Charis

Actually, you want an advisor who'll tell you when your research is useless because chances are they've got a point. The bad advisors never read what you sent them, smile, nod and pat you on the back. Also, I don't think anything anyone's said has been purposefully discouraging, wrong or self interested (except TM_guru soliciting dropbox referrals--I know what you're doing:encouragement:). If it wasn't what you expected then you'll fit right in. I know one guy already who was originally going for PhD who's changed his mind. I admit, I'm a bit more gloomy than most because I'm interested in development, and anyone doing research on it who doesn't having an existential crisis regularly has no heart. :dejected:

I don't think you're giving adcoms enough credit. Most know the math subject GRE tests college math and you'd be competing against prospective math graduate students. They'll know 82nd percentile is an amazing score. The problem is they won't have anyone to compare that to because almost no one applying to Econ PhD programs has a Math subject GRE score. Thus, I agree with others who think it will only matter on the margin. Still, I personally would include it.

I was told that there are no hard deadlines for LORs, unless the school specifically says it somewhere. In general, I don't think it will be a problem at all unless they've started reading applications, which by all reports starts in Feb.

You really missed the point. What everyone was questioning wasn't if you were capable or a qualified candidate for a PhD, but whether you had the right expectations and really wanted to go down that rabbit hole? Even people like you with superior ability, amazing intellect, and fantastic connections may, after 5 years of noodles and late nights, realize they've undergone a half decade of highly specialized discipleship for a job they don't really want. It's a far more serious question for you then for the average PhD applicant because your alternatives seem better than most of the applicants we run into (the average econ PhD candidate is a math nerd who's may have briefly held a job in the real world, but at best at the entry level). I think common wisdom on TM is that if after considering all that, as I did, you still think it's worth changing your life trajectory then go for it.

I wouldn't worry about exaggeration, but I do think there's a serious posting bias. I think not only may people with weak profiles be more reticent about posting, but people with more unorthodox profiles are overrepresented because they have questions about things that are more difficult to get an informed opinion about.

Actually, a selfish adcom could, theoretically, be biased against grad students working in his own speciality since less grad students interested in that means less advising work. In reality, though, I don't think you need to worry about the enthusiasm being less effective on non-environmental people. Overall, I don't think the enthusiasm counts for anything. They're just worried about fit and perhaps extraneous factors (e.g. dream job is teaching at a community college).

You know it wouldn't surprise me if somewhere there's a junior faculty member who refers back to TM for advise on hard questions when advising undergrads.

Totally agree with elliephant that any low self-esteem this forum generates is nothing compared to what the 1st year will do to you. I suggest thinking about it as good practice in handling it well. Besides, we all know our time would be more efficiently spent working on stuff then hanging out on this forum (after the first couple of hours of reading the FAQs, which as others pointed out is enormously helpful), but we come back because math, research or grad school is driving us crazy and we want be reassured we're not the only insane people in the world.

How many of your credits are you going to lose, and how many new requirements will you need to fulfill? In other words, what's the opportunity cost? A semester? Two?

It would be worth your while to take a good prob/stats course from the math dept. As for taking an econometrics course, I don't think KKecon's concerns are going to be worth a lot to adcoms, and I definitely don't think he "needs" to take it. For others, I think KKecon's advice would be spot on, but doing well in a Calculus of Variations course, to me, makes it obvious you could do well in any undergrad econometrics course. Also, I wouldn't bother doing a MA in econ if I had your background coming out of undergrad. Depending upon how well you did in those classes you might not be a secure top 10 candidate, but it's not worth 2 years just to overcome the fact that you don't have a lot of econ on your transcript because you've already demonstrated you're capable of grad level econ work if you can take those grad math classes. Finally, even if you find out you like straight math much better than econ in a few years, I think econometric theory is a lot more like a field in math then a field of economics. I'm kinda surprised I don't see any Math or Stats PhDs doing applied work managing to make it into econ depts.

Besides what one-armed mentioned there's one other reason to limit applicants to one application per a school. Admissions committee don't just want to maximize the number of applications, app fees, or even the quality of the class who shows up in the fall. They also want to control their class size, so a high variability in matriculation rate (aka the acceptance rate of their acceptance letters) is bad since they could wind up with way too large or small a class. Having people who apply to multiple departments at the same school makes the matriculation rate if multiple depts accept that person even lower (unless you assume if they are constrained not to apply to multiple depts they will still apply to just as many schools and just add another school to the list). Depts very weakly prefer sending out a few letters to people with higher matriculation rates then many letters to people with lower matriculation rates since it prevents black swan events like the '08 crash that caused larger then expected class sizes at many schools. You can see this preference occasionally in the profile and results thread when people are rejected from obvious safeties because schools know their safeties for that candidate so they'd have a really low matriculation rate if they sent an acceptance.

Good catch, resource. I'm pretty sure it was about tenure. I have no idea about hiring practices.

I think one of the top 10 has some sort of point system. I saw it once on TM, but I don't remember where (sorry). Anyway, tier one solo publications got a full point, tier 1 co-authored work (regardless of the number of coauthors) got a little less than that, and tier 2 journal work (i.e. top field journals) was worth about half as much as a tier one solo publication. Anything below that in quality was not counted. If someone can remember where that came from it would set my mind at ease because it does irk me to mention something without a proper citation.

But you get to play with lasers and atom smashers. enough said.:onthego: Also, I think there's something to be said about how at least economics is pretty upfront about what you have to be disillusioned with. Pretty much your entire career path can be forecasted in economics, but in other fields you may climb halfway up the ladder before you realize just how much BS there is at the top.

Provided your sponsored by an employer English teachers for Japanese high schools can get work visas. I find it difficult to believe this is a greater barrier than foreign PhD holders getting work visas to stay in the US. Hence, it can't be responsible for the disparity. Your probably right about the language being the biggest hurdle. The question, then, is do they suffer from a lower quality faculty to advise the government, and the expand the network of the faculty, because they've chosen to exclude non-Japanese speaking economists? I'm not sure if that is the case, but it's an interesting question to me because it seems like most developing countries have insular faculties, and most developed countries have a faculty that is well-connected to the rest of the global economic profession. Usually, this is because developing countries are poor and developed countries are rich, and have a higher propensity to have English instruction. Japan is an interesting outlier because it has chosen to be insular despite being rich and having the capability (as University of Tokyo demonstrated recently by adding an English instruction econ MA) of incorporating English instruction.

Do you think it's wise for a country to be more closed to free trade in academia? As a specific example, I'd point to Japan who's econ PhDs are taught in Japanese (so there's pretty much only Japanese in the program) and whose faculty are even more disproportionally educated in Japan than most. Now all countries will have a bias towards graduates of their own universities probably because on the supply side nationals will prefer to work at home and their own programs are disproportionally filled with nationals. There's also the relevance issue, since people educated at home will be more likely to research topics relevant to their home country from the same perspective as policy makers from their home country. Still, US, Korea, Australia and many European programs are not as insular as Japan's economics programs seem and hiring practices could be seen as a proxy and a tool for more free exchange of ideas. Therefore, an efficient well-structured academic institution would seek diversity and to be integrated with the global academic market. On the other hand, hiring foreigners, or even giving preference in hiring to foreigners (as they may need to do if foreigner's preference to not work in Japan is what's driving this trend) may reduce the relevance and effectiveness of their policy making, and would be really difficult to swing with the whole Japanese instruction thing. What do you think? Is this suboptimal and inefficient, or is integration overrated and are the Japanese Universities serving their students best keeping instruction in Japanese about Japanese topics. Finally, a more realistic policy relevant question is do you think it'd be worth it for insular departments to offer more Post-docs to foreigners?

This seems to run against TM common knowledge and my own personal experience but it could still be entirely relevant to many places, so I just want some clarification. 1) Do they say it's cute because they normally only give "cute" unpublishable projects to undergrads interested in working with profs, and have grad students do the real work? 2) Or do they really think RAing has little value as training for researchers? If it's the first I think that's highly school dependent. If it's the second it may be field dependent. Sadly, in the case of the 2nd definition that implies the RAing doesn't improve the candidate, but provides returns by better connecting them to faculty and their networks, which stinks just a bit of cronyism. Of course, I think your profs meant the 1st, and I'm lucky enough to have wound up at an institution where they'd give an advanced undergrad real work and experience. In any case, depending on what the project is economist could very well be right that it's not worth the opportunity cost, given the returns are going to be positive but may not be very large.

I had the so called "Imposter syndrome" while taking the 1st year classes after our first midterm when I felt I was near the bottom of the class and likely to fall further behind. The saddest part was I didn't think I was alone in it. Later I found out the feeling had a name and it's pretty common to feel it at some points during your 1st year. Still, I didn't think it was common enough in other disciplines too that Michigan would schedule a seminar on dealing with it. Rackham Graduate School Just a little encouragement for those of you who might be feeling like you don't belong in your classes.

Aim higher. I think you can still break into the top 50 even with rather mediocre letters. If you had one good one then you could make it to top 40. Also, it looks like you're applying to all those ag econ places because you figure it'll be easier to get into then straight econ. In the case of cornell's AEM program, though, I'd estimate admissions is at least at the level of difficulty of getting into a top 30 econ program.

Certainly not every successful applicant has research experience, but every successful applicant does have some mathematical basics (i.e. Calc sequence and almost always LA).

There are funding opportunities for MAs in Canada and some in Europe (not the UK though). In regards to UM Amherst. They are the number 1 heterodox economics program in the world. Unfortunately, heterodox schools generally can't place into orthodox schools so they have significantly reduced job opportunities, so unless you really believe in their perspective on economics I would concentrate on placing into an orthodox school even if it's slightly lower ranked.

why are you going to retake the GRE? 750-800 is the best bracket I've seen, so I was under the impression they don't have any higher brackets. Admittedly you could still wind up with a 750 so you should be ready if you have to retake it and maybe make plans so you're ready to if you have to, but if you get 770 or above I definitely wouldn't bother. Also, are you aware about UM amherst's heterodox leanings. Finally, I agree with EnvEcon that UC Berkeley and AEM are out of your league. Some people, according to untitled's analysis, who apply to AEM's PhD program wind up getting rejected from the PhD but extended offers for unfunded MA admissions (with PhD admissions implied with satisfactory progress through the MA program). Given that you should definitely still apply since it's presumably a PhD and an MA application for the price of one.

I don't think he's going to be competitive for those RA positions. I applied with a lot of math, and some stata experience made it into the final rounds at one of the banks but still got cut. Still it's worth a shot to apply. Unfortunately, they'd also like 3 LORs from people who can attest to your expertise in the classroom or in research. Also, use the search function. I think I wrote about this within the last 2 months. Basically, you may not get a yes from the first person you talk to. Many people are doing things that they have to train their grad students to be able to do so they really don't want to give it to an undergrad who may lose interest halfway through. Others may not be doing something they could use an assistant for, but there are plenty of professors who are willing to bring you on board for their projects. Also don't be afraid to ask professors you haven't taken classes from if you're especially interested in that field or the ones you're taking a class with turn you down.

In the US the standard theory core is usually courses: interm micro, interm macro and a couple statistics/econometrics courses with people having to take intro micro and intro macro before they take the intermediate classes. Although I have seen colleges with Micro II or advanced micro (usually as an elective not as part of the core). Almost all liberal arts colleges for example will offer Micro II and occasionally Micro III to their students who may have graduate school aspirations. I think this is because LACs don't offer grad classes so its to minimize the disadvantage. Some of these Micro II or Micro III even use very rigorous books such as Varian and Mas-Collel. In terms of taking grad classes the policy depends on the university. Many will limit the amount you can take and have count towards completing future graduate study requirements at their university. This is just to keep you from taking an extra year as an undergrad to get the 1st year's worth of your MA/MS/MBA etc. curriculum done at the cheaper rate. In general, if you just want to take it and get a grade you just need the instructor's permission. Now for my questions: Did your micro and macro sequences take longer because there was more math involved? I don't think we covered anything more than advanced than taking derivatives in interm micro, and nothing beyond algebra in macro.

They both seem to do awesome work. I also find it amusing that Princeton seems to be trying to wring prestige out of the fact that Sargent is at Princeton right now as a visiting professor. Obviously princeton deserves prestige from having Sims on its faculty but Sargent being there right now is just a lucky fluke.