tmnod

Don't worry now about finding particular fields of interest, finding professors and reading journals. You don't need to be committed to a particular topic before you enter the PhD program. Even the 1st year PhD students often change their mind during their 1st year. You mentioned that you are interested in IO, Metrics and Labor (it seems to me that auction theory is a subfield of IO), and this is enough for the PhD application. As we often apply to 10~20 schools, you don't need to take a close look at the schools. Being a student from a T15 school, you can even apply to all of T20 schools without any research. In any case, after you are admitted to a few programs among 10~20 schools, you start taking a close look at the schools. If you do want to clarify your research interest, take a field course in IO and Labor this fall and spring.

"Empirical economics" is not a field --- it is a way of studying economics, in other words, an approach. Also, asking "which schools do empirical economics?" is like asking "which schools do macroeconomics?". The class of "empirical study of economics" is so huge that almost all (if not all) schools have faculty members who focus on the empirical study. If you want to address that you like analyzing data in your SOP, I think you should mention one or two particular fields and then say you like to study the field(s) by analyzing data. As I said, saying "I am interested in empirical economics" is like saying "I am interested in macroeconomics", which is a vague statement for an SOP.

If you are into the empirical IO, there is another department devoted to the field: Marketing. So you may want to check the connection between the business school and the economics department at OSU.

I also think USC is better than PSU in terms of econometrics faculty as they have two fellows of econometric society working on econometric theory (Hsiao and Pesaran) and other active faculty members in that field while PSU has no fellow in the field AFAIK. But I heard PSU is much stronger than USC in terms of placements (didn't check).

I would guess that those who have got in top 10 Econ PhD programs as a stats master student have taken econ classes and have got reference letter(s) from econ professors. Therefore, I think that, if you go for the stats master, you should take econ classes and try to get letters from econ professors while engaging in research at the stats department, while you would just focus on the former and not the latter if you attend the econ master's program. I think that, in terms of admissions, the stats master would help as much as the econ master only if you take econ classes and get letter(s) from econ professors. Of course, at the same time, you should complete the stats coursework and work hard in your research to get a strong letter from your supervisor at the stats department. Therefore, being a successful stats master student as a potential econ PhD applicant would be more demanding than being a successful econ master student as the potential applicant. However, if you manage to get letter(s) from econ professors, I think that a stats master would eventually benefit you more in terms of your career development. So the bottom line is that a stats master may be a little riskier than an econ master in terms of admissions in that it may be harder to get letters from econ professors (but an econ master also has a risk of not getting letters from econ professors).

If your school sends students to US schools every year (no matter where they are ranked), I think there is no better indicator than the placement record. If the top students in your school are **usually** admitted to say T9 schools, then you should have high probability of getting into T9. If the top students in your school are usually admitted to say T30, you can still try T9 (and you should) but you should include T30 schools in your application list as well. Being a top student in your school, I think you can take the median placement of your school as your lower bound in your application list. Then you can apply to higher-ranked schools for which you will decide how many schools to apply depending how confident you are.

I've got the email about a half hour ago. They are probably working late (or working at home). I think you should get the email soon.

I will just list what I read from GC and not make any guess: Columbia sent out acceptances on Feb 27 (Fall 2013) Mar 2 (Fall 2012) Mar 8 (Fall 2011) and they sent out rejections a few days after the day of the acceptances.

By the way, looking at the historical record of USC at GC, I found that in general people are notified admission via e-mail while they are notified rejection via postal mail.

That may not be too much, but if you look at the historical record of USC at GC, you will find that USC has offered 23k for the last two years.

I second this.

Did they ask you to provide how many dollars of annual stipend you would like to receive? When I first read your post, I thought they are asking if you need, for example, full tuition and a stipend or full tuition but no stipend. In this case, my answer would be something like "I need full tuition remission and a stipend that is enough to live in XXX"

Northwestern decisions are out while it seems that only rejections are out according to GC.

The staff said the official offer should be emailed next Monday when I contacted early this week.

I didn't apply to American U, but let me answer this generally. You should have answered "yes" for the question asking if you wish to be considered for financial aid when you fill in the form on the online application system. Check your application proof.