strugglin

You're overreacting. It won't matter at all. Get good grades in subsequent math classes. I had a B in calc 3 freshman year, and I sincerely doubt that was what kept me from better programs. You'll do fine, keep working hard.

Your rankings seem pretty reasonable, but as Ivan said above, Northwestern is head and shoulders above the rest in most disciplines, but especially theory.

Well in the past only ~8 people would be funded in the first year. It looks like next year's class will be the same size as ours (20+), but everyone will be funded. So it's a pretty dramatic difference, and will certainly cost the department a lot more money.

Well that's excellent, I think it would help us get better students. It's a bummer for those who just missed it by a year or two, but I guess someone had to get the shaft. Congrats to those who got in, and feel free to ask me if you have questions!

Is that a new policy? If so, this would be the first year. I guess that answers your question lol. That'd be a great change I'd say/

BU doesn't have an open house (or at least didn't last year). As a BU student, I agree with most of what Integral said, but I'd disagree about his comments on micro theory. I think that Lipman, Epstein, Mookherjee, and Newman strictly dominate the professors he mentioned (obviously not a slight towards them, they're great), and our younger theorists are quite good as well. I'd certainly recommend going to the flyout at BC, and if you have questions about BU they'd be happy to help, even though there isn't a flyout.

There was no flyout at BU last year, for some reason they kind of dropped the ball on that, not sure what happened. Happy to answer any questions you might have, or say hello if you make it to Boston for some reason.

For those of you wondering, last year UVA only let in 20 people, and waitlisted everyone else. I actually received an invitation to the flyout before I received the letter informing me of the waitlist. I called and the woman said she legitimately just missed my name on the list. Infuriating, but she was sweet and southern so all was forgiven. This was late February, and both admits, rejects, and other waitlists had already come out. So I'd suggest calling if this sounds familiar to you. Also, I heard from BU around the 14th last year, but some did hear earlier. I don't know if they're ahead or behind schedule this year. They did give us an extra month (May 15) to decide last year though, for what it's worth. Good luck y'all!

Also to the OP: take the course, it's awesome. I've had two of them, I think it's beautiful.

Yeah, the point that mathematicians treat proofs differently is probably the understatement of the day. I've been really disenchanted this year with the lack of formalism in the way a lot of economics is presented, mostly with regards to macro. I started out with my heart set on macro/money stuff, but am pretty strongly leaning toward micro now.

I haven't found it directly, but any abstract algebra course will certainly improve your proof righting skills, even if they're quite good already. It's also a minimally positive signal if you do well. Of course in terms of value, a lot of the things Humanomics mentioned would be more useful, but those are often unavailable.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but I've been poking around these economics forums for a few years and I was wondering if someone could explain to me the stark contrast between this site and EJMR. For some reason, on this site we get thoughtful question from applicants and prospective graduate students, with nice and usually polite answers from current graduate students and occasionally even faculty. On the other hand, everyone there seems to be pretentious and there solely to make others feel lousy. In theory that site would be a very helpful resource, but it is essentially useless because of all the mindless banter going on.

I am a bit biased but I can say that the econometrics at BU is quite good. We also do a conference with BC, and I am led to believe they have a couple good people there as well.

I am tempted to say that there enough applicants from lower ranked schools that taking it at Concordia and getting the A would be the better option. Obviously, it would be best to take it at McGill and work your *** off and get the A there, but if you don't think you can, then perhaps ignore that bit.

It seems that well equipped laptops are more than capable of handling big datasets and matlab programs, so I wouldn't worry too much there. It also depends on how important portability is for you. I do all my work away from my home/office, and I use a laptop exclusively for my computing (ie don't own anything else), and I spent all of the fall semester lugging around an almost 6 pound T410. I switched it out this christmas for a macbook air with an i7, 8 ram, and 256 ssd, and it has made travelling with school work a lot easier (windows ultrabooks would have accomplished this just as well, but i didn't like 8). If you're laptop is going to be mostly sedentary, there's no reason to pay the premium for the sleeker ones with the parts fit together as tightly as possible. Lastly, I have heard good things about Asus, but I second that you cannot go wrong with a thinkpad. I've had two of them in the past 5 years, and they were great. I would caution you that they don't particularly last long, both of mine were ready to go when I got rid of them.