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.

big Congrats!

Why FSU for Grad School? - Will Doerner's Notes A quick background to put my opinions into perspective . . . I went to a small (4,500) liberal arts school (Furman University). When I graduated, I spent a year as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar in Guatemala where I took Masters classes in development and worked on humanitarian projects. Not too long thereafter I got married. For my first go-around, I enrolled at Johns Hopkins University for doctoral work in economics. I chose the institution because I was told to go to the highest ranked school that I could afford. The experience was not what I had expected and I left after the first semester to teach mathematics for a private company. The following Fall, I got a fresh start at Florida State University. Below are some of my reflections on FSU.

someone transferred from Hopkins to FSU several years ago...

SMU should also be a good place.

I would go with CMU Finance.

I just talked to someone on the job market (she got an AP offer from an European university); she said school ranking is way more important than you can imagine (on the job market).

Hi hedgequant, may I ask you how you expressed appreciation to your letter writers?

yes, I noticed there were two admits back in January on GC, and it seems that they have been completely quiet since then.

I received rejection yesterday...sigh

still waiting for UNC-CH, Rice...