weakerthan

This makes me feel great about letting go of my Michigan offer :)

Bump! I keep going back and forth on this decision... Thanks chateauheart!

I'm wondering what people's thoughts are on the following decision: the Economics PhD at Columbia versus the Public Policy PhD at the Harvard Kennedy School. I'm interested in applied micro fairly generally, sprinkled across development (more quasi-exp than RCT), environmental, and labor economics. I've also got a pretty strong interest in applied econometric theory/methodology around causal inference and non/semi-parametrics. I doubt I'd want to go on the market as an econometrics candidate, but ideally I'd like to do some work on methods mixed with application as a part of my dissertation. My goal upon finishing is to go for a faculty job in an economics department. I don't think I'd be opposed to one in a policy school, as long as it were clear than I'm an economist. I definitely want to be an academic. At this point I've visited both departments and got a really great impression from both. For Harvard, a big part of the draw is the access to the greater Cambridge economics community, both in taking classes and advising. Current public policy students stressed that this access is a real thing, and clearly some previous PP grads have really taken advantage of it and done splendidly on the economics job market (some of the oft-mentioned examples being Will Dobbie, Hunt Alcott and David Autor). Of course, my PhD would ultimately read "Public Policy" and coursewise I'd be missing some of the rigor of the traditional economics micro/macro core (though econometrics is taken in the Harvard economics department). I really liked the vibe of the faculty I met with at Columbia. And as a single department, I think Columbia offers more strength in my areas of interest overall than does the HKS faculty. But if you include the economics department at Harvard, and then bring in MIT as well, it's nearly impossible for Columbia (or any other school) to compete with that pool of minds. But which is the right comparison is to make here? Obviously getting the attention of one or more of the Harvard economics faculty may not be terribly easy, but on the other hand wouldn't the Harvard economics graduate students face a similar challenge? One person described the choice to me like this: the median student at Columbia will do better than the median student at HKS (on the econ job market), but if you manage to really stand out at HKS, be very entrepreneurial and bring in economics faculty into your research, then you'd be better off there with the Cambridge community as a resource. Is this a good characterization? For what it's worth, I'm pretty even on NYC vs Boston (both have their pluses and minuses!). I'd say NYC wins by a hair for me overall. Thanks in advance! Hopefully this discussion will also be useful to other folks considering the Public Policy program at Harvard who are evaluating alongside economics programs.

I'd say definitely ask. I did this at school B and received a yes response. I think you'll just be limited by the total allowable reimbursement amount,

Congrats, ColonelForbin! I would love to hear how you are feeling about Berkeley ARE vs Duke, or your possible admits at Michigan and UCSD. Feel free to PM me if you feel like discussing.

I'll be there too! Is anyone else taking the 4:45 AirRide back to the airport? I hate to leave the schmoozing session early, but that's the latest bus that get's me to my flight, unless I rent a car...

Also: University of Colorado, Boulder: 4/2-4/3 UBC: none Does anyone know Duke's date(s)? I haven't heard anything from them and not sure that I'm expecting a yes, but it would still be nice to know for general planning purposes.

Michigan: 3/20 Harvard Kennedy School (Public Policy): 3/25-3/26

It seems like this question really lacks consensus, which is too bad given that it comes up a lot (I'm dealing with it myself). Perhaps, more optimistically, it suggests that there's really no wrong answer.

Yeah make sure to check that! One of my reference letters thought he had submitted but apparently there was some technical issue and the letter wasn't received, and the system wouldn't let my writer submit again. I called GSAS and they told me to create a "fourth" letter writer, using a different email address, and that allowed my letter writer to submit his letter without issue.

Hey Zubrus, I got confused about this too: I think the fee counting twice only applies to Harvard Integrated Life Sciences (HILS) programs. Bummer, but I hope the additional $105 investment pays off for you! And as Colonel Forbin mentions, you have to create another account.

Yeah, I'm not sure that there's actually any way around it. It's strange that ETS is unwilling to offer you as the test-taker a record of a single score, given that they make such a big deal about letting you choose scores that you report to institutions. I sent my most recent score in my official score report, and for the application I guess I'll just upload my online score record that includes all tests. I bet they get this situation a lot. Many people send their scores right when they finish the test, before having knowledge of specific application procedures.

title should say "analytical writing" - whoops! (mark my score down) I know the AW part of the GRE is not the main thing that adcoms look at, but what would you consider a "good", or "great" AW score? At what point does your score become a (slightly) positive signal, and at what point does it become a (slightly) negative one? I'm thinking something like the following might be useful to people(myself included): 0-2.5 -> should probably retake 3 -> not great but sufficient 3.5 -> not great but sufficient 4 -> good/neutral 4.5 -> good 5-> very good 5.5-> impressive 6-> very impressive That's just my intuition to prompt discussion, I can't defend those judgments :) Also, I'm guessing adcoms look at the AW differently depending on whether English is your first language. If it's not, my guess is they are willing to cut you more slack. Perhaps we need two lists, one for native English speakers and one for non-native English speakers?

Thanks Econhead, that all makes a lot of sense. But where does that leave point 1)? Has anybody dealt with this? Do people just send one score from ETS, upload all of their scores to their online application, and not worry about the discrepancy?

Hey all! I see lots of threads on here where folks ask for advice choosing between multiple GRE scores, and evaluating the specific score tradeoffs there (e.g. is it better to send a score with higher math but lower AW & verbal). But how about the question of sending all of your scores versus just sending your best? I have one score that would clearly be the one to send, if I could only send one. But are any of the following good enough reasons to also send a second score I have from four years ago, which has a slightly worse verbal and the same math and AW? 1) Some applications, e.g. MIT and Columbia, require you to upload your online score report with your application, in addition to sending your official scores. As far as I can tell, the ETS website will only show you all of your scores, and not just a single test date. So when the school sees two sets of test scores on your online application, but then only receives one from ETS, will they think that is weird/not forthright? (p.s. there may be a way around this, by requesting a $25 paper score report to yourself using ScoreSelect then scan it. But you'd want to check that this is acceptable with the schools, and leave time for the score report to get to you). 2) In my case, I think it would be nice to show them that I got the score I wanted on math twice, over a four year span. That should signal some consistency and look good. But my AW score (same both times) is on the lower end of what I would have hoped for, so I might prefer to send just one score and have the adcoms think that was a fluke sampled from the low end of my distribution. Any thoughts? Thanks!