile looks really strong. That said, not only are PhD programs long, but they don't pay very well. Admissions people will be worried that after a year or two (or after graduation), you'll decide to go back into the private sector. You'll have to show them that you are interested in staying for the long haul. There is a big difference between academic research and investment bank research, so I wouldn't focus too much on liking that either. If I were you I would get two econ recs and try to talk a lot with those professors to convince them that a PhD is what you want, so that they can also write in your letters that you know what you're getting into. Another good signal would be to get an RA job for the year, in order to demonstrate that you're willing to get a paycut in order to do econ research. Other than the fact that you already have a good job (odd, right?), I think that your profile looks about as good as a LAC profile can be. Good luck!

Econ departments have moved away towards taking people who are good at math but have no econ experience whatsoever, but it doesn't look like you're in that boat. If you demonstrate through classes (if you can, take grad micro) that you're interested in econ, you can explain your interest in mathematical economics in your essays and ad-coms really won't see it as a problem. Undergrad econ is different enough from grad econ that, especially if you're from an unknown department, courses which are clearly rigorous and hard are just as important as econ courses if not more so (eg some trade classes are really easy, and they might have no idea what yours was like. Grad complex analysis is ALWAYS impressive, even if it isn't too relevant to economics). And don't worry about being from a non-flagship university, if you do well (and it seems like you will) and get nice letters you'll get into some good schools.

I'm not sure - the format of the SOP isn't really the important thing to ad-coms, but the content. Since this is the internet and it's pretty easy to figure out who I am from what I wrote, I'm not going to add it, but I'm happy to describe it in lieu of doing actual work. I only wrote about things that I'd done recently - nothing from before my senior year. I was told that one of the biggest concerns of Ad-coms is that Americans - especially ones from LACs - don't know enough math, so I mentioned a math project I'd done. I had 4 paragraphs about projects I've worked on, one on my thesis, three from my individual contributions to projects that I'm an RA on (the projects I mentioned changed depending on the program, at some I talked more about finance & IO, at others more behavioral stuff). At the end of each paragraph, I talked about how I would want to continue that research in an innovative direction, and how the school I was applying to would help me do that. I tried to be detailed & specific instead of generally listing contributions or things I'm interested in. While that means I left stuff out, I felt that I had a better shot at being remembered if I went all-out talking about just a few things. It was always under 1000 words, for some programs I only mentioned the math and my thesis. I didn't cite anyone else's work, and didn't talk about how I've wanted to do econ ever since I was wee. I had it edited by a friend in law school, and while she didn't have much to say about the content she was hugely helpful in making it clearer.

I just got rejected again (I didn't contact them in between). sad :(

I hope that we all do well on the job market!

I don't think that's always true. At Harvard, the bizec students get to take the exact same PhD courses as the regular econ students, and their advisor can be from anywhere (I'm not even sure if the professors notice who is from what program). The reason why it exists is that it's designed to train economists who work at business schools (by making students take a semester of mba classes). Other than that there really isn't much of a difference. I'm not sure if that's true at other programs, though...

PROFILE: Type of Undergrad: Top 10 LAC, majored in Math and Econ (class of 2008) Undergrad GPA: 3.69 Type of Grad: None Grad GPA: N/A GRE: 800Q, 630V, 5.5AW Math Courses: The usual , plus some high level statistics classes. Mostly As, some B's. Econ Courses: 12 or so, mostly A's and some A-'s. Other Courses: Some random classes, several about law since when I got to college I wanted to be a lawyer. A's and B's. Letters of Recommendation: Only from people who know me well and (I think) like me. Two from econ professors with PhD's from top-5 places and one from a reasonably famous math prof. Research Experience: Undergrad thesis (won an award), RAed for two summers including once abroad, and did field research in Latin America for almost two years after graduation Teaching Experience: TAed and tutored a couple of math and econ courses. I've also tutored at an underachieving elementary school near my house (which is remarkably similar to tutoring underachieving college students, actually) Research Interests: Development, IO, Game Theory, Education SOP: Had it vetted by various economists, they said that it was fine. I wrote about three pages and then for each school only kept the 1-1.5 pages that were most relevant to that program. I'm not really sure how much it matters Concerns: Had no idea what my LORs actually said. RESULTS: Acceptances: HBS($$$, pretty sure that I'm going to take it), Harvard ($$), Cal($$), Michigan ($), BU($), Maryland() Waitlists: None Rejections: Duke, Yale, Northwestern, Stanford GSB, Columbia, NYU, Stanford, MIT What would you have done differently? I got into my dream school, so I'm ecstatic.

I asked a professor I know, and he agreed, adcoms aren't really equipped to handle withdrawals. Better to wait and say no a day or two after you get any offers. And I wouldn't bother explaining your reasons, just something along the lines of your first and last sentence. They can figure out why you're withdrawing, you don't need to explain it (this also goes for declining offers from schools that don't have automatic forms).

I think that the USNews list is of colleges that don't give out PhDs and give out most of their degrees in non-technical fields (ie economics and biology instead of business and pre-med). My LAC does pretty well at grad school placements. Students basically can't take grad classes (although there is a professor at my school who has taught personalized grad micro to students he really likes) and don't have many opportunities to do fancy research, but there's something to be said for getting close personal attention, and there are still plenty of opportunities to research interesting questions with professors who went to top 20 programs. Also, since the undergraduates are the only sources of RAs, there is much more of a push to get students to do research - I'm not sure I would have realized that I'm interested in becoming an academic if I had gone to a university.

Have you thought about working for ipa or J-PAL? You would get to actually work in development/applied micro, plus if you work hard and do well your PI will probably write you a nice recommendation, which is a good way to improve your application. A lot of the positions are two years (which is a pretty serious commitment since being away from home can be hard), but even beyond the grad-school stuff they're really awesome jobs. You get to do interesting work with interesting people in interesting places; what could be better? Even if you don't want to go abroad, there are always a couple of support positions available in the States.