JM458

I had a phone interview for quantitative marketing earlier this week so everyone can begin freaking out now if they'd like. They said they interviewed so early because of some university wide financial aid stipulation, but wouldn't make decisions until February/March. I'd prefer not to disclose the school though.

I found my independent study to be very worthwhile. I found an economics professor with a joint appointment in the math department who was able to supervise my math study. It was technically a real analysis study, but my choice of supervisor allowed me to make it more econ oriented. I did it concurrently with grad micro, so I was able to take some time to study things like correspondences, separating hyperplane theorems, and other topics that were relevant to me at the time and wouldn't fit into any math courses. And it definitely helped me get to know a professor pretty well who is writing what he says will be a strong letter. So as far as proving to admissions that you have mastered certain material, it probably won't do much. But if you want to take your math degree in a slightly different direction and make some good contacts, it could be a good idea. It worked out very nicely for me but I guess it depends on who you can find to supervise you.

I haven't run out of lines, but I have run out of space on individual lines. In this case, my university just told me to use abbreviations whenever I could.

I know quite a few economists who graduated from top ten programs and used Greene.

Do you guys mention specific faculty members you are interested in working with in your SoP? I'd like to emphasize that I'm a good fit, but I'm not sure if singling out a professor or two is the best way to do that.

I've taken two RA classes and neither allowed for notes on the exam. However, we were given a lengthy sheet of theorems which we should know how to prove, so you could do very well on the tests by memorizing definitions, theorems, and proofs. Homework counted for about 30% of the grade I think. I agree that I spent a lot of time memorizing rather than understanding. I didn't feel like I understood analysis very well until I watched the Harvey Mudd lectures on youtube and followed along in Rudin. I haven't done an econ Ph.D., but I did take a grad micro class last fall. Overall, I'd say it's not definitely more about understanding than memorization. The first question on each of our exams was always to give the definition of something or state some theorem, but the rest of the questions required actually understanding the material. Your grade was based off of your rank in the class, and pretty much everyone got full credit on the first question, so in a sense it didn't really factor into your grade. To do well you had to be able to apply what you learned.

I'm doing an independent study in analysis right now for credit, so I'll give you my take. Before I start, my background was one RA class with Ross which covered single variable, then one RA class with Browder which covered multi-variable (roughly first 7 chapters of baby Rudin). Of these, Ross was a decent book and a good introduction, but if you're good at math you may be able to jump into a more advanced book like Baby-Rudin with no background in analysis. I thought Browder was a terrible book with confusing notation and excessively long paragraphs. I didn't grasp this material well until I read the first half of Baby Rudin over the summer, which I thought was a lot clearer. For my independent study now, I'm using Principles of Real Analysis by Aliprantis and Burkinshaw (Aliprantis was actually an economist with a math doctorate, which is why I picked it). This has a quick review of the sort of stuff you'd see in the first 7 chapters of Baby Rudin, and then a chapter generalizing results from metric spaces into a general topological space. This was my first introduction to Topology and I thought it did a reasonable job. Starting with chapter 3, it gets into more advanced material like measure theory, lebesgue integration, hilbert/banach spaces. Overall, I really like this book so far. It's well written and the exercises are challenging but not excessively so. The authors also published a book called Problems in Real Analysis which has the solutions to the hundreds of exercises in the book, which you can find online. If you're self studying, a solution manual is very helpful so you can check whether your solving the exercises correctly. Edit: If you are self studying, there is a video series on YouTube that goes through the first half of Baby-Rudin at Harvey Mudd College, and the teacher is very good. This is definitely how I would self study if you are a beginner, just make sure you do some exercises. Also, I found Ok's book to be a little confusing, definitely don't use it as an introduction.

"It seems to me that ruling out someone solely based on his academic record is unfair." If you don't have a good academic record, then why should anyone believe you'd make a good academic? They have to discriminate somehow and your academic record is the most reasonable way. Both applicants you mention will be at a disadvantage, but a person with close to a 4.0 from a weaker school is still preferable to a person with a 3.0 from a great school. The reason is the person with the 3.0 has already proven that he/she can't succeed in difficult classes. They can't rule out the possibility that the person with good grades at a worse school would have earned excellent grades at a better school too. If you post your profile like the people in the other threads, you could get better advice for your situation.

Thanks for the replies! I have one more question: When admissions committees look at your undergrad institution, do they care more about the rank of the school's graduate economics program or the rank of the undergrad institution as a whole? For example, Vanderbilt is a very high ranked school with a less prestigious econ program, but the undergrad courses are probably pretty difficult. Wisconsin, on the other hand, has a top 20 econ program but is ranked in the 40's on US News in the undergrad rankings, and they might make undergrad courses less difficult because the quality of the students may not be as high. Would a high GPA at Wisconsin be preferable to a high GPA at Vanderbilt, holding other factors such as LoR's constant? For the record, I don't go to either of these schools. I ask because my school has a very good grad program but I sometimes worry that my undergrad courses were less challenging than they should have been.

I posted a profile over a year ago to see how I was doing. But since I'll be graduating this semester, and applying to grad schools in the next few months, I was hoping to get some advice on whether applying to top 10 programs is worth it. Type of Undergrad: Public, grad program ranked in the 20's. Undergrad GPA: 3.83 overall, 3.83 math, 4.0 econ Study: Math major, econ minor GRE: 165Q, 166V, 4.5W Undergrad Math: Calculus I/II/III (A/A/B), Linear Algebra I/II(A/A), ODE's I/II (A/A), Discrete Math (B+), Real Analysis I/II (A/A), Probability (A) Undergrad Econ: Micro I/II (A-/A), Macro I/II (A/A) Statistics for Econometrics- Honors (A), Econometrics (A), Economics of Modern China (A), Mathematical Economics (A) - I went to a different school my first semester so the A- is not factored into my GPA. This semester- Ph.D. Micro (w/ MWG), Math Stats, Math independent study (big Rudin) Recommendations- I've worked as a research assistant for 2 profs. If I have a good semester, I could possible get 2 very good references (both economists). Overall I should be able to get 3 good ones out of these 4 and, if necessary, a math prof. Research Experience: 2 months last summer as RA for labor economist. RA for finance prof for most of 2012 (the project was partly labor econ as well) Interests: Micro theory, decision theory, labor, public SoP- Wrote a draft over the summer, should be fine. Other- I have a 4.0 for spring and summer of 2012, so I am finishing strong. Worst semesters were at the beginning when I took mostly gen eds. My main weaknesses are B in Calc 3, lower grades in gen eds bringing down my cumulative GPA, and no independent research. Right now I am targeting 10-25 schools, and a few safeties. I'll probably apply to some decision science programs as well. I'll talk to my advisers about this more when school starts back up. So my question is, assuming I do well in my grad micro course, would it be worth it to apply to a few top 10 programs? Am I aiming to high in general? Thanks in advance, and let me know if any more info would be helpful.

What I would do is make a list of all the courses you think you'll need to take during college and make a schedule for your next 6 semesters in an Excel sheet, obviously making sure you meet the requirements for your major and minor programs. Which order you take the courses is not so important, as long as you take them. Just try to put your classes in a logical order and make sure not to put all the toughest classes in one semester. Personally, I took pretty advanced courses like real analysis II before taking differential equations and probability, and I found taking the tougher classes first helped me a lot in understanding the math behind the simpler classes, but that can be a risky thing to do. So to answer your original question, it really doesn't matter what you decide to do. If you take the probability course, it would seem to be a waste of a class since you don't need it if you take the more advanced one. But what you replace it with is up to you, and there are plenty of useful courses you can take. More econ or an intro to proofs class seem like a good idea though.

Thanks Oleador, I uninstalled my old python and installed python(x,y) and everything is working great now. I see Stachurski recommended using python(x,y) but I guess I missed that and installed the normal package from the python site.

Has anyone tried to go through this? I installed Python and did the first lesson, but he starts using iPython in lesson 2 and I'm having trouble getting iPython to work. Could someone PM me if you might be able to help?

I'd be surprised if most colleges (at least American colleges) offer undergraduate measure theory, so really any measure theory is graduate level measure theory. In my school, which has a well regarded math department, measure theory is taught in the first year graduate real analysis course. I'm sure there are exceptions at some top schools, but its not the norm.

I wouldn't worry about taking discrete math either. Definitely better off doing some analysis or stats than discrete math, unless you just want to take it to become familiar with writing proofs.