Jump to content
Urch Forums

OutOfGame

1st Level
  • Posts

    140
  • Joined

  • Days Won

    2

Everything posted by OutOfGame

  1. 1. UChicago has three analysis sequences, all for undergrads: honors, non-honor fast pace (same pace as honor, same textbook, just less homework), and slow pace (different textbook). 2. Honors sequence is really tough, and definitely provides sufficient preparation for grad econ coursework (you can take more math for intellectual reasons, or if u want to do particular kinds of theory). Slow sequence might be equivalent to analysis at a less challenging school. 3. Analysis is not a hard rule, but in general the more math u take, the more favorably you would be looked upon in terms of admission.
  2. Most schools allow you to take classes as a non-degree student
  3. OP: don't get disheartened - application is tough and random, especially for applicants from lesser known schools like yourself. Your few non-As in math classes could have penalized you disproportionally. I would do the following, if you are serious about grad school: 1) apply to top RA positions; 2) take grad classes from top 5 places and make sure you ACE them.
  4. Yes, all offers are out. They have not given out WL yet.
  5. I agree Chicago is a bit weird in terms of admissions - multiple friends were admitted to arguably higher ranked schools but rejected by Chicago. But my case wasn't a good example though - I was WLed for "personal" reasons :)
  6. Hi Julilo, Just my two cents: 1) you can try bargaining with Berkeley over TAship (and funding level), using Princeton as your chip. I know of people who have successfully done that in the past. TA in the first two years is a huge burden. 2) I would personally favor Berkeley, given your interest, but the general point I want to make is that this forum is like an echo chamber of knowledge about graduate school and therefore you'd hear similar advice from multiple members on this forum. You should be cautious in interpreting such as "consensus". I'd say definitely put more weights on what current students at those two schools have to say.
  7. I'd say don't stress too much about the length of SOP. I had mine at about 1100 words, and I had a "reference" section so it totals 3 pages. I didn't do ANY customization to each school, so even for schools which require 500 words, I sent my 1100 (e.g. Columbia if I recall right). Also, to Humanomics: often those vacuous sentences you cited are used to help the flow of paragraphs. You need them there to make the essay fluid - otherwise you would just list down points. I had plenty of sentences like the ones you cited, for example. I think the key issue here is to have solid content (i.e. not to fill your SOP with either vacuous statements or unparsable statements about econ research), and we dont have to be too particular about what kind of sentences should be thrown away out-of-context.
  8. badasseconomist: short answer to your question is that Func Anal / Measure was way harder in content, but PhD metrics had a huge variance on grading even after conditioning on your background, so it's a touch call. In my metrics class, the source of variance comes from: 1) prof put down a question worth 40% on the midterm on a topic that she said she won't test us; 2) the TA was quite irresponsible and was grading exams and Psets in a very ad-hoc fashion (so I got 8% on that 40% problem, a few friends also didn't prepare at all and scribbled something down randomly but got 35%+; also there were quite a few Psets in which the grades were written when the Psets were held upside-down).
  9. sirhawk: Finance admission being more competitive is more of a "myth" or rumor on the internet rather than truth. Based on personal observations, this is not quite true. I think I'd summarize as follows: 1) finance programs are harder to get into if you have no connection to the department, because they are less willing to take a chance on someone due to their small class sizes. That's why for someone with no prominent recommender, getting into one of the top 7 Econ schools could be easier than top 5 finance programs - it's more likely for econ programs to admit a candidate with noise in his profile. 2) if a candidate has connection that helps him reduce noise in his profile, then top econ programs are harder to get into than finance. This is based on quite a few conversations with professors at top finance programs and econ programs, as well as observations made on admission results during visiting days at top programs. 3) I personally am quite interested in finance, and had to choose between top econ and finance programs, so I asked a lot of opinions. Here's my summary of the pros and cons: if you have a good job market paper, then candidates from econ and finance programs have no difference on the finance job market. However, even top students could have a less-than-satisfactory job market paper due to various reasons (timing issue, some results not working out, etc), and in those cases B-schools are more willing to hire finance PhDs than econ PhDs, especially when you go down the rank. The pro's of a top econ program is also obvious: 1) the option value of doing research in other fields; 2) the likelihood of building a stronger connection with a larger group of future promising researcher. Some hard numbers I've heard professors mention are: if one goes below top 15-20 B-school, finance PhD might be preferred; if one's more than 85% sure he wants to do finance, he should go to finance PhD rather than econ at a comparable department (i.e. same university).
  10. Dear TMers, I'm back! With my promised thread on PhD applications. As some of you may know, I was rejected by all top 10 schools for fall 2010 entry, but I've had much success in the 2012 app cycle. I think I have learned a lot about the application process, and I'll try my best to articulate what I've learned in this thread. Just a head-up: what I'm going to say here will mostly be about the top PhD programs, and since all the information here represent only my personal opinion, you should take them with a grain of salt. Here's my profile and results: http://www.www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/139568-profiles-results-2012-a-2.html#post906782 Top PhD programs want to admit people who will (1) perform well in coursework and (2) excel in independent research. The primary way of evaluating (1) is to look at the history of courses the candidate has taken. The primary way of evaluating (2) is through letters of recommendation. On courses - there are a lot of discussions about which courses would help PhD application. I'd have to say that I concur with most people that while I don't think there's any hard requirement beyond basic calculus and linear algebra, it would help a lot if you have challenging courses under your belt with good grades. By "challenging", one should think from the adcom perspective: they want to see signals on your transcript that show you are really smart and academically outstanding. Which courses fit into this category largely depend on your institution and your other constraints: it could be challenging undergraduate math classes (for LAC applicants), PhD level economics classes at a good econ department (for those who have access to such classes), or it could simply be undergraduate econ courses at a well-known school (if you go to a top undergrad). One simple rule-of-thumb, as Mankiw mentioned on his blog, is that more math cannot hurt (on this "coursework" dimension of your profile, ceteris paribus). I added the parenthesis to Mankiw's statement because there's usually a trade-off of your time: more math could mean less PhD econ class, less research, etc. That's a trade-off that only you can make because it depends on the opportunities available to you and your comparative advantages. I've personally been following this "math rule" until I landed my RA job at a top 5 school, after which I took a PhD econometrics course. On research: although everyone knows that research experience is important for PhD admission, I want to emphasize that this is usually the dimension that's lacking for most "frustrated" applicants who think they underperform in the applications. In this great post, one of my fellow MIT classmates uses the word "crucial" on RA work: For the ambitious, prospective PhD student: A Guide : Core Economics I personally cannot think of any single person in my MIT class who has not worked as a "serious" RA before. I know that "serious" is a vague word, but I'm still throwing it out here because during my application in 2009 I thought I had done "serious" RA work when I in fact had not. You could consider your RA work "serious" if it fits one of the following categories: 1) you've done RA work full-time for at least one year; 2) you've done RA work over the summer under direct supervision (e.g. meet 3 times a week); 3) you've done RA work part-time during the school year and your name has been acknowledged in your Professor's paper / draft. This is not and should not be a hard criteria, but the rule-of-thumb for judging whether RA experience under your belt is "serious" enough is to ask yourself the following question: would your professor know you any better if you work for him/her full-time for an additional month? If your answer is no, then I think you should be confident that you've done some serious RA work and that your professor has already known you enough to make a good judgement of your research ability. Be reminded that grad schools want to admit candidates who will excel in independent research, and while doing RA work for someone will almost certainly show some aspects of your research skills, it will not necessarily show your ability to work "independently" in coming up with research ideas and executing it well, hence it might not be sufficient, and it is definitely not the only way, to show that you will excel in independent research. Another great way to do that is conducting independent research, or writing a good thesis. On letters: the ultimate goal of adcoms reading your recommendation letters is to obtain unbiased information about you that cannot be obtained from the rest of the application package. Therefore, from their perspective, reading letters from economists they know is almost always preferred over reading unknown letters. Therefore you should almost always pick recommenders who are established. Beyond this criteria, I personally do not think letters from big names (e.g. Nobel Laureates, famous economists who are 50+) have any real advantage over letters from those established, but not necessarily renown, economists (e.g. young, recently tenured economists at a top 10 school). The noisiest part of your profile is usually your research potential, and that's precisely why RA work has been emphasized - your professor will be able to write letters about your research potential. Once you've chosen your recommenders, however, you should not let the content of the letter just be in their hands, but instead you should actively communicate with them about what part of your profile is not as visible on paper, and see if they can help you by reducing the noise of the signal in their letters. For example, if you have a piece of excellent independent research, or if you took a particularly difficult class, you could always communicate with your recommenders on these signals. Repeated signals here might even be a good idea - if your well-known recommender A knows your class performance in [DIFFICULT PHD CLASS], and your not-as-known recommender B supervised your excellent thesis, you could always let A read your thesis (and ask for feedback!), and ask if he could include a comment about it in his letters (most experienced recommenders will not need such reminders!) As a rule-of-thumb here, I think research-letters are almost always preferred over coursework-letters because information contained in the latter usually repeats in your transcript and if not, it could always be explained in the research-letters by asking your coursework-professor to write a short email/ note to research-professors regarding your class performance. SOP: many people say this cannot help you if you write well, but it will hurt if you write poorly. I think empirically this is not true: I wrote a great statement this time with 50% of the space about an independent research project, and I repeated get asked / hear positive comments about my project during my school visits. I believe SOP not only could help at the margin, but it often serves as the "glue" that keeps your whole profile together. Final remarks: what has changed between 2010 and 2012 in my application: I have 1) performed very well in a PhD class at a top school and got a letter out of it; 2) worked hard at an RA job and obtained three research letters from established professors. Personally, I think recommendation letters is the single most important aspect of your profile that sets you apart from the rest of the applicants. I'm not saying that your transcript is not important, but I think most of the "underperformance" frustration sources from this factor: many excellent students at LACs or universities outside of the top 10-15 have great (and similar) transcripts, but many do not have access to good research opportunities or established recommenders. This is where full-time RAs can be especially helpful: I come from a top LAC with 3.96 GPA and a math major, but I didn't have access to any established researchers that could write my letters in the 2010 cycle. Some remarks on Plan B: there's always the question of whether one should take a good offer this year, or wait for a year or two and work as an RA and aim for an even better offer. That is largely situation-dependent, and I cannot comment too much on this without knowing the candidate really well. However, I should say that if you are confident about yourself and really think you are underperforming in one cycle, waiting one/two years is actually neither bad nor uncommon. Over the past two years, I've learned so much at the job from my professors that not only helped me on paper for the applications, but it has also helped me grow tremendously as a researcher. In fact, I think more than 50% of MIT's incoming class who did undergrad in the US have some full-time RA work. The proportion is similar at the other top 5 which I RAed at. However, even though I would recommend my RA job without any hesitation at all, one should be cautious in choosing a full-time research position, be it at a top school, think-tank, Fed, or other research institute. You have to be confident that the professor /researcher you will work for is really interested in helping you grow as a researcher, aside from getting you to do work for him. This is not always the case, even with well-established professors. I hope you have gained some useful information in this ramble, and please leave any questions in the thread and I'll try to respond periodically. Best, OOG
  11. Retrospectively, can I get the Chron 2010 please?
  12. PROFILE: Type of Undergrad: Top 10 LAC Undergrad GPA: 3.96 Type of Grad: Part-time student at a top 5 Grad GPA: 4.0 GRE: Q800/ V580/ AWA 5.5 Math Courses: Calc, Modeling, Linear Algebra, Intro to Proofs, Real Analysis, Complex Analysis, Measure Theory, Functional Analysis, Topology, Abstract Algebra, Combinatorics, Number Theory, Probability, Stats, Stochastic Processes, Math Problem Solving Econ Courses: Principles, Intermediate Micro, Intermediate Macro, Finance, Game Theory, Accounting, Econometrics, PhD Econometrics Other Courses: Intro to CS, Data Structure, Algorithms, Data Mining Letters of Recommendation: 3 research supervisor (top young professors in econ / finance), 1 PhD Metrics professor (department chair at top 5), 1 undergrad professor (took 3 classes with, and TAed for). Research Experience: ~2 years full time RA at top 5 Teaching Experience: TA for intermediate macro Research Interests: using empirical methods to answer macro / finance questions; IO SOP: professors say it's very good Other: rejected by all top 10 schools two years ago RESULTS: Attending: MIT Acceptances: MIT, Harvard, Stanford GSB, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Berkeley, Chicago, NWU, Columbia, NYU, Booth (finance / joint), Sloan (finance) Waitlists: Penn, Wharton (finance), Michigan Rejections: None Never heard back after interview: Stern (finance)
  13. Just got an email notification from MIT - my student host during the visit days will be the legendary "jeeves0923"...
  14. I think the OP is in Kellogg finance, not Kellogg decision science.
  15. It really depends on your profile. If you are 100% set on getting a PhD, and if 1) your profile is good, just having a bad year, and if Columbia MA or some research experience could get you into top 20 a few years later, then I think it's worth the wait. 2) your profile is not that good for a top 20, and if a MA will only marginally increase your chance for top 20, then I won't wait. If you are not 100% set on getting a PhD and don't mind paying for the MA, I'd get the MA.
  16. Hey LUDuckling (nice to talk to u on the forum:) ), I think Yale is your dominant offer, unless a) you get funding from MIT; b) you really like NYC over Yale's campus.
  17. 1) Research interests are likely to change (and seems like especially true for you), so I'd choose the best department overall rather than on specific fields. 2) NYU is a great school - I think in recent years its reputation > Penn. They also have good placements. This year one of the RESTUD tourists is from NYU (Bigio). 3) Unless you really hate the west coast, I think Stanford dominates your other choices. This year their placement is at least as good as Harvard's (maybe even better), and the department has been on a speedy rise since 3-5 years ago. Al Roth is going there, and for the past few years they attracted all the job market stars to be junior faculties there. (They got 4 out of 4 offers they made last year).
  18. Sorry I'm a little busy this week with work. I'll do it after Apr.15th.
  19. You are welcome. Of course, people who know more about Penn or LSE than I do might hold different opinions, but for me personally I'd choose Booth without a second thought. I have been a research assistant here for the past 1.5 years and I really like it here.
  20. At Booth, you'll have access to both the Booth faculties and U of C faculties. As you have said, Booth econ group is very strong in the fields you mentioned, minus development (I'm not sure if Penn / LSE have development either?), and U of C is of course a top 7 department. I'd say Booth > Penn. You can look at the placement of Booth's program online. (I know nothing about LSE's PhD program)
  21. a bit out of topic, hsdhz have u decided on Harvard or MIT?
  22. I don't think asking this by yourself would be useful - but if you could motivate your professors to ask, you might get meaningful results. A friend of mine applied last cycle and was shut-out, and the department at our school asked on his behave and indeed hear useful information.
  23. Institution: Michigan Program: PhD in Economics Decision: Waitlisted Funding: N/A Notified: 3/13/12 Notified through: Email Posted on GC: no Comments:
×
×
  • Create New...