mcsokrates

Not sure how UK PhDs are regarded. Some firms are much more concerned with prestige, and hire almost exclusively from top places, while others recruit more broadly and regularly hire from top 50 or even unranked places. Its worth looking through the employee roster - if you see almost exclusively Harvard/MIT/Stanford alums, you might want to target different consulting firms. I know that the Analysis Group has hired several fresh PhDs from Oregon over the last decade, and Oregon has less name recognition than Oxford (unless its college football season).

Absolutely put your profile in the standard format. In re: your comfort, note that you won't be in "the Midwest" if you do your PhD in the Midwest. You'll be in Chicago, Madison, Ann Arbor, etc., all of which have demographic profiles much more similar to where you are now.

5-6 hours of sleep a night for two weeks straight for the average person puts you in pretty serious sleep deprivation territory. How much good is studying an extra 2 hours from 3-5am doing you? If your description of your routine is not exaggerated, it seems very possible that you are studying too much, and this is harming your cognitive performance when it comes time to take exams.

I think substantially no one under the age of 35 uses Word to typeset papers anymore, right? You can tell whether a working paper was done in Word or LaTeX really easily, and the only new working papers I see that are obviously formatted in Word always have an older co-author.

So, 1) I think RMarkdown is cool! I use it a lot for early stages of work, and its super useful for quickly generating reports. I've heard that stats and some econometrics instructors have started nudging their students towards using it for homework. But, its not actually ready for primetime in terms of writing a full manuscript. LaTeX is still the best option here, for a number of reasons: 1) RMarkdown is great for integrating code that runs quickly, but its clunkier if you need to integrate code that takes hours or days to run (especially if that code needs to be run on a computing cluster). 2) LaTeX has packages to accomplish basically any typesetting task, while RMarkdown is still in relative infancy. 3) Journals (and your school's graduate school) will generally have required LaTeX style files. That said, you should still be focusing on beers, beaches and relaxation. LaTeX, Rmarkdown, and programming in general is best done by actually doing. The gains to learning it now are relatively low.

If anything, reading papers is probably more important than cramming for math. At this point, you probably either have the math chops to pass the first year classes and quals or you don't. But there's 4 years of program after that, where you will largely not be proving theorems out of MWG.

Stipends are usually for 9 months. If you teach over the summer (relatively common after the first year) you'll be looking at another ~5k in income. At 22k, you'll make about twice the poverty line in the US. You won't be poor enough for the state of Minnesota to consider you eligible for food stamps (DB101 Minnesota - SNAP: The Details - Eligibility), but you won't be particularly rich. if you're doing things right, you won't have enough time to do anything fun that costs a lot of money. Once you're familiar with your new city, you should be able to better optimize the rent vs. travel costs tradeoff.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to take time to relax this summer. Once you start a PhD program, there's a lot of stuff that becomes infeasible. This is your last chance to do some of these things for at least a couple years. Want to play a video game that requires 50+ hours of time commitment? Do that now. Want to drop everything and go on a road trip for a week? Do that now. Want to drink beers on a patio at 1 in the afternoon on a Wednesday? Do that now. The first year is a stamina game more than anything. The more relaxed you are coming in the better. If you have to sneak a peek at some math books to quell your anxiety, so be it. But you have the rest of your career to prove theorems and wrangle data and argue about causal effects.

In re: Oregon, three things: a) we place quite well at decent to great LACs, largely because grad students end up teaching more than other programs. This is good or bad depending on whether you think ending up in a more teaching role is a good outcome. b) I don't do macro, but it seems like people who do sort of what George Evans and Bruce McGough do (Adaptive learning/bounded rationality) seem to do well. c) PM me if you're still thinking about Oregon and I can add more.

Note that schools on the quarter system make it somewhat difficult to swing internships - spring quarter generally doesn't end until early June, and Fall classes don't start until the end of September.

Math camp serves two purposes: first, it dusts the spiderwebs off everyone's math muscles, and gives everyone a chance to get up to speed before core classes start. But the more important function of math camp is that it operates as a forced socialization exercise: you are going to be spending a lot of time with your cohort members, so the (relatively) low stakes atmosphere of math camp offers just the right chance to get some cohort bonding in. Also, if you are starting your PhD this coming fall, the list of things you should be doing includes: making out with dudes and or ladies, drinking beers in the afternoon, making time-intensive meals from scratch, going on road trips, hiking in the nearest wilderness, binge watching Netflix shows, hugging your mom, throwing dance parties, reading a book on your front porch, watching fireworks and generalized shenanigans. The list of things you shouldn't be doing includes: studying. Trust me, you'll regret not enjoying yourself this summer, and studying MWG won't actually buy you much of an edge.

My take on some of the questions asked so far: - I agree with everyone above who suggests taking it easy in the summer. The summer before your first year is one of the last times you'll have free time without looming deadlines. Honestly, the optimal amount of studying is probably zero conditional on being prepared. Especially if you are married or have a long term partner who is moving with you, investing some relationship building time and effort now will help your relationship down the road, when you'll be stressed out, working on problem sets and studying for quals and not being a particularly great partner. Getting to know your new city is also important. If you play video games, make sure you can finish anything you start by the end of summer. - Always, but always, be looking for gaps in the literature. Always, but always be looking for connections between literatures that haven't been explored. There's a lot of potential roadblocks that will show up after your second year when you start working on your first paper. You can do some things now to alleviate some of these roadblocks. Start a Google doc now, and write down any research idea you have. If you don't already use Mendeley or Endnote, spend a bit of time getting to know one of them. Even if you don't have the time to read full papers, read the abstracts of all the NBER working papers every week. Skim the papers that interest you. Sign up for RePec new paper mailing lists for the fields you're interested in. Once you've integrated yourself into the department, finding some likeminded fellow grad students to bounce ideas off of is invaluable. Doing problem sets in LaTeX in your first year can pay off in the long run. - Finding an adviser can be tricky. At the end of the day, you want someone who will help you move your research agenda forward, and help you place into the best job possible. For me, at least, this means someone who will let me do my own thing but has enough knowledge and expertise to steer me away from ideas that might not pay off (even if they interest me). Other grad students want more hands on advising, but that's down to research interests and personality. Being able to work well with your adviser is paramount - and a lot of this comes down to personality compatibility. Finding an adviser can feel a bit like dating in middle school, and (at least for me) felt just as awkward. But maybe I'm just a weirdo. - At Oregon, first years are in big offices (4-6 people), and upper years share an office with one other grad student.

Insofar as money is a factor, keep in mind that according to the BEA's regional price parity data, Durham is a lower cost of living metro area than Madison. Another thing: given the current political situation in Wisconsin, I think its wise to think about downside risk when considering UW. Given current proposals, there's some non-zero probability that budget cuts might affect funding in the future. Duke's relative independence from state government politics is an advantage here.

So, as an instructor, I've had the unfortunate experience of being on the other end of this scenario a couple of times. Academic dishonesty is out of control at my institution, and in talking to other Grad student instructors at other institutions, my sense is that this is a nationwide phenomenon. I have no reason to doubt your word, but I also have no reason to believe a professor would take a costly course of action (dealing with university bureaucracies) based on no evidence. It seems unlikely to me that merely coincident answers would be enough to pursue this sort of action. If the professor (and/or a TA/proctor) witnessed inappropriate behavior during the exam and there is evidence in your answers of collusion, then it does make it more likely that if you pursue this with the student conduct office you will be worse off than just admitting it. If the only evidence is your answers, your chances are much better, regardless of whether you cheated or not. If you did not in fact commit any academic dishonesty (according to the school code of conduct, which may differ from your idea of "academic dishonesty") then you should of course argue your case to the relevant authorities.

Billions might be an exaggeration, but not by much. Count up the people living in areas with areas at least as cold as Michigan on this map: World Map - Average Temperature in January

Man, people are obsessed with weather lately. Literally billions of people figure out a way to handle cold winters every year - its really not a big deal. #3 and #4 seem the most promising. Choosing #4 because you might get cold seems silly. I managed to live through a quarter century of Michigan winters. You can manage 5. edit: in re: the above comments, would the J-PAL add only 1 year? This would imply you would apply in Fall of 2015, at the beginning of your RA-ship.

Cold is lame, but there's heat in your office and you won't have enough free time to really take advantage of the weather even if it were warm.

Post-docs are hardly a guaranteed method of advancement. You always hear about the successes, but my sense is that these are relatively uncommon. Post-docs at the moment are kind of like a pooling equilibrium, populated by low-ranked climbers and high-ranked lemons. This means that doing a post-doc doesn't necessarily send much of a signal, although productivity during a post-doc can be a good signal. However, usually hiring committees will pro-rate their expectations, so to actually move up, you would need to be more productive than expected during your post-doc. edit: Note that it will be ~5 years before this is relevant to OP, and a lot can change in 5 years.

I'm trying to be less grumpy today. You have clearly made up your mind, which is fine! You are a free person. I'm still going to try and convince you that taking the offer on the table might be worth it. - As a fellow older guy getting toward the end of my PhD, note that each year of living like a grad student becomes more unbearable the older you get. Putting off admission for a year or two right now might seem OK, but it might not feel that way 6-7 years from now, when you'll still be living like a grad student. - Look carefully at placement. By your own admission, you are smart, but not a genius (this describes most of us). Maybe you'll be the star at the top-40 place, but you'll be surely the middle of the pack at a top20. Stars at top 30 places are more productive than median guys from even the top 5. Famously, the median Harvard PhD grad has 0.04 AER equivalent publications 6 years after graduation. Co-author networks matter, and stars have better chances at co-author relationships. But, of course you won't take this advice, and maybe you'll succeed. Best of luck.

I've eaten dinner, and am hence less cranky (see Danziger et al (PNAS, 2011)). So, again, but a bit gentler: - You applied to a top 35 program, presumably because it was a program you would be willing to go to. You are admitted to this program. If you did not have any intention of matriculating, why did you apply there? - You seem to believe that you can do better (which is possible), and want advice. You have received advice, from two people: given what little information we have, it seems highly unlikely that the discounted expected flow of benefits from a "try to do better next year" strategy is greater than the flow from just taking yes for an answer. - If it matters, I tell almost everyone I meet, at one point or another, that they are not a special flower. So, on at least two levels, you are not a special flower. (This is funnier to me than anyone else, but whatever.) TL;DR: take yes for an answer.

So. Some things: - I guess I just don't particularly sympathize, which will color the rest of my points. You selected a list of schools, presumably because you would accept and offer and go there if admitted. You were admitted. Your feelings are hurt because you are not a special flower, but you have an admission to a top-40 school. - Without knowing your full profile, its hard to judge how "strong" your profile is. - Do you want to study economics, or do you want to study economics at a "top place"? If the latter, why? What research do think you will be able to accomplish at a top 20 place that you wouldn't be able to do at the safety school? - Accepting admission with the intention of trying to immediately move up the ranks may or may not be a faux pas, but does not exactly reflect well on your character (also, it reveals a degree of naivete that is either hilarious or frightening). In any case, finding the free time to put together applications while taking first year classes seems like a great way to die of a stress-induced aneurysm. A not implausible outcome would be that you spend your capital at the safety school, still get rejected everywhere, and then fail quals because you were too busy trying to apply to other places to concentrate on first semester core micro. - Your subjective view of your strength is obviously at odds with the view of several top 20 admissions committees. Update your priors accordingly (hint: the posterior distribution will have more weight on "you are not a special flower") This is 3x more harsh than is necessary (I'm grumpy, deal with it) but I'm serious: you need to think hard about whether giving up on a sure acceptance to a top-40 place is worth a highly uncertain possibility of moving up, with significant downside risk.

Just curious - were you denied by your school's financial aid office? Or was your EFC super high on your FAFSA? Health insurance and tuition waiver shouldn't count as income for financial aid purposes.

If you are married, and your stipend is sufficiently low, you'll probably qualify for the EITC (maybe the AOC too if your wife is paying for tuition) and have negative tax liability anyway. I've had to take out some student loans, which is not ideal (ideal would be to fire ~25-50% of admin staff and redirect the savings towards more academic hires and higher salary for profs and grad students, but rent-seekers gonna rent-seek). However, time and effort spent on worrying about money is time and effort not spent studying for qualifying exams, reading papers, running regressions or polishing drafts. Consumption smoothing is enough of a justification; stress-smoothing is probably even more compelling.

Emailing grad students is fine. As has been suggested, to maximize the probability of response, going through the graduate director or secretary might be the best move. Talking to people at different stages of the program would actually be a pretty good idea. first and second years will probably be better for getting more info on coursework/qualifying exams, while 3/4/5th years will be better for advice about working with professors, and job market experiences.

This will be highly heterogeneous across institutions, so any given bit of advice might not be super germane to your case. It seems likely that you'll receive this information before starting classes (at Oregon, we had several days of orientation between math camp and classes that included qualifying exam policies and logistics). If its useful, here's how Oregon does it (a simplified version): there are 5 questions for each exam. Each question is given a grade (on a standard 4.0 GPA scale) by the professor who wrote the question. Passing conditions are basically getting an average of 3.0 (i.e. 75%).