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thanks for the advice all! i am now seriously considering the build-your-own-desktop option. It does sound cheaper. But I really do like the mobility that a lap top gives you. What I'm hearing is that mobility is not a major benefit?

Does anyone have any recommendations for lap tops for grad school? I want something that will last for 4 years without much bother. I currently have a Dell Latitude and I have not been overly impressed.

Now that the admission season has come to a close, I thought I would pose a question to my fellow ARE folks. What got you interested in ARE?

I watched Independence Day and ConAir 26 times each in high school.

Oh and work with other people if you can. If it is paper, having a co-author to kick you in the a$$ can work wonders. If it is a class, working on homework with someone will force you to work on it earlier (as opposed to waiting until the very last second). Plus, the people you work with can give you moral support. Just got to make sure it is a working relationship and not just social.

I suffer from this problem constantly. I feel like I've been coping better with it in the past 2 semesters. Basically, I just ask myself why I'm putting stuff off. 9/10 (when it comes to work and school stuff) I am procrastinating because I don't have a clear path of what to do. For example, I might put off doing a paper way too long because I haven't laid out the steps I needed to take to get to a finished product. I don't know where to start. So I've got in the habit of mapping out what i need to do from start to finish and setting personal deadlines. "you have to get step 2 done by today". of course, i've also found it is very easy for personal deadlines to slip. So i try to put external haults on that. Making commitments that i would not be able to meet if I don't get the paper done. Of course, that doesn't always help either. :P Its a constant struggle getting crap done.

What's bringing down your GPA? It looks to me like you are getting A's in very hard classes.

OP: AREstudent and Working Hard have the best advice thus far. Listen to them.

You should re-evaluate the way you approach the internet when someone has to explain to you that their idea to submit a paper to AER that included animated gifs was a joke. Are you HONESTLY saying that including bullet points in a paper would be like dropping mathematics from economics?? :p Come on. I am talking writing clearly and concisely so economists can read (and write) papers more quickly. And your attempt to imply that a similar argument could be made for dropping math from econ seems to be missing that point. Because nothing is more clear or concise than mathematics. And who said details don't matter? You seem to be confusing including bullet points with dropping important information from a paper. They don't remove information they highlight it! They draw your attn! Power Point != Bullet Point. Thanks :) The last thing I wanted to do with this thread was to inspire heated arguments over BULLET POINTS. I was just noting that it seems like a bizarre and frustrating social convention. And it seems to me that no one truly disagrees. They just note the cost of changing the social norm is probably too high for an individual to incur. In other words we are locked in: http://dimetic.dime-eu.org/dimetic_files/Lect%204%20to%20Cowan%20-%20Arthur.pdf Which is not at all a justification for why we should continue to ignore cash on the street, just an explanation for why these norms would be hard to change.

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two words: path dependence :) But if that were true, it really wouldn't matter how you presented your study so long as it conveys your results/methods etc well. But clearly, using particuarly styles of writing can cost you points with reviewers. So the way a paper is written does matter to some important folks. haha indeed. i was more or less just commenting on one frivolous aspect of academic culture. there are def bigger problems in the world than Luddite economists ignoring an amazing literary technology.

whats with the bias in here toward macro?

Gotcha. Well your grades are good there, but it would still be a weak spot since you still haven't taken other courses adcoms expect to see (prob/mathematical stats, real analysis, diffeq, etc.). That alone would be a reason to start off with a masters b4 applying to PhD. And if you do well there, then your undergrad econ grades won't really matter as much. Of course, it really all depends on your goals. If you want to continue working in a govt position (as opposed to being an academic), you don't need to get an econ phd from a top 20 school (at least not from the economists I've seen working for the EPA). Maybe what you have now would get you into a less competitive school and still get you the job you want. It It all depends on your ambitions.

I worked in a similar environment (i assisted with economic research and had opportunities for publication) before applying to PhD and I was told later that my work experience was a significant plus on my application. That being said, even if it will help distinguish you from the average applicant, I don't know if it would compensate for poor grades. What are your math grades like? Those will be important too. Maybe more important than your undergrad econ course grades.

OneArmed, From the perspective of an individual economist, you're right. But from the perspective of society I don't see how one could not believe that there are significant economic gains being foregone by clinging to writing standards developed before the word processor. And I don't see any cost to making the switch to better practices. This is literally cash in the street! If I had the time, I would write a paper on the game theoretics of how the careerist instincts of young economists leads them to adopt inferior standards that create a welfare loss to society, then I would publish it in the AER AND I would include bullet points and windings and animated gifs.