Liwanyo

I don't know exactly what you mean when you say "top 50 university", but depending on the reputation of the school you're at and that of your recommenders, I wouldn't be TOO concerned about your lack of math. Just continue to get all As.

Please please please don't give advice about things you do not know.

FYI Bates White is econ consulting too. And what you found answers your question. It's more than possible. For some extra information, a decent amount of economists do consulting on the side (it's not only the superstars like Carlton), and when they do so it is via econ consulting firms. Academics who do consulting know the people at these firms and they respect their work.

You're not alone, there's no damn way I would have gone overseas for a masters. Even if you decide you want to do a PhD, the ledger has a cost side too. It's far from clear that spending 1-2 years in a place you don't want to be just gain a few places in the PhD rankings is optimal. Look for a place that's a good fit (whether that's a masters or a job) and just go do it.

anyone want to provide some evidence for the claim that econ consulting helps/hurts an application?

where you doing your undergrad OP?

All this math obsession is silly... what are your research interests? If you want to do micro theory, fine, take all the math. If you want to do, say, development, i would wager that no adcom admitting you for that purpose will give two ***** about whether you have a course in topology.

For those a few years in, it seems correct to include field of research too, right? Surely that is important.

I agree that "a great student will do great regardless of where he/she goes", but extending that to think "holding the paper constant, going to Harvard makes little difference" is basically a fallacy of hasty generalization. Not everybody on the job market is great. Placements presumably don't only reflect the quality of the job market paper, but of expected future research. The job market paper is surely not the only factor involved in estimating that, in particular when the job market paper is mediocre. I would bet that, in those cases (and thus on average), the Harvard student would outperform the Princeton student on the job market. As for the top 20, there's no question in my mind whatsoever that the Harvard student would place better.

I call. Maybe you're right for OP specifically since he doesn't seem to have anything about his profile that screams "field X" (unless he really wanted to do labor I suppose), but in general that advice is plainly terrible. Fit is huge; top programs are looking for the next top researchers in the field, and an applicant's expected ability to mesh with current faculty is very important.

in my opinion, there's no real reason for you to even consider "fallback" options like a masters program or working as an RA. you have nothing to worry about re: phd admissions.

I feel like that advice really only applies to balanced applicants who don't have anything about their application that already indicates that they're leaning toward a given field. For people with more specialized interests and qualifications, e.g. if all of your LORs are from profs who do International Trade or something like that, "fit" will be very important in admissions. For myself, the school's strength in field X was an excellent predictor of the outcome of my application, far better than school rank.

I don't see any reason not to apply to a bunch of top 20s. One of my profs (Mankiw too maybe?) started law school before realizing he wanted an econ PhD, which he got at Princeton. OP's profile seems really solid to me, and I don't see how having a JD makes it worse...

Haven't actually been able to try the code (only look at the data), but I think this is what you're looking for. ________________________________________ insheet using "filepath\WDI_GDF_Data.csv", names clear **Drop any indicators you don't want here local i=5 local year=1960 while `i' rename v`i' d`year' local i=`i'+1 local year=`year'+1 } **Use this kind of thing if you want to drop years (take out the "/*" and "*/" if you want this part to run) /* local year=1960 while `year' drop d`year' local year=`year'+1 } */ reshape long d, i(seriescode seriesname countrycode countryname) j(year) replace seriescode=subinstr(seriescode,".","_",.) drop seriesname reshape wide d, i(countrycode countryname year) j(seriescode) string renpfix d

This is correct. Take as many math courses as you can handle/afford. Get all As. I don't agree. Trivially, adcoms admit people that they think have the ability to become successful researchers in economics. Math is a part of that, but you seem to be implying that everyone should be striving for a "balanced" profile even when at the cost of improvements in areas where they're already strong. That's plainly incorrect. OP is not and likely will not ever be the kind of applicant that adcoms say "oh wow, this guy might turn out to be great in micro theory." To me, it seems like a very reasonable plan for OP to just crush a masters degree (and along the way pick up enough math to not be thrown into the auto-reject pile). This is especially true since a masters degree might give OP an opportunity to pick up an awesome LOR, which is worth more than any math class. Edit: OP you can always apply to both masters AND PhD programs...

When you take the GRE again, don't forget that you don't have to accept your scores (if you have another freakout)! Hopefully that won't happen, but just in case... no reason to even see your score if you guess on a bunch of quant questions.

What started this mess was the above post which was quoted and then cut off before "Ask yourself...", which is an obvious misrepresentation of what Batjik was saying. If I understand correctly, the dispute is over a claim like the following: grades are typically pretty good signals of ability, and therefore it is unlikely for someone who is very good at economics to get Bs in intermediate econ courses. With no caveats, that claim may seem harsh because the statement is of course conditional on whether OP and his intermediate econ grades are a "typical" case, which we know nothing about from the OP. However, Batjik acknowledged various exceptions (did you neglect to study?, etc.), and SlowLearner and Canuckonomist confirmed that such exceptions exist with their own personal stories. But as for peoples' response to Batjik, do we really require some enormous wealth of data and an "entropy model" to make the statement that intermediate econ grades are likely positively correlated with future success in economics? From Canuckonomist: "Bad grades in a couple courses, as long as you can score better on higher difficulty versions, is not a death knell for top 50 programs, nor does it mean that you're bad at economics, or even theory in particular." That seems right to me, but it's incorrect to think that the bolded is completely independent of success in the intermediate courses. Good luck to you OP.

Is that true even for questions of the specificity that OP is asking? (Not saying you're wrong, just curious) That is, "Will I get into at least one Top 20 program?" vs. "Will I get into Columbia?" I feel like the first question shouldn't be that hard to answer for a professor who is writing LORs with any kind of regularity, even if it comes in the form of "I think so, but you should apply to a few lower ranked programs just in case." Regardless, just seems like more reason to apply broadly if your own recommenders aren't that confident.

What I'm puzzled about is why your letter writers are being so damn cryptic about where they think you get in, especially given how solid your profile is. Rather than telling you "I'd expect you can get into at least one of X, Y, Z", it sounds like they're going on tirades about the "system." These are the people that hold a substantial portion of your admission results in their own hands, so I don't really understand what's going on. Maybe they've done horribly placing students at top programs. At any rate, with that uncertainty at play, I think it's correct (as it is for most people) to apply broadly.

Thanks for the link! My internet is lagging bad though so no video watching today, but: 1. seems to imply that the people doing the credit checks systematically underestimate potential buyers' credit worthiness, which is silly. And even if that is somehow what's happening, a policy to just provide the credit seems more appropriate than a subsidy. 2. bleh. here's a similar argument: "it can be the case that buying a house completely eliminates a buyers' financial flexibility, say in the case of an out of town job change. this problem is larger for the poor, who have less extra resources to handle unexpected events. govt should subsidize renters in order to push people away from the massive downside risks of buying a home." this whole "it can be the case" business doesn't seem particularly persuasive unless you make some kind of attempt to demonstrate the frequency with which each "case" occurs. 3. i have to give the guy credit for creativity, but this seems like more smoke and mirrors to me. what about rent support payments (i.e. why not subsidize renting -- what's so special about home ownership)? how about just building more socialized housing? I'm looking forward to the video, as I know I may have misunderstood some of the arguments. That said, unless it can be demonstrated that home ownership is some inherent good that is underprovided absent the subsidy (due to credit constraints or whatever), I think that proponents of the subsidy will have a hard time convincing me.

Just wanted to echo this optimism, but no guarantees of course (I don't like making predictions). It's not like all applications without Real Analysis get immediately tossed on the reject pile. If the admissions committee likes the rest of your application, I find it unlikely that they're gonna be like "We really want to admit this person... Wait, what? No Real Analysis? Nevermind, reject." There's also the fact you've done well in your other math courses which indicates that you'll likely do well in Real Analysis. Don't get me wrong, math grades are important, and real analysis is an important course -- I just find it difficult to believe that your application swings from lots of accepts to universal rejects by not having it.

My admissions results this cycle have confused me sufficiently enough to know that discussions of this nature are likely to be pure speculation. Unless we have any current students here able to confirm that applications with grad analysis are singled out for consideration at school X, I think it's just really hard to say. All else equal I feel that the analysis course has some benefit over the group theory, but I have no way of quantifying it, nor of knowing how painful it will be for you to take the class. I know that's not very helpful. I would just caution taking any advice you receive here too seriously -- conditional on the poster of course. I think TM does a decent job roughly grouping candidates, but determining the marginal value of one course to an already very strong application (such that there's no super obvious positive signal from the course that was previous lacking)? I have my doubts.

I know I'm late to the party, but: Institution: Northwestern (Kellogg) Program: Managerial Economics & Strategy (PhD) Decision: Accepted Funding: don't know yet Notification date: 2/23/2011 Notified through: phone Posted on GC: no Comments: my #1 choice! Institution: Virginia Program: Economics (PhD) Decision: Accepted Funding: don't know yet Notification date: 2/21/2011 Notified through: e-mail to check grad apply Posted on GC: no Comments: none

Hmm yes upon further reading I think you are correct... in which case I too am confused as to how economics would be being made "purposefully inaccessible" (if not the math)

Don't people also blanket 10-20 a lot? I too am a bit surprised by the admission rate.