DGSE

Muhammad Yunus. Come on how many Economists are researchers and practitioners of that research. Too bad there he was forced out of Grameen for stupid political reasons.

I submitted most of my apps in Dec. and sent my fall grades after I submitted my apps (by email I requested they be added to my file). The mid to late Jan. deadline ones, of course, I just sent a transcript with my fall grades on it. I didn't have any problems except for 1 school (I forget which one it was) that specifically requested I not send them a fall transcript unless they requested it. Everyone else said they'd add it to my file. I, of course, had a few schools requesting my transcript by email later on in the spring (obviously they're not entirely organized), and several asking me to send official fall transcripts by mail. As far as I could tell, getting fall transcripts included in your file is pretty easy, and every one of the school that seriously considered me looked at or requested to see my grades. I would just do it Fall 2013 as everyone else is suggesting.

Fall of 2014 is 2 years from now. Why not just take Grad Micro fall of 2013. While you can totally take it without having taken a math class on proofs, I think it'll be way easier after intro to proofs and RA I.

If you apply to be a field RA for JPAL or IPA then you may or may not have a visa problem. Generally they don't require travel to the US, just to some developing country to handle the raw data, and oversee some of the data collection activities. It allows you to get a very good LOR from the professor at JPAL or IPA you'd work under and some research experience, so it's one way people with strong quantitative backgrounds can become even more competitive. The application process, though, is somewhat competitive, but I imagine you'd have an advantage since time spent living abroad in a developing country is seen as a major plus. I wouldn't have recommended this, though, if you hadn't stated you were interested in development economics, since it does entail living for between less than a year to 2 years (depends on the length of the project you apply for) in a developing country on a meager wage doing development research. If you are serious about pursuing this, by the way, you'd also significantly help your chances if you can show at the time you apply some proficiency in Stata, which isn't that hard to learn. Ideally this will be demonstrated either by working as an RA under a prof at your dept. or doing some thesis/senior project using it. Of course, even if you aren't interested, doing one of those two is a good idea to do for admissions purposes.

Don't worry TMguru. You didn't spoil anything. I'd seen the post and was stewing on it because really nothing convincing was occurring to me. If you still want a BS answer, though, to "For women, pursuing a Ph.D. at a private university increases the probability of completion by a whopping 62 percentage points—which, however, is offset by 38 percentage points if the university also offers a terminal masters degree in economics (we have no idea why)." It could be that women have higher completion rates at private U's because they have better funding, but weaker completion rates if they also grant MAs because MA granting is acting as a proxy for being lower ranked, which is already shown to be correlated with lower completion rates. Overall, though, I think TMguru's explanation hit it squarely on the head, and shows the danger of letting intuition lead your analysis rather than an actual knowledge of statistics and the data.

There are a few reasons to want an Econ PhD even if you have a math PhD: (1) Math PhD job market is horrible, and (2) Econ research is almost always more useful than math research. That said jz722 and mathemagician are absolutely right that no one should do a Math PhD if they want to be an economist. Check out the FAQs for some threads about the pros and cons of doing a Math MA, which is huge orders of magnitudes less hard than doing a full PhD--assuming you can get a Math PhD which I'm sure only a minority of Econ PhDs could manage if they tried. Generally, people say for a math MA it's useful for admissions but there are far better uses of your time (sole exception might be someone wanting to do serious theory work). Besides, there are funded MA opportunities. Check out Canada (if you don't know which MAs have funding check out the profile and results or untitled's analysis Untitled), and some places in Europe (I would say avoid UK because if your not from the eurozone you won't get a funded UK MA). Also, JPAL and IPA RAships provide for your living expenses although not much beyond that. Also, I personally think your too fixated on the top 10. I hope you realize the a major reason the top 10 get better placements and raise more stars than top 20 is they get far better raw material. Furthermore, the advantage of going to top 10 vs. top 20 or even top 30 is far, far overshadowed by your actual on the job performance as a researcher. Assistant professors can move around quite a bit dropping or rising from whatever their initial placement is due to their ability, or inability to get published.

CalTech is harder than you'd expect given its ranking since it has a very small class size. Also, getting into Dartmouth PhD econ is way way harder than getting into MIT, or Harvard. Just think about it for a bit. Yiisheng makes a good point, though, I don't think it really helps since they're basically the same. The easiest will probably be UPenn, by the way, considering they have large class sizes and a reputation for taking chances on people since they fail so many at comps time.

via search function I found these threads mentioning the older version: http://www.www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/117581-attrition-top-schools.html http://www.www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/117525-attrition-rate-small-programs.html The paper used then was in the AEA Papers and proceedings 2006, and uses data from 03-04: http://www.aeaweb.org/joe/articles/2006/attrition.pdf Honestly, though, I think it's productive to bring this up every occasionally. I mean a lot of applicants probably seriously underestimate the attrition rate, especially the post-comps voluntary attrition rate. I didn't realize how high it was until after I was hanging around TM for about 6 months. I think if more people knew about these numbers there would be more reluctance about taking unfunded offers. I mean I don't mind taking loans out at the end of my program if I, god forbid, take 6 years (I'm going to pretend no one takes longer than 6 years for the sake of my sanity), but it's a significant pressure if you took out loans to pay your first year and then wind up wondering in your 2nd year if this is really worth it. Also, most of what Economists mentioned in his 1st post is pretty intuitive and to me explanations for each them seem to jump out at me. Math majors tend to be less likely to hold an MA and I think MAs take less long because they have an advantage at the dissertation stage (a lot of MAs either have a well worked out idea for what they want to do or adapt their MA thesis into a chapter in their dissertation). I also think people from top places take longer than people from mid-range places because they have more funding available for people past the 5th year. People at low ranked places also take longer because they're less prepared, less motivated, and in some cases must scrounge around for funding which may require them to work as an ABD far from their university, which obviously seriously impedes their finishing and leads to higher attrition. People from lower ranked institutions have higher attrition rates because they have less preparations (e.g. a lot of people leave during the 1st year because they can't handle the math), and this lack of preparation usually comes with incorrect expectations (i.e. thinking throughout the 1st year "this isn't what I thought it was going to be"), and, finally, have a lower opportunity cost if they quit and get a private sector job, since they weren't certain they could get anything but a private sector even if they graduated. Also, I find women are slightly more likely to prioritize their family over their career. Obviously, signing up for graduate school is like signing up for a 60 hour, poverty striken lifestyle for you and your family unless your spouse makes serious bucks, which hopefully isn't swallowed up by school loans.

That's what puzzles me so much. In academia he wrote and argued strongly to Japan, who was experiencing the same problems, that there was a bold, worthwhile monetary policy to improve matters, but now plays so conservatively I can only conclude one of two things happened. 1) He knows something we don't, and isn't telling the rest of the world to keep up our confidence, or (2) He thinks there's something wrong with all these academic theories now that he's in a position of actual power. If anyone has any ideas about other options I'd be interested to hear them, but if it's one of the two, as an academic, I sure hope it's (1) not (2). I mean (1) probably isn't good for the state of the world, but (2) would mean academia missed something big on the way from the drawing board to the carpenters workshop.

I know one advantage using the GRE has. It's cheaper. Then again, since I'm already done with admissions I think its a swell idea to for econ PhD admissions to migrate over to the GMAT. I'm not sure if we're too small to affect the quantiles by much, but it'd be awesome if we shockingly and radically pushed down the curve in the quant section for the MBAs :groucho:. Of course, we'll probably help them in all the other sections. Also, Nauru top 50 econ depts. (where most econ PhD students currently are apparently) probably will never want to place much weight on a single math test. Even if they came up with a special test for econ PhD admissions that covers everything we ought to know (Calc I-III, LA, easy proofs) I think adcoms might increase the weight of the test, but not by much. It's a little redundant if they already have your grade in classes, which are presumably better signals, and LORs which allow them to compare you across schools and provide more comprehensive info. Also, once you get beyond a certain threshold of math one guy being able to use cauchy sequences faster than another guy or solve bellman's a bit more accurately doesn't matter. Research potential is far more important and that's not going to be conveyed in a math test. Their current usage of the test as an early, easy sorting tool (P/F style) is probably suits their needs just fine, so having everyone who passes bunched at 780-800 or in the mid to high 160s is fine.

I come to TM to procrastinate, and then I read that list...:confused:. Well, suddenly econometrics doesn't look that hard. Motivation reignited! Maybe I should drop by TM more often.

Li are you headed to a US top 50 State school. If so, don't worry about the TOEFL, since graduates of US universities are not required to submit it. Also, GRE math doesn't matter because so few applicants take it they have no one to compare you to. The exception is if you're a genius, and can outperform math PhDs applicants to score in the upper crust. Also, as someone who came from a no name state school with a PhD program and got a few admits in the top 20 I think not at as much of a disadvantage as you think. I mean obviously you're going to be at a disadvantage compared to the guys coming out of top schools, but they'll also be competing with a much tougher batch of students to get their A's in RA. I may have gotten an A in RA, but I'm honestly not confident I could have done that at Harvard. Also, your disadvantage is not as bad as the disadvantage of people coming from liberal arts backgrounds (no grad courses and RA opportunities with profs who may not be very active) or abroad (they need MAs almost always, and I've heard US programs, especially weaker programs, try not to unbalance their cohorts with Chinese so the Chinese applicants have a slightly harder time then everyone else). That said, you do need to do really well where you're at. Also, economics association and TAing won't help directly, but might help marginally in getting to know profs who you can work with (senior thesis or RA) that will net a good LOR. I think a better use of that time, given your constraints, is just to directly work with a prof doing a thesis or RA. I suspect that its important to have 1 strong letter (as ecoptmist said) and not to have either of the other 2 letters be weak. In other words, maximize your top letter and maxmin the other 2. By the way, though, more important than getting a well-known economist as an RA (although that is important) is having someone who's interested in having you as an RA. It may also help on the margin to have your prof's research match the focus of the depts. your applying to so he's more likely to be known there. By the way, I ended up taking an extra year so I could continue paying in state undergrad tuition while I loaded up on more math classes, grad econ classes and so I had time senior year to do a thesis. It was a cheaper option than an MA, but if I didn't have that option I would have tried to shoot for one of those 1 year Canadian MA programs and hoping I got funding. I also applied to JPAL, IPA, and the FEDs (rejected). That's another way to net good letters from good economists, and if you go straight from undergrad you'll wind up applying without all your grades from senior year.

I don't think its necessarily a trend that lower ranked places are more likely to give you a grade for math camp. I think its very rare in high and low ranked places. I'm headed to Berkeley from an outside the top 50 school. The school I'm coming from had a math camp (no test, not mandatory), and Berkeley's is graded and the grade counts towards your GPA.

Upvote. Can't argue with that.

Congrats to Amy Finkelstein (MIT). The American Economic Association I admit I had no idea who this was until I read their bio section. I guess that's the whole point of the JBC. Also I was pleased to see that they adopted on Jan. 5th an extension of "Disclosure of conflict of interest" to their principles in the AEA publications (scroll down on the page I linked to). Not sure how much that may actually change some past problems, but it sounds encouraging.