jiafei9014

Per topic, what are some of the most frequently used softwares? Just reformatted my laptop and looking for a list of programs to get before school starts. Thanks!

Great. Thanks for all the info guys!

Hello all, I've been fortunate enough to receive a funded offer. But last time I picked up a math/econ textbook was a while ago. Before school starts in the fall, I'd like to catch up on econ relevant calc/real analysis/stat, and macro/micro. Does anyone have any book to recommend? Thanks!.

I know we are not supposed to stress out too much about transcripts/official scores, but freaking Yale still lists my GRE score as "not received", I sent them my first offical report way back in Mid October. Upon submissions of my application, I sent them another report in mid December. Yet the website still shows the report as missing. I tried emailing the adcom about it, but they send back an automated Q&A redirect.....

Is anyone still having trouble with their test scores? Some of my GRE score reports are still listed as not received....

Actually, my status for transcripts just changed to "received - not official", so I'm guessing they don't need the official transcripts after all. But they still list GRE as not received even though most of other schools have received my score. Ugh.

Mind if I ask when you submitted your Yale app? I'm hoping they don't start matching GRE score to applicants till after the electronic app is submitted. My Harvard app doesn't say anything either, but I applied to another program, not economics.

For anyone that submitted to Yale, has your GRE score been received? Mine still says GRE not received even though I order the report back in October and pretty much every other school has received it.

Anyone that recently submitted to Yale notice that on the status page it says "official transcripts from XXX university - not received" ? Last time I checked, the econ department doesn't require official transcripts, so..? Should I still ask for official transcripts to be sent just in case?

Just submitted my app to Yale, and on the status page it says "official transcripts from XXX university - not received". The econ department does not require official transcripts to be sent prior to admissions, and I've scanned unofficial copies in the application. Would this affect the application in anyway? There are some other schools that ask for nonessential stuff on the status page, as opposed to what the econ departments need. I'm just worried that these materials could be considered "missing" and thus prevent the application from being read.

So I had trouble posting yesterday, the system kept saying my posts were subject to moderator review. I'm guessing it was related to this incident?

I actually disagree on the MIT LoR system. I thought it was awful at first as you'd have to manually copy the link and send it to your letter writer. But, if every school did this, you could collect all the links and put them under 1 email, rather than have each school send out a separate email to the writer. If I were a letter writer I'd much prefer one email over 10+ emails from different schools. Too bad no school follows MIT.

Don't think so.

I believe so, which is really smart because they can pretty much cut the amount of paperwork down to a minimum. If they want to read your resume, they can check out the link. For most applicants, they probably won't even bother.

I've noticed this on the application forms of several schools, which require you to list not just the subject name, number, level, but also the textbook. I've graduated from college a while ago and never kept any of the old textbook. Is it a big negative if the field is left blank?

While the absolute number of applicants might have peaked in 2010, the admissions rate continuted declining in 2011, which is what most of us would expect anyways. A 10-15% admissions rate sounds about right for schools in Northwestern's range, although I'm a little surprised by the low yield. In fact, the low yield of top econ phd programs overall is pretty interesting, when compared to, say top MBA programs, most of which are above 60%. Does this mean that some people are just all-stars and get a crapload of offers from every school, or funding is a very big issue and those without finaid just don't go? Then again, I'm not even sure if yield matters as much to econ departments as it does to the admissions offices of business schools....

Ya, I feel anything over 1000 words is just overdoing it, unless you have multiple pieces of outstanding research that needs to be described in-depth.

Just in the process of finishing up my SOP, total length comes out to be around 2 pages, 700 words with Times New Roman 12pt font and 1.5 line spacing and standard margins. Should I add more content? From most of the sample SOPs for other disciplines (especially humanities) that I've seen, they tend to be quite a bit longer, like 1400-1500 words, and the authors really go in-depth into their past research projects. I'm not quite certain if this applies to econ departments, as I haven't been able to find that many econ phd sample SOPs... Thanks

Regarding this topic, I was quite stunned to read on Columbia econ department website that it receives over 1000 applications per year, 25% more than Harvard/MIT. Are they potentially playing a numbers game here? It certainly gives the impression that the program is extremely difficult to get into. I don't know if it's just a geography thing attacting applicants (yay NY!) or misinformation.

Walras, when do the schools actually start reading applications? I had a professor tell me that although the stated deadlines for most schools are around early-mid Decemberish, they don't actually start reading the application till January, which means we shouldn't freak out too much even if the letters are a week/couple of weeks late?

Very simple and straightforward question here. I'm planning on asking my 3 professors to write 6 letters each, but not quite sure if that's too many considering they are all pretty busy folks. How many do you guys ask your letter writers to do? Is there a rough concensus on the average number? Thanks

Hello everyone. With respect to the resume/CV section of PhD applications, does anyone have a good CV template? I'm looking for one that's used for PhD applications, not current PhD students. Most of the sample CVs I've seen online are current students'. If you don't feel comfortable posting publicly, I can take PMs as well. Thanks a lot!

Great, thanks! Now I can happily go back to agonizing over my apps.

Not trying to derail the thread, but is 27 considered too old for PhD applications? (28 upon matriculation).

At this point, there's really not much to be done with 2 days to go, just review vocab and the test questions you got wrong. Also make sure you go through the ETS book and practice exams at least once.