Slippers

Got my result - didn't make it. "Florence, April 2012 Dear Mr. XXXXXXXX, With regard to your application for admission to the European University Institute for the academic year 2012/2013, I wish to thank you for attending the interview. Regretfully, I have to inform you that the Institute’s Admissions Committee has not selected you for admission. The Admissions Committee, taking into account both the overall quality of your application and your performance at the interview, gave the following evaluation: - The candidate's academic background and capacities did not meet the department's requirements Nevertheless I would like to stress that the mere fact of being invited to the EUI for an interview shows that you have the potential for carrying out postgraduate studies and completing a thesis. In the light of the above, you may wish to consider re-applying to the EUI next academic year. In any event, I wish you all the best with your future studies. Yours sincerely, XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXX" This was my last chance to go anywhere this year. I'll have to think seriously about if I aimed too high. I got Q170 V170 on my GRE though and I don't want to end up in a department where I feel like I wasted my potential by not improving some other part of my profile. I don't know where to apply anymore.

No news yet for me (my interview was on the 30th - econ, Irish). I found out from students at the dinner after my interview that applicants are not just competing against other people from the same country (say 4 places for Ireland going to the best 4 across Econ, SPS, Law and HEC). The places start out spread between the departments and the countries (say 1 Irish econ, 1 Irish SPS, 1 Irish Law, 1 Irish HEC). If the Econ department has 3 spaces for Germans and 4 really good Germans they want to make offers to they can tell the SPS department "we will give you our Irish space if you give us one of your German spaces". So the Econ department makes offers to 4 Germans and 0 Irish and the SPS department makes offers to 2 Germans and 2 Irish. If the SPS department wants to hire an extra Portuguese person they may say "we want a Portuguese space instead". The four departments send one member of staff each to sit around a table and bargain with each other to get spaces for the people their department wants most. So my getting an offer does not just depend on how good Irish econ applicants are or how good Irish SPS+Law+HEC applicants are or how good the other econ applicants are but on all of those and on how good Portuguese+Italian+Austrian+etc SPS+Law+HEC applicants are. The better the non-econ non-Irish applicants are, the more willing the other departments will be to give spaces for Irish people to the Econ department to get spaces for those people. I imagine the Econ department trading for say an Austrian space from the SPS department when they only want to trade it on again to the HEC department to get what they really want which is say a French space. It all sounds very complicated and gets even more complicated when we consider what would happen if not all 4 of the Germans accepted an offer from the Econ department. Can they trade away the leftover German seat if their next favourite econ candidate is not German? This should help explain to any future forum readers how I understood the system to work. Good luck everyone!

Have a look at post #103 in this thread: http://www.www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/111410-eui-results-coming-4.html#post856716

I applied to Economics. I got an email this morning (Friday the 2nd) inviting me for interview on the 30th of March. I'm Irish.

Thanks for your quick reply. That clears things up. Can I ask what the mix of nationalities is like in M2, how many people do you have from each country? I'm Irish myself. (I realise now that my first post may have sounded a bit negative about Aude which I did not mean it to, her emails were friendly and helpful.)

Hi everyone, looks like this will be the thread for people starting next year. I applied to the M1 but they thought it was a mistake and sent my application to the M2 committee. I got an acceptance email for the M2 on the 16th of December. Aude said I was accepted for the Economics & Statistics stream but if I can't speak French I should pick something else. I asked if I could pick EcoMath and also mentioned that I am interested in a PhD. Aude replied that if I want to do a PhD I must choose the doctoral track. The doctoral track is not on the list with Economics & Statistics and EcoMath. The page for the PhD says "Students can choose between the four curricula described in the Masters programme in the doctoral path" but doesn't say what the four are. Does anybody know more? I don't know if I can afford to go anywhere if I don't get funding. I also applied to PhDs at the EUI and Cambridge and the MSc Economics (Research) at LSE.

'Country's leading university' grumble grumble. There is some advice which may help at the end of this thread: www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/111815-irish-thread.html

I did mine on the 29th of Aug in Dublin. AW 3.5 (top 71%) Q 170 (top 1%) V 170 (top 1%) Old-score-new-score conversion table and percentiles here: www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/concordance_information.pdf

There are research centres at the University of Newcastle and the University of Maastricht.

There's an Ec&Fi+MA grad in UCSB.

I'll be starting the one in UCD on Friday next week so I'm interested in this. So far, I've done a bit of seaching and have found an economist called Doireann Fitzgerald who did her BA and MA in University College Dublin and got into Harvard for her PhD but that was fourteen years ago. She is now an Assistant Professor at Stanford. Doireann Fitzgerald's CV

PROFILE: Type of Undergrad: Omnibus Entry Science at University College Dublin 2003-2006 1st Year: Computer Science, Pass Maths, Geology, Mathematical Physics 2nd Year: Pass Maths, Statistics, Computer Science 3rd Year: 8x Statistics, 2x Maths Undergrad GPA: 42.8% (3rd Year) Type of Grad: Higher Diploma in Statistics at University College Dublin 2007-2008 MA Qualifier in Economics at University College Dublin 2010-2011 MA in Economics at University College Dublin 2011-2012 Grad GPA: HDip: 3.08 out of 4.2 MA Qualifier: 4.17 MA: No grades yet GRE: Booked for the 29th of August Math Courses: 1st Science: Pass Maths 67.6% Mathematical Physics 50% (repeat exam) 2nd Science: Pass Maths 74.2% Statistics 57.1% 3rd Science Maths: Graph Theory 66% Combinatorial Mathematics 18% 3rd Science Stats: Statistical Theory I Probability 83% Survey Sampling 62% Statistical Theory II Statistical Inference 45% Statistical Theory III Bayesian Statistics and Stochastic Processes 44% Statistics and Visualization 40% Data Analysis and Statistical Software 40% Statistical Methods II 17% Statistical Methods I 13% Higher Diploma in Statistics: Probability Distributions A+ Survey Sampling A+ Biostatistics A+ Linear Models I A Statistics and Visualization A- Statistical Inference I B+ Actuarial Statistics I C- Design of Experiments D+ Linear Models II D Statistical Inference II D Categorical Data Analysis D- Actuarial Statistics II E© (pass by compensation) Econ Courses (grad-level): Haven't started yet but these are the courses MA in Economics: Semester 1: Quantitative Techniques Research Skills Macroeconomics Microeconomics Econometrics Semester 2: Presentation Skills Welfare Economics and Public Finance Advanced Macroeconomics Advanced Microeconomics Advanced Econometrics Summer: Dissertation Econ Courses (undergrad-level): MA Qualifier in Economics: Advanced Macroeconomics A+ Advanced Microeconomics A+ Applied Econometrics I A+ Financial Economics A+ Game Theory A+ International Monetary Economics A Other Courses: 1st Science: Computer Science 88% Geology 55.6% 2nd Science: Computer Science 45.6% (repeat exam) Letters of Recommendation: I was the most participative student in each of my economics modules so I think the letters will be good. PhD Georgetown, American(?) Lecturer for macro. Stopped me after a lecture and said if I need a reference I should ask him. After that I spotted a misstake in one of his problem set solutions and got 100% on the module, which can only impress more (A+ = 76.67%). Nice guy. BA Toulouse, PhD Autònoma de Barcelona, French Lecturer for micro, MA micro and MA research skills, also director of MA. Asked a question and offered to write a reference if anyone could answer the question correctly, which I did. Really nice person. Got 97.9% in her module. Thinking of asking another young lecturer - PhD Oregon, American Got 91.5% in his game theory module. Another friendly lecturer. Research Experience: None Teaching Experience: Some martial arts teaching experience. Research Interests: How the money supply (reserves at the central bank and transaction account liabilities of commercial banks) enters circulation (via spending by the CB and spending by the commercial banks) and what would happen if the only entity that could spend additions to the money supply were the government. So, a real-time 100% reserve requirement on transaction accounts and no more central bank operations other than crediting the government's account, something like this. Other interest is Modern Monetary Theory. SoP: Maybe something about how my work could reduce private and government indebtedness? I don't have conventional interestes so I'm worried about how to write a SoP without putting adcomms off. Concerns: Whether I would get into a better programme if I were to wait till next autumn when I will have all the grades from my masters, a dissertation, and possibly some useful experience lined up for the gap year. I'll turn 29 in March 2012. How I'm going to do in the masters, especially the dissertation. The writing sections of the GRE - I'm slow to decide exactly how I want to say something and slow at typing. My unconventional interests. Other: I'm Irish. I moved around Europe when I was young. Rome 3 years, Dublin 3 years, The Hague 4 years, Dublin 2 years, Vienna 5 years. That said, I really only know one language (maybe a little bit of German). Applying to: Not sure, suggestions welcome. Thinking about the European University Institute and MIT (because I'd regret it if I didn't even ask).

Ok. Thanks for your help.

I agree that further down the rankings is more important. I was trying to judge the reliability of a ranking by looking at how it ranked the top 10ish because I don't know how 10-30ish is supposed to look. What's a good ranking that includes Europe? The other one that looks reasonable at the top - so I was thinking might be good further down too - is a RePEc one for pages in good journals.

What do you guys think of the ranking that you get when you go to the Tilburg sandbox, add in 2004 and take out all the journals except for American Economic Review and Quarterly Journal of Economics? (It should start 'Harvard...253') It solves the problems that kipfilet noted and seems a bit closer to how people might rank the PhD programmes. The top 13 are: Harvard MIT Chicago Berkeley Stanford Columbia Princeton Yale UCLA Northwestern NYU University of Pennsylvania LSE I think it could be useful because it's similar to the USNews ranking but includes universities outside the US.