LAecon

Penn has other great micro theorists, look up Andy Postlewaite, Steve Matthews, Ken Burdett and a recent hire but great guy, Yuichi Yamamoto.

maybe you can download it as or convert it to csv (comma separated values), which every program reads. if you can figure out a way to interpret the above as columns and end of row it's easy to write a program to convert it to csv.

Groundhog Day or a good Woody Allen flick.

This sounds like it will be very complicated. I also know that if you're international some countries have tax treaties with the US that exempt you (but may be due in your home country, who knows). Basically do not expect to receive 100% of your fellowship in most cases.

If you're on linux, use emacs and split the screen using Ctrl-x and then 2 for horizontal and 3 for vertical. If you're on windows, get linux and do the previous step. And AREStudentHopeful has it. Why pay for supercomputing when your school has some computing servers at your disposal? A little knowledge of linux goes a long way.

This is what I have and does the job perfectly + the best user interface + low amount of annoying crashes (relative to Vista, last windows version I have used a bit). Anyways, for any calculations that your computer can't handle quickly enough you could easily do them on one of NYU's (probably cims) servers through ssh, since OS X has a linux-like command line, which windows does not.

Penn math camp: Math Camp | UPenn Economics Department $2000 tuition is rather expensive

number of macro faculty != quiality macro grad students. I heard from a friend that the CBS flyout was horrible, which probably doesn't speak about Columbia's Econ program, but serves as a good indicator. Can you talk to anybody who attended? I would personally choose NYU based on faculty for macro, good diversity of fields, low attrition and overall satisfied vibe I got from the grad students. Minnesota is also a great option, if you are sure you want to do macro theory it is the obvious choice IMO, otherwise NYU.

Felicidades!

I transferred from a school that wasn't going to get me into a top Ph.D. to one that did (eg. no Econ Ph.D. program school to a good Ph.D. program school). If you're financially able to do that (as aid is scarcer for transfer students), that's what I would do.

Some schools have two waitlists, one of their top options, which they're pretty sure they will be able to make offers, and a secondary one which is basically for contingencies. Sometimes they have to dip a lot into the second one, but short waitlist had priority. They certainly don't appreciate it, but you gotta do what you gotta do IMO...

Thanks for the info riskaverse, those numbers are great to have. I forgot to ask about retaking the prelims, that rate is horrible! Where do you think you'll attend?

http://www.texify.com/img/%5CLARGE%5C%21%5Cgeq2.gif

You're welcome guys. I don't have any official numbers, but a second year told me that the most that have failed in his memory were 5 out of 24. I think something horrendous like that happened a long time ago, but I'm pretty sure that's not average.

If I were you I would forget about Cornell, visit both and decide from there. If you can't visit, then look for which department has faculty whose research interes align with your current insterests, and then consider which department has broader scope of research (in case you switch). For me, I like macro so I think UCLA would be the one for me.

I was there. It was a pretty good trip. We met with 4 professors each individually during the morning, who talked about the program and answered questions. Mingled with grad students and afterwards we saw presentations from one person of each of the four "fields" at penn: microtheory, empirical micro (and they underlined that they were strictly structural), macro and econometrics (but it's hard to difference between these two). Afterwards we got the job market talk from three guys who were on the market this year (2 went to the fed board, don't remember the last guy), who were pretty cool and answered a lot of questions. They wanted to emphasize that they've reshaped the program since Dirk Krueger took over as director of graduate studies, since the last one apparently was hands off, and the students didn't come out as "polished". They've also cut down the Math for Economists class in the fall and made it into a half semester course in basic consumer theory. They also wanted to say that it's a very technical program, that they believe that tools go a lot longer than one cute job market paper that gets you your first appointment. About placement they said last year was really bad everywhere, but that once departments shrink too much they bet they'll start hiring again. They claimed to have good median placement, which is important. Krueger talked about the attrition myths being misinformed, since what they claim they do is eliminate in the first year the people who would've lingered on and not ended up graduating. Basically that the rate that matters is program attrition, not first year attrition. They said theirs is the same as any program. Of course the DGS said he recognized that even if the correlation between exam taking is not perfect, it is positive; but they'll look into it case by case and sort relax a little bit about it. This year they'll do micro in the fall and macro in the spring; with metrics year long in four mini courses with different faculty each. To end it they took us to a happy hour and pretty much the whole department showed up. It was pretty fun. Dirk Krueger was great. The department chair is a really nice and fun italian.

PROFILE: Type of Undergrad: International Student, Joint Econ and Math + Computer Science double major at a top US Econ PhD granting school. (Transferred in Junior Year from no name east coast business school) Undergrad GPA: 3.9 Type of Grad: N/A Grad GPA:N/A GRE: 790 Q, 590 V, 3.5 AWA / 740 Q, 610 V, 3.0 AWA Math Courses: At business school: Discrete Math, Linear Algebra, Calc I-III, Intro to Prob and Statistics (All A's). At PhD school: Analysis I (A), Probability and Statistics (B), Topology (A), Scientific Computing (A), Analysis II (Current Semester) Econ Courses: At business school: Intro Micro/Macro, Intermediate Micro/Macro, Money and Banking (All A's). At PhD School: Intro to Econometrics (A-), Public Econ (A), Africa in the world Economy (A), International Econ (A), Advanced Macroeconomics and Finance (A). Other Courses: Whole Computer Science Major (As(, Plus Honors Thesis (A and Current Semester) Letters of Recommendation: Great (I expect) one from a really well known economist who I've taken classes and worked for. Great one from political scientist I've worked for and are currently trying to get a paper published with. I have no idea one from the chair of my department who didn't know me that well. Research Experience: Worked the whole summer for my main letter writter, a really well known economist, also for my number two letter, will end up coauthoring a paper with him. Writing my own honors thesis. Teaching Experience: Nothing. Research Interests: Macro, DSGE, Finance, Development and International. SOP: Pretty bland, just changed Universities and sometimes faculty I'm interested in. One page and a half. Actually sent a couple in with a small grammatical mistake. Talked about my research experiences, a little bit about my interests, and about my thesis. Other: RESULTS: Acceptances: UPenn ($$$), Minn ($$$), UCLA ($$), Duke ($$$). Waitlists: Carnegie Mellon Rejections: Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Northwestern, Chicago, Booth, Stanford GSB, Brown, NYU, Princeton, Stern and Yale. Pending: What would you have done differently? The only thing in my opinion that could have gotten me into higher ranked places in my opinion would have been to get a better third LOR, which is something that I could have done in my department in retrospect; or a master's abroad. This last one IMO, is not worth my time, as I got into great schools. I will make a post in the Getting into PhD's from low ranked schools thread, but I hope my example here shows that if you care about the two years you will invest in a masters and will not get funding, if you have the grades try to transfer to a department with a good PhD. From my previous department I wouldn't have been able to enter a top 50 place. My money / time was better invested in an undergrad where access to great economists is commonplace.

If you are into empirical work, Numerical Linear Algebra by Trefethen and Bau was what I was taught with in Scientific Computing, and it is a wonderful book. Changes your perspective on linear algebra to be able to apply it with numerical methods: decompositions, least-squares projections, norms, condition numbers, all in a very intuitive but rigorous manner.

I wish we had a Penn student on the forum to confirm this! I've read every Penn post on the forum and apart from a sample of uncofirmed failure rates there is virtually no information here. I can say that NYU students are all happy with their school and have lots of opportunities to work with faculty. In terms of development it is rather theoretical (check out Yaw Nyarko as well), but there are lots of empirical Labor/Education/Human Capital people who would atleast in terms of methods be of great help. Almost forgot Bill Easterly, great professor and development researcher, one of the best known in the development world (academic and popular).

Ellie gets my vote.

Honestly, if you're into the city the vote is clearly for NYU.

Marjorie from NYU told me my result today, if anyone still doesn't have a response try doing that.

\ I asked the graduate coordinator and NYU is not done, and apparently won't be for a week or so. Good luck everyone!

That's it! I applied to three b-schools, but never really had a chance either (they seem to be more micro and IO and applied). I'm more than satisfied and really excited about going to either program. If you're leaning for financial wharton would be a great asset, very few places in the world are as good/better. Edit: I should note that I emphasized macro in my app (as probably did my LORs), and I only got into "macro" schools, I don't think this was random!

I guess we'll be talking about it at the flyouts. Not being 100% that I want to stay in academia forever does give Penn an edge.