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I was at a top-5 school and only the older professors used Stata/Matlab. The younger ones and all students used R. The inexpensive student versions of paid software are somewhat Mickey Mouse versions and not really useful when you use large databases in real life research. For a freeware like R, if you post on the R forum, helpful people will give you their programs. So there's incredible support and within minutes you get what you need without having to pay for it and without investing any of your time in writing a program. I know someone at Harvard who invested time in SAS and Mathematica, joined a university in Tennessee where he was forced to migrate to SPSS and Maple and then joined another university where he had access to neither. SAS programs are not portable to SPSS and Mathematica programs are not portable to Maple. It's up to you - opensource and freeware are much better options and R is so much more powerful and cooler than any of the paid software, but if you want to waste money and fret later on, be my guest. Incidentally, I don't appreciate the needless constant digs by TM_Guru on whatever I post, starting with my Native American culture, and the attacks on me on personal messages, so I won't be visiting these Urch forums again. Moderators: could you please delete my account.

I picked up sufficient skills in Matlab and Stata in less than an hour each, so I don't think you need much time to learn either package, although I had prior skills with R and Maxima. Incidentally, it's a bad idea to invest in Matlab or Stata - or other paid software like Mathematica, Maple, SAS, SPSS, etc. Professors who end up at schools without a substantial research budget have regretted doing that. Even those with research budgets run into problems when they want to work from home. They load Mathematica or SPSS on their personal laptops, their laptops break down and they need to buy new packages again. These commercial companies are ruthless. Even if you buy a disk, it doesn't work when you migrate to a new laptop. Besides, Matlab, Stata, etc are for old people. We younger ones use opensource packages. It is best to start off investing in superior packages like R or Maxima or something similar that is free/opensource. And while you're at it, kick away Windows and migrate to Linux - you'll thank me later on!

I provided a very balanced assessment and a few individuals from your own country have sent me personal messages thanking me for my analysis. The list I gave extends well beyond IITs and IIMs and includes institutions like Bajaj, XLRI-Jamshedpur, VJTI, Sardar Patel, regional colleges, NITIE, IIFT, etc. Like I said, if any institution is highly regarded in India (like the IAS cadre), it will be highly regarded in the U.S.; if it is poorly regarded or discriminated against in India, it will be poorly regarded in the U.S. This is because an Indian person will be involved in making those admit decisions. You mentioned "Delhi University, Hyderabad University, University of Bombay or University of Madras" and I recognize Delhi, Bombay and Madras as having high reputation. If by Hyderabad you mean Osmania University, then you need to know that that university is suspected of extremely poor educational standards. I understand there is a strong pecking order in Indian educational systems but you need to know American understanding of this pecking order is provided by professors from your own country employed in America. You might be from Bihar, Orissa or Rajasthan - and if so, the discrimination against you by the American educational system is a function of the discrimination against your people by Indians already in the United States. There is considerable heterogeneity in the Indian educational system with some institutions being world class and some being shamefully corrupt, with some speakers being perfectly capable in English and others completely unable to comprehend English. The only way for us to make sense of India is to rely on professors from India already teaching Economics in the U.S. and on standardized test scores like the GRE and TOEFL. If you apply to Harvard, you are guaranteed that one of Sendhil Mullainathan, Gita Gopinath, Raj Chetty, yes even Amartya Sen or one of the visiting Indian professors would have provided input on your application if you were a serious contender and their input would be valued above everything else. But I am glad you and I both agree on one thing: that the training in Economics at the 3-year BA-level is quite poor and woefully inadequate. Also true for the Indian MA in Economics. So if you take any Math class at the BA or MA-level in Economics, it will not be valued in the U.S. (unless you took those classes at one of the elite institutions in India).

To the OP. I worked in graduate admissions at a top-5 Economics department for 3 years and we had a number of applicants from India. My position was that of a secretary/admissions assistant. A few months of these 3 years were spent in the admissions division of the Graduate School. From my notes, general observations, experience in graduate admissions, a whole study-abroad year that I spent in India and my own interest in India and in the process of gradute admissions, I have observed that some classes of applicants from India are very highly regarded and others are not as highly regarded. Especially highly regarded are the BTech from the IITs, BE from VJTI or Sardar Patel or good regional engineering colleges, PGDM/PDGBDM/MMS from the IIMs (especially IIM-Ahmedabad and IIM-Calcutta), XLRI-Jamshedpur, Bajaj and other schools in Mumbai as well as those with degrees from NITIE, IIFT and other national institutions. Students from these institutions also have, in general, a good command over English but there is considerable variability depending on what part of India they were from. Those from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and similar states have a poor command over English while those from Maharashtra and the Southern states generally have a good command over the language. Usually someone of East Indian descent helps with admission decisions from India because they are so complicated. Some of your education is world class while some education is of pathetic quality. Those with BA or MA in Economics from India or an MBBS from any Indian university (whether the donation-based Manipal college or your top colleges like AIIMS, Kasturba, etc) are rather poorly regarded by admissions committees for graduate study. BA/MA Econ students from India are considered to be extremely poorly trained in Economics. The BA is also not considered as equivalent to a BA/BS from a North American university since it is a 3 year degree and not a 4 year degree. The courses that you talk about won't be favorably regarded, unless of course you took them at one of the IITs or IIMs or one of the institutions mentioned above. In fact, such courses will actually position you as unsuitable for graduate study in Economics. Remember that a professor originally from India will be the key person with influence in your admit/reject decision, so this person is always extremely knowledgeable about what kind of education you've had. If your education is highly respected in India, it will be perceived well by admissions committees here. Almost always the person making your admission decision will be from the IITs or IIMs, so if you're not from one of the above institutes I have listed, your chances are slim.

Speaking of inexpensive textbooks, what's a good place to buy cheap books? I have heard people suggest buying international versions, which are cheaper than the ones in the US here. Any other ideas? (I found a way to get SPSS/SAS, Mathematica/Maple and Windows out of my life. I am now using better freeware alternatives that are more powerful and clearly more superior, e.g. Ubuntu Linux instead of Windows. Hope we can do the same with textbooks! Publishers have exploited students for too long).

How about exchanging or bartering textbooks - is that also against discussing on this forum? If a discussion of exchanging textbooks is not forbidden by this forum, then that could be a good alternative to expensive textbooks. For example, I will be happy to get rid of a horrible book on mathematical statistics by Rohatgi because I should never have bought it in the first place. I will be meeting with a professor (Preston McAfee) after the semester starts and he might have some useful ideas about the problem of expensive texts.

I found this link on Open courseware consortium: http://www.ocwconsortium.org/en/courses/browsesource There are a number of universities offering free courses in Economics. The above offer free alternatives to buying expensive textbooks. Plus there's iTunes University but I have yet to figure that out. If it means buying Apple hardware or software, I am not too excited about them. See for instance http://itunes.stanford.edu/

No, it does not extend to accepting money/financial benefits/help from those within the tribe. But we don't accept any kind of help, financial or otherwise, from anyone outside the tribe. The answer is complicated but if you google Indian code of ethics or Haudenosaunee confederacy, some link might be pulled up.

I certainly wasn't implying you are "the same as some horrible people form 400 years ago" but seeing that you seem always intent on misunderstanding, debating or trapping me, I won't be responding to you henceforth.

This might sound weird but if I don't get into a PhD Economics program either in Germany or in the US, I have a plan-B for which graduate credits are not considered in computation of your GPA, but more importantly, online credits are not accepted. So while Stanford's program sounds excellent (it's pricey though), unfortunately it is a no-go. There's too much discrimination against online courses, sadly. I would have loved to enroll in some of the courses you suggested and Stanford is such an awesome university!

Thanks for the comments. What do you guys think of Harvard Extension? I know quite a bit about it but not for Econ as such.

A high GRE always helps you! Your question reminds me of a General Manager of a small-sized company in Germany who wanted a graduate degree in Economics or an MBA and later on a government career. He told me his problem was he was always getting perfect or near-perfect scores on the GRE/GMAT in practice tests. He told me that schools in the US will infer that if someone had the time to ace their GRE/GMAT, they were not achieving much in their corporate career and they probably didn't have a responsible job. So he was strategically thinking of under-performing on the actual GRE and GMAT. Schools don't think that way though. High scores always help you.

Not talking about tenure here but PhD admissions. What the professor told me was that when it comes to potential doctoral students, they don't care as much about your publications as they do about your potential. She said something like "It takes us less than 5 minutes to assess how good your paper is. I usually read the paper backwards, looking at your appendix and proofs. So even if you give us an unpublished paper, we will have a pretty good idea of what kind of journal it will eventually end up at."

Thank you. I am considering a PhD in Economics from Germany (not sure if this is a good idea), so I should probably pay more attention to subjective perception of universities rather than their actual rankings in Econ/Math. And usually what drives subjective reputation of a university, at least in my opinion, is excellence in the sciences. Of the above list (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Texas, Michigan, Maryland - all excellent universities), probably only Michigan is close to Berkeley in subjective reputation. Their tuition is somewhat confusing (Half Term Tuition & Fees - Office of the Registrar) and I believe it is much higher for out-of-state students than it is at Berkeley.

Actually we think the rest of you have a unique take on life ;) Example - in the 1600s, twelve heavily-armed armed White men came down to our tribe. The children had never seen White men before. The men pointed to a majestic mountain and demanded "Who owns this mountain? We want to talk to the person who owns this mountain" and the children burst out laughing. The men became very angry, held a little brother and sister hostage and demanded to talk to our Chief. The children didn't know what they wanted because Indians never had a Chief before the Europeans told them to appoint a chief they could negotiate with (we had a system of communal decision making). So the children ran to some elders and said some men with "spider webs on their faces" (beards) were asking who owned the mountain. The elders invited the White men in, fed them and their horses food and water, gave them gifts and apologized for the behavior of the children. They said the question who owns the mountain is like asking "Who owns the Sun?" Because no one can own Grandfather Sun and if anything the Sun owns and controls everything on Earth. The strangers looked at us like we were crazy and said henceforth they owned the mountain and they didn't want us to go there any more to collect medicinal plants.