huaxue09

lots of international students with MS in Economics at UIUC, Vanderbilt, Boston U cannot get offer from top 50, or even a funded offer...

option 1 is the best; then Duke, Wisconsin as both aimed to place students to PhD; not sure about NYU.

my econometrics professor (theorist IDEA top 5%) only uses Matlab.

it's easy to drop out, but it would be much harder to regain this type of acceptance after a few years. would you regret if you even didn't try (of course you need try your best otherwise you would not pass the prelims...)?

I agree that chateauheart and seta have the best opinions. You can go abroad for fun, and you can afford to waste some time..., but the optimal way to get what you want- a phd in a top Econ program is suggested well by both.

Hi Catrina, welcome to Texas!

I'm in 60 range, our micro I homework and exams have 60-70% proofs...

Really well said! UC Irvine has an option to get an additional MS in Stat in their PhD program, and I felt that's really good and probably would do the similar thing myself.

Take BU offer; if you are a top material, you can be place into top 10 after graduation (to be a professor in top 10, not a student). BU placements are comparable to some of top 10.

ASU if you are interested in finance.

It's extremely rare for an undergrad to have a R&R in a top journal; it's even very hard for a new top PhD graduate from a top program. It's common knowledge that nobody cares about your GPA when you go to job market as a PhD, but the job market paper. If you already got a paper published (or almost) in a top journal (and that's what you are trained for in a PhD program), I cannot see any reason why you cannot be admitted into a top program.

I disagree. The best math grades I got in my undergrad are Bs plus some C+ about 10+ years ago. I retook Calculus III and LA in summer 2012, and DE, Multivariable Calculus, PhD Micro I, Macro I and grad Prob and Stat I all five classes in fall 2012, and got all A and A+. You can as long as you work hard and know you are good at it.

certainly you are a competitive top 5 candidate if you could have one semester RA in economics...

you could search for hedgequant's post who had similar background as yours. He earned a MS in Statistics (after leaving his trading job if I remember correctly), and then got into Rice's Phd in Finance program.

I recall that tm_member once argued that a number of his classmates without taking RA still did pretty well; RA is essential when you want to do theory. Please correct me if I didn't remember correctly.