MikeS

I will also attend.

Institution: Ohio State University Program: Economics PhD Decision: Accepted Funding: Not yet Notification date: 1/13 Notified through: E-mail Posted on GC: Yes Comments: Nice start for the season!

Guys, what do you think of Bartle's Elements of Real Analysis or Efe Ok's Real Analysis with Economics Applications? Where do they stand in terms of difficulty? Is Rudin better? I am looking for something comprehensive and not too basic, but I don't want it to assume I know too much stuff.

That's what I'm planning to do too, but I will need funding for the MRes year. I wonder how they make funding decisions for MSc people who are continuing. If grades are in so late,maybe MSc students are at a disadvantage there?

@zhang639 thanks for the information about PhD placement. I wish we had more. Also, the PhD class size at UCL and funding information are very important. If their class size is smaller than 20, then funding seems good (Funding). I might attend the MSc course with you guys if I manage to get funding. But even if I do, I have to know there will be a good chance of MRes funding.

Do they make 15-18 offers or 15-18 students enroll? Also, I just found this on UCL's website:

I also received an offer from MSc Economics at UCL and accepted it, though I'm still waiting for another program. Since they do not require any deposit, I think it is very common to accept the offer right away, and then withdraw it if you are going to attend another school. Just be sure to notify them as soon as you can to not hold a place that someone other may get. They also mention in the general conditions of the offer that they understand that you taking up the place is conditional on you being able to fund it. So lack of funding is a "legitimate" reason to cancel your acceptance.

Institution: UCL Program: M.Sc Economics Decision: Accepted conditionally Funding: Nothing yet Notification date: 22/01/13 Notified through: E-mail to check the portal Posted on GC: yes Comments: Waiting for Cambridge Diploma, funding is an issue too.

I occasionally participate in coding competitions. I am not very good at them but they are always very entertaining and are a good brain exercise. Sometimes I also look into contests at kaggle.com. You all should definitely take a look too. They hold statistical prediction/data mining contests with good cash prizes on a regular basis. They also currently host the $3mln Heritage Health Prize competition (though it's about to end with the big prize unclaimed).

The identity (x^a)^b = x^(ab) for real numbers x, a, b is only defined for positive x, i.e. when you write sqrt(x^2) = x, you necessarily assume (by definition!) that x > 0, but in the original function sqrt(x^2) x does not have to be positive, therefore functions y=sqrt(x^2) and {y=x AND x >0} are not equivalent (they differ in their domains). An equivalent function to sqrt(x^2) is abs(x).

As usual, you can think of the three girls as "one object" which needs to be positioned among 4 boys; 5 ways are possible (g=girl, b=boy): gggbbbb bgggbbb bbgggbb bbbgggb bbbbggg In each of these 5 cases, the positions of individual girls and boys can be different. More specifically, 3 girls in a given case can be rearranged in 3! ways, and 4 boys can be rearranged in 4! ways. So we have 5 * 3! * 4! as our final answer.

If 20 are not in any of the groups, we are left with 80 "interesting" students. Since we are told that there are more students on the fencing team, that number should be at least 71. If it is 71 then we have 80 students, among whom 71 are in the team and 70 are in the club. Therefore, the number of students who attend both = 71 + 70 - 80 = 61 (|A| + |B| - |A ∩ B|, where A is the set of the students in the team, B is the set of the students in the club). You can draw a Venn diagram if you want to see things more clearly. Finally, you need to observe that if there were more students on the fencing team (e.g. 72, 73, etc), the number of students who attend both would be larger. So 61 is the minimum.

What Zeno describes seems to be a general attitude in academic circles. It is not that surprising that people in academia consider factual research much more important than "mental gymnastics", since the former requires not only above average mental abilities, but also a lot of hard work to form an intuitive understanding of what has already been discovered in the field. But then again, my understanding is that olympiad medals are not earned without similar (in quality, but not in quantity) hard work.

@chateauheart that is exactly the case. College programmes in my country are usually very inflexible. So I ended up learning a lot of unnecessary stuff, but I objectively lack the preparation people going to top PhDs usually have. Interestingly , UCL MSc page asks to reflect on any skills of working with spreadsheets and "mathematical programming". So, I have talked about pre-college related things quite a lot in my PS. I just hope that isn't too much.

Thanks, it's good to know there are that kind of people at econ departments. I don't have 3 gold medals, though :D, that guy looks like a beast!

@bobibo that's interesting, can you show a couple of examples? Also, to make things more specific, I am referring to the international olympiad in informatics. Though it's not pure math, things like graph theory, computational geonetry and dynamic programming show up frequently in problems. So, assuming adcoms know something about the olympiad, I hope I can also signal some "quantitative reasoning" ability beyond the GRE level.

Hey guys, I am in the middle of applying to some masters courses in the UK in the hope of boosting my profile for a PhD in the US. I have sort of asked this in the past but didn't get any responses, so here is the question: what effect a big achievement from late high school (like a medal at an int. olympiad) can have on how applicant is viewed by adcoms? Do they automatically throw away everything pre-college related or maybe it depends on who looks at your application? My understanding is that if GRE scores play a role to show applicant's problem solving and analytical abilities, then things like medals at int. olympiads should do that job even better. And those medals can't even be too old considering GRE scores are valid for 5 years. I am asking this, because I have such kind of an achievement and wonder if that can help for masters admissions, though thoughts about PhD admissions are welcome too. So, any ideas?

My scores became available online on 30 November, the report date column said "28 November".

It is a specific score in 130-170 range.

I haven't received any special treatment throughout my education, looks like MPhil will be good for me. I have looked at past placements and found a guy who is at UPenn now. That was enough to comfort me :). Thanks for the info! Oh, and maybe you could connect me to someone who is doing/has done the diploma?

So you have talked to diploma students? Do you have any more information about it: the quality of teaching, availability of professors, etc? And were you talking about the diploma in your second point? If so, that's perfectly understandable, but if you were referring to the MPhil or UCL Msc, that sounds disappointing. To clarify I was referring to job market placements (where you go after finishing your PhD) and I'm mainly interested in an academic career and doing research. Also, most of the masters programs can't have good PhD placements just because they are so short, right?

I'm going to apply to Msc Economics at UCL too, but I honestly feel 1 year is not enough for me, besides doing PhD elsewhere would be ruled out due to the shortness of the program as you noted. Well, looks like I have to postpone thinking about comparative advantages of Cambridge and UCL to when I get accepted to both (and I doubt it will happen). I just wanted to make sure that Economics at Cambridge isn't far below from what one would expect from a Cambridge degree. Probably my willingness and ability to work hard and come up with original ideas will matter the most.

Thanks for the opinion, actually I'm now applying to their Diploma in Economics program. It's a 1 year course preparing for the MPhil, so I hope I can work a little bit with some professors and at least get good references. And what about staying in Cambridge for a PhD? How does that compare with US PhDs in terms of placement and reputation in the academic circles?

Anyone?

Hi all, I've reed on forums like this that Cambridge economics isn't very good. How accurate is that statement? Isn't Cambridge MPhil still a decent preparation for Top 10? My undergraduate coursework is pretty weak, but suppose I attend and do very well (i.e. get distinction) in the mphil program, will it give me the necessary boost to be competitive for schools like MIT, Harvard, UPenn, Chicago, etc? Thanks, Mike.