sally82

Admitted: Johns Hopkins Penn State Rochester Stockholm Waitlisted: Yale Pending: Northwestern Wisconsin Madrid Here's a weird thing. I'm offered at both JHU and PSU the most attractive aid they can give. For JHU that is a fellowship of $14,500, for PSU it's a fellowship with $18,000 (a lot for that PSU is in the middle of nowhere). I always thought that that private universities are the rich ones. :hmm: Are the Northwestern admits all out already? Did anybody call and ask?

That's great news, Econ! Hope you get decent financial aid from them, too. Good luck for MIT and Harvard :)

I don't know the details for Rochester. But here is a good guess: It all starts with one group fighting against another group because there are different opinions about how things should be done. In the end the atmosphere is so bad and there are so many broken fences that either nobody or at least nobody in the losing group wants to stay and try to mend them. Hence, many people leave. Naturally, I don't know who will fill the positions. But consider that the info I posted is speading quickly through the economic community and personally I doubt that any respectable professor is about to gladly go to a recent "battlefield". Keep us updated what your friends say.

First of all, Congrats. One more confirmation that you are great :) . I also found their email offering admission this morning. I'll reply asap and say that I'm not interested. Personally, I would strongly recommend you do the same. Rochester is a department with severe internal problems, and many people there are extremely frustrated with the decision-making process. Quite a number of good people will leave Rochester this year: Jeremy Greenwood, Steve Landsburg, Shakib Khan, Mark Bils, and Gordon Dahl and possibly others. Unfortunatly, I didn't know this yet when I applied and wasted some money :mad:

Have you seen this recent post from "gambitgirl", the Duke secretary: (the adcom) "saw who else you applied to and thought you were so good why should they bother offering you admission when they know you're going to get an admit to MIT and they can't compete. so they move along to the next applicant who is also good but who they think they have a better shot at recruiting. i have heard this conversation many times from my adcom." So if you answered the question "Which other school did you apply to?" truthfully, this might have killed your application.

First of all, congratulations to all your great admits. Some people in this forum are simply amazing. I’ve been very busy lately and didn’t have time to tell everybody personally. But when I read today the posts of the last couple of days, I was very happy for each of you. :) I'm also thinking of those who got rejected. Don't let this discourage you! I keep my fingers crossed and hope that you will get some good news soon. Finally, here are my results so far: Accepted for PhD in economics: Stockholm School of Economics: Fellowship (no duties in first year, then TA) $20,000 Pennsylvania State University: Fellowship (no duties in first year, then TA) $18,000 Wait-listed: Yale: Fellowship if accepted

Thank you all! Hope that we all get some (more) good news soon! Yes, the "blond with blue eyes" factor is definitely worth considering. ;)

[clap] Congratulations [clap] That's great news! UCL is a fine university and living in London must be a great experience. I'm sure you will get some big admits soon! By the way, what's your dream school/ top choice?

Many universities want a diverse entering class not because they have some target quota but because this makes class discussion much more interesting. If you have a group of students from various different cultural backgrounds you often get diverse opinions and different approaches to the same question. And this is somethings all students (not just the minority applicants) in the program benefit from. I mentioned in my SOP my personal background (I lived in four different countries, can speak five languages, and grew up in a family of academics) because it has strongly shaped me and my view on the world. The experience I made in my life so far prepared me for grad school just as the math classes I took in college.

Thank you Commentor! You really make my day! I couldn't have solved it alone. TM is such a great place because of people like you!!!

1) sorry, it should be two 2) yes, each person has an even number of acquaintances

No big surprise here. :) Wasn't expecting anything else from you. The big question that remains is whether you get into Harvard or not. For your other schools, I have no doubt that you are in, unless one of your lower ranked school realizes that you a much too strong candidate and wouldn't accept their offer anyway (well, UCSD didn't realize that).

Contratulations, that's great news. The first offer is always great even if it is not from a dream school. It's not just because you know that your won't end up without any admit but especially because you get confirmation that your stats are good. Good luck for your other applications!

Stockholm School of Economics (joint econ PhD program with Stockholm University) sent out admits by email yestersday. I'm admitted with fellowship SEK 11.700 per month. That's about US$ 20.000 per year. While SSE is not my dream school it is very nice to have a first offer. SSE is for me more in the category "school at a great place to live, charging no application fee". (I won't call it safety school because they have an acceptance rate of only about 5%) So and now back to waiting for other notifications :)

vinnythepooh, thanks for your detailed account of your experiences. was very interesting to read! Good luck for your admissions!

While we're waiting for admission notifications, could maybe one of the brilliant minds hanging around in this forum help me with a math problem set? I would appreciate your help very much. Here are the two problems I couldn’t figure out: 1) In a room there are 10 people, all between 1 and 60 years old (all ages as whole numbers). Show that one can always find to groups of people with no common person such that the sum of their ages is equal. Can 10 be replaced by a smaller number? 2) There are 100 people at a party. Each person has an even number of acquaintances (possibly zero). Prove that there are three people at the party with the same number of acquaintances!

Oh, that's sound bad. I'm sorry. I'm in the lucky situation that I'm in a part of the world for which the normal US office hours are just when I'm sleeping. Thus, I can check my email once in the morning and that's it for the day. No need to check more often. To combat anxiety, I would recommend to avoid computers with internet connection at all costs and to do a lot of other things instead (i.e. sports, going out, travelling). For me travelling really does the trick. I'm in the lucky position to be able to travel over Asia during the next couple of months. And my mind is mainly occupied with questions like "Shall I go to Malaysia beginning or end of March?" and "Better go to Vietnam or Laos, or both?".

That's great news, econ! I'm very, very happy for you. P.S.: I'll reply to your email tomorrow and I have some new sightseeing pics to share.

g234, I think that snappythecrab mentions an important point. It seem likely that a PhD in economics might not be somethings you will enjoy very much. You should take into account that doing a PhD in economics means first two years classes, mainly applied math, and afterwards three to five years doing research. During the time you live on a minimum wage.

I'm also applying econ PhD this year. And yes, I like math a lot and it comes naturally to me. I'm one of the few people who actually enjoy working on problem set. But I know also quite a number of people doing a PhD in economics at the moment for whom math is not something enjoyable. So don't worry too much, you are not alone. Where did you apply?

Econstudent, so when you apply you have 2 semesters of cal, 1 in statistics, and 1 lin alg. It is certainly better if you can take even more math, as Yousuf suggests. But math is not everything. I know of someone who go into a top 10 school two years ago with about the same number of math classes as you will have when you apply. So anything is possible. If the other areas of your application are strong, then you should have a good chance. So try your best to get GREAT recommendation letters (they are probably the most important part of any application!), get research and teaching experience if possible, and get a quant GRE score of 770 or better. I would recommend you to apply to a large number of universities if you are absolutely determined that you want to get a PhD in economics, as the admission process is pretty much random and every additional application increases your chances of admission. A friend of mine (similar academic background as you, but from an unknow liberal art college) applied at 8 US top20 to top30 schools and didn't get into any of the 8 schools. Fortunately, he had also applied in other countries (originally mainly just for fun of it because there was no application fee). He ended up accepting an offer from a non-US university with a really good financial aid package (about $24000). So if you don't have personal reasons forcing you to stay in the US, do also consider non-US schools! There are quite a number of universities outside the US that are academically just as good as TOP50 US schools. Additionally, there is often no application fee, especially in continental Europe. So its perfect as safety school. Sally

It's not easy to make any recommendation. You will have to take significantly more math before you have a chance of getting in. For example UW Madison requires applicants to have Cal 1 to 3, Linear Algebra and Mathematical Statistics. And you need to take that BEFORE you apply. It won't help you to tell them "I'll take that the summer before I start graduate school." You asked about job chances. Well, I know the situation at UIUC which you seem to consider. At UIUC the very best grad students each year get decent jobs (top 100 schools), many others take semi-interesting job at lower level public institutions or work in business or end up at community colleges, and there are also those who don't find any job right away. To sum up, if you want good chances on the job market it is better to try everything possible to get in a top20 grad school. Have you ever thought about doing a MA in economics or mathematics first? That could really increase your chances to get into a good grad school.

All these problems are really annoying and costly (both money and time). I'm sorry for you all.

Yes, it is probably best not to take the GRE one more time. Where do you plan to apply?

This advanced calculus course sounds useful for graduate studies in economics. Does it also deal with the Lagrange and Kuhn-Tucker theorems? These theorem will be very useful because they are used a lot in graduate econ courses. Consider also that additional math courses will only help if you get an A. If you get a B, that may make your profile weaker.