taurenchieftain

Also, advanced math counts more than advanced economics for finance phds.

Kellogg and UCLA are probably up there with NYU. Cornell is on a different tier. I think you are in good shape, specially given your strong coursework. It will be good if you have one full professor in finance or a econ professor with serious finance connections for your letter though. LORs are KEY. This is how I feel now having gone through this entire process. I think you have a really good chance at cornell. But for UCLA, Kellogg or NYU its very tough without serious improvement in the letters.

In order of priority.... - learn Matlab (this needs to get done urgently) - have fun - finish the two databases I am preparing for myself (I am pretty sure with "have fund" up there on the priority list I will never get to do the stuff below) - read papers - do a bit of review on first-year micro i took this year

I agree with hzzhangyu. The average chinese must be spending not that much otherwise it is physically impossible. I think a big part of this is you can leave a really really inexpensive life in China with little money. But if you want to live a upper-middle-class American life (3-bedroom apartment/toyota/shrimp+beef everyday/prada(girl only)), you need to make as much as upper-middle class in US in real terms. A lot of this price gap just come from high income inequality. An average shanghainess probably make 1/10th of what an average New Yorker makes. But one government official doing railways caught a few months ago made 400million usd out of embezzlement.

Haha....I wanted to point out that Kellogg has better deal after taking cost of living into account. But at a second thought, I realized maybe I am just bitter that I didn't get off the stanford waitlist. haha

i heard china's commodity prices (food) are more expensive than the US already. not sure how they cope. havent been to china for quite long time.

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MIT admitted 10-11 Chinese applicants? So half of their class is Chinese?

again. I think doing a masters overseas help your rec. All your rec must come from academics. If I am right, there are no young professors in china who graduated from top finance programs (many in econ). So if this is the case, and you want to apply to finance programs, getting a masters helps

I visited 5 top10 b-schools this year and met a few chinese student. Here are their background. So all had US degree. (and counting those with US undergrads, I only met 3 Chinese students in my visit to the 5 schools) top30 us undergrad top2 china BS, top us financial engineering MS top5 us BS

1. From country like China the most important factor will be your recs. That is, do you have any one known in the US who can write a good rec for you? Your grades are good, but soft skill is not important for PhD admission. Recs are very very important. 2. Also, just from what I see, almost no chinese student make it to a good finance PhD program without a masters, either the masters is from China, or (preferrably) from the an English speaking country. 3. PhD in finance is generally more difficult to get into, just based on the raw numbers of applicants and acceptances. I think not counting Chinese who lived or did their undergrads in the US, only several Chinese student make it into top15 PhD programs in Finance, most of whom has a masters in the US already. The numbers of Chinese getting into top 15 econ programs is way higher.

Kellogg Finance!!

congrats...

I was at the Kellogg visit. Kellogg Finance professors were very nice, very accessible, and like to work with students. I have decided to choose Kellogg over the other equally ranked (or slightly higher ranked) programs I got into for this reason. I encountered professors talking to students who were guiding us about a paper when they met on the hallways, so this is real and not just something claimed. The best part I think is students. They are all extremely friendly and I feel I could become friends with them (at least those only 1 year above me who are not leaving the program anytime soon). Kellogg actually stressed interaction with the Econ department and the possibility to work with Econ professors (I have some interests in models of asymmetric information). Hope I am not hijacking the thread too much. Can some NWU students also inform us a bit about the grad-student housing opportunities? Thanks

maxmg you are going to princeton?

Thnaks. Just asking because I heard at my school (stanford), metrics is a bigger problem than the other two.

I was there on the visit day, and I think I know you. The brown-bag lunch at UCLA was a good proof that professors interests are VERY broad at UCLA finance. And the placements are way better, the stipend is more, and the program overall is stronger.

To get to Stanford, if you want to take the rail system, its: From SFO -> By BART -> To Milbrae From Milbrae -> By Caltrain -> To Palo Alto From Palo Alto -> By A line school bus -> Econ building

At every school of my visit, I heard some professor talking about chicago's high attrition. I guess it is something they were noted for back in the 90s or something. Glad to see that it is not the case anymore. PS: Hopefully Chicago did a great job at the visit day

ADD: I am on Columbia's waitlist too. I declined it, so hope that helps marginally. I just got notified from Wharton official source that only two guys failed comps on both tries over the last nine years. Looks pretty good.

I just did one class. Did ok, but struggled alot just like many other people in the class

stanford and chicago do that consistently

From the offcial website I see that NWU attrition is about 15% on average. I wonder if any students t NWU can give some info on which comp contribute the most to this? More specifically, as a Finance student, we only have to take to micro comp, so I wonder how many actually fail the micro comp, and how the pass rates of the three comps compare (I am not so interested in the other two comps because we do not take it :p)

UCLA is trying to expand. they have lots of money and student get lots of attention there. So I don't see it as a problem.