Nonsequitur

Fwiw, I wish you well. I think the world needs more "thoughtful contrarians" willing to swim against whatever the conventional wisdom of the moment is. It's from them that productive change is most likely to arise in the long run.

Yeppers.

I'll "third" this. Often those on this board are so intent on "leaves" that they don't properly gauge "trees" let alone "forests."

Students from highly ranked LAC's are in a different kettle of fish, often overlooked on this forum. Their UG experience may bring some deficits to the applications table but they also bring some positives. There's *way* too much smug outlook from those receiving their UG from at Top 10/Top 30 uni with a strong Econ program.

#3 is actually the best option. Pity. Youth is wasted on the young.

This bears highlighting and repeating.

"All will be well in the end and if it is not well then it is not the end." --- quote from a different movie We seem to be not quite in agreement but not quite arguing either. I agree about completion of the first year being the end of the beginning. Re the math that's not your favorite, there's a big difference between a 90-minute timed test and the more leisurely development applicable to some research. The quote I've heard from a highly regarded Top 10 prof re first year is: "Just get past this [now] and it won't be a problem."

Well, yeah, but your choice of fields for field exams implicitly emphasizes/deemphasizes certain math subsets. I know a couple of first-years who are looking at each other's field choices in horror.

Shucks, I go along with both parts of this. But I think you have a fair amount of freedom as to what subsets you really need to be well grounded in and which you need be only passingly familiar with.

I'm pretty sure that an accurate paradigm is thus: all you need is sufficient math to ultimately pass your first-year courses. Beyond that, you specialize in fields of interest which you are simpatico with and other attributes come to the fore and you're stressed by math only by choice.

Foo. We're not even able to manufacture a good disagreement in this thread.

Well, I think tmg's observation that many applicant profiles combine elements of both. It's scarily competitive but no one needs to tell anyone here *that*. I was speaking of this subject with a professor (STEM, non-Econ) about aspects of this yesterday. His observation about the admissions process is that it's fundamentally flawed. In his metaphor, "We're hiring for one job (research) based on how you did in a very different job (course work and standardized tests)." There is some correlation, of course, but he thinks not nearly as much as many people assume. All fwiw. I've come to believe that for Top 10 programs, at least, the grades and scores are so uniformly gaudy that the final discriminators are the LOR's.

Well argued. As an economist. :) However, that's one of the weaknesses of Economics: often reducing choices to purely economic attributes. A sin going back all the way to Adam Smith. I believe in the fuzzy, the chaotic, the paradoxical, and the idiosyncratic. For starters. :)

This bears repeating. Often. Some PhD students have been known to have difficulty making the transition from an "ace the test, nail the problem set" mentality to being able to develop worthwhile research avenues on their own. The former may still do very well the first year but often relative positions will have flipped by third/fourth year. One thing to remember your first year: nobody in your cohort is stupid. They beat out a lot of highly qualified candidates to get there. The adcom saw something in them and they're there for a reason.

Mmm, that would be an interesting question to debate at length. The Econ PhD will open doors for you that an MPA/MPP won't. If you're looking for some of the heavier duty public policy jobs in think tanks or places like the CBO, OMB, etc., the PhD will do very well by you. Otoh, as you say, the opportunity cost is non-trivial though it may look more trivial at age 50 than it did at age 30. I suppose it comes down to exactly where & what you want to be doing in public policy. Fwiw, Econ History, often looked down upon, is a useful field to have in your repertoire paired with Public if you're interested in Public Policy.