rthunder27

pmillsoh is right about the intent of the SOP. But to answer the broader question about being brutally honest, I think "brutal" might be going too far, but being very frank, and trying to be a standout is very much a high risk/ high reward strategy. So if you're not risk adverse, it might be the one for you. Personally it worked out for me, but since your returns could be of high variance, you might strike out.

I don't think any of the finance students I know were 30+ when they started, but I myself was 27.

Anecdotaly I can report that Stanford GSB has admitted several 30+ students, although like most schools the median age at the start of the program is about 25. It's hard to judge how much age discrimination goes on at any given school, given that the VAST majority of applicants are under 30.

I don't think that this will cause any large impact on the GRE's role in the admit process simply because students could always send only the most recent GRE by slightly altering there information when registering for the exam (for example, by changing one's address, or including a middle initial). I discovered this myself when I took the GRE four years apart (so my address had changed) I was upset when I realized on the most recent score was sent out as part of my "free" score reports, and I had to call ETS to have them merge the records (I hit the 800Q on the second one, but suffered mild drops in AWA and V, so I wanted both sent out). So all that scoreselect does is codify a loophole that's presumably been well known for a long time (or at least known by the type of student who is also likely to abuse scoreselect). But perhaps I am underestimating the impact of moving something from unacknowledged loophole to legitimate part of the process. It also raises the issue of the misaligned incentives of ETS, being a monopolistic, private company (albeit non-profit), and academia. It's in ETS's best (short-term) interest to have people take the test even more times, no longer afraid that the newest score could sink them. But will this negatively impact the application pool and process? Unclear, since the GRE is a pretty crude instrument as it is. This change on the surface benefits those that are bad test-takers and freaked out on one test, and it also helps those that can afford to take it N times. But it also helps those that are less in the know and didn't know about the pre-existing loophole.

Actually the Economic Analysis and Policy (EAP) is the real econ group inside the GSB (Bob Wilson and David Kreps are in EAP for example), while the PE track is regular PE, ie it places a big emphasis on political science.

I have never seen parents, but I have seen a few spouses/serious significant others at flyouts.

With Kreps, Wilson, Milgrom and Segal, I'd say Stanford may have the best for faculty for game theory, mech design and contracts.

I don't know about student's sharing resources, but there is some back and forth in terms of faculty giving seminars at the other school. For the first two years it's largely moot, since for the most part you're doing course work, but I imagine it'd be pretty easy to share resources once you're actually doing research.

I actually didn't have a formal interview, but I did have a few phone calls with Profs around 2/5/11 (I was an odd case). I think only Finance interviews, but I don't know for sure. So no, I wouldn't necessarily give up hope until we see some formal admittances, since they do do them in one wave.

I believe that decisions have been made, but the official e-mails haven't gone out yet, but some professors are e-mailing or calling some admits. This was the case last year at least, when I got an e-mail from a prof with whom I had previously spoke a day before the official e-mail (which came on Tuesday 2/15/11).

Department e-mail.

Now that's silly, I lived in State College for four years, and sure it's isolated, but it has its charms.

Some of the Finance Faculty at Stanford GSB are getting more into Behavioral, namely Ilya Strebulaev and John Beshears.

If anything, business schools (which host finance programs) are more likely to offer funding than Economics departments, but this is also a function of the fact that finance programs typically admit a smaller number of students than the econ departments.

Definitely the intellectual stimulation from professors and the rest of the cohort. Being surrounded by so many smart and interesting people from diverse backgrounds has been one of the best experiences of my life so far.