arrm

Make sure that one of your letter writers at least mentions it. You (or they) might want to mention your class rank, or they could compare your grades to a past student who went on to a similar graduate program as those that you are aiming for. Normally I would say that yes, there is definitely some adjustment for school difficulty. However, this is conditional on the adcoms being familiar with your undergraduate program, which is not guaranteed at a small liberal arts school.

I think that you'd at least have a shot at getting an interview, and then all you need to do is nail the interview. This is assuming that you'll be mostly getting A-'s and A's in your classes from here on (maybe a couple B+'s mixed in). Good grades in metrics and math classes would do a lot to help, as that B- in calc is pretty detrimental.

The issue is that the requirements for passing comps are often not transparent at all. As far as I know, few programs will give you a prior indication of what a passing score entails, and it's very possible that they will adjust the passing benchmarks year-to-year or even determine them after seeing the scores. I have no idea whether Brown does this or not, but it definitely isn't unheard of.

I don't think deferring helps though. As has been stated, being the year behind a huge class is just as bad as being in the huge class. The funding and faculty limitations are going to be just as persistent. In some ways it could be even worse to be behind them. Imagine trying to get time with faculty in a couple years when they're all already swamped with advising the class before you.

[ANSD][/ANSD]It doesn't hurt, and might have a small positive impact on your application. But your time and effort is almost certainly better spent looking for econ-related research opportunities or taking additional classes.

I think (US) masters in econ are terrible returns on investment (if you're paying tuition), both in terms of industry and academic outcomes. Sometimes they're necessary (e.g. needing to catch up on coursework after a major field switch), but it doesn't seem like you're in one of those cases. For the GRE, I don't even think the returns on studying are that high. There just isn't that much you can actually study for, especially if you already have taken the required math classes. 4-5 months in particular is way overkill. If your problem is test anxiety/unfamiliarity, you'd be better off taking practice tests in under test-like conditions. I would recommend staying at your current place and making sure to take (and excel in) as many more math (or math-heavy econ) classes as you can. If I were an adcom, those calc grades would be terrifying, and you want to have as much on your resume to counteract them as possible. Getting an RA job would be ideal, and you should use any contacts you have (e.g. professors at your school, your letter writers) to see if you can get some RA work.

Since you interact with economists, would it be possible to get a recommendation letter from them? Keep in mind that your performance in school or class is decidedly secondary, the most important part of any recommendation is an assessment of your research potential. If you regularly work with economics or related PhDs, especially those who are actively publishing in reputable econ journals, then hopefully some of them can evaluate your research potential.

There are two possible situations I see here. 1. You don't actually want to do graduate-level research, but you think that you would need a PhD because of some sort of glass ceiling in industry or public sector work. In this case, you should decline your offers and go work somewhere that you want to. There's plenty of interesting work out there that doesn't require a PhD, and if you don't like the kind of work and research that it takes to get a PhD then I doubt that you'd really want to do the kind of jobs that require a PhD. 2. You want to get a PhD, but you're scared about the work and commitment and/or you're getting some classic imposter syndrome/cold feet. In this case, you should go ahead with the PhD and do your best. Working for a year is going to give you very little to no additional information about how you will feel and/or handle the work and research required for a PhD, especially given that you already have research experience. These might not adequately describe you, there might be other factors at play, or you might even be a mix. I can't really answer that. I do recommend that you not defer from more than one program, mostly because it's pretty unheard of and there's no reason to do so. All it's doing is pushing your program choice down the road, and it's incurring potentially significant costs (e.g. preemptively burning bridges and connections) to do so. I also strongly suspect that if you defer your enrollment now that you will never come back to attend or finish a PhD, regardless of which situation you are in. That would probably be a good thing if you're a 1, but not so much if you are a 2.

If you're aiming for top 20 then you'll probably want to shoot for 165Q to be safe. 160 might disqualify you from some places and you probably want to maximize your chances. The other sections aren't vital, but it's not exactly a good signal to score terribly on them. Also, to be very blunt, if you can't get a decent score on the quantitative portion of the GRE with a month or so of studying then you aren't cut out for a top-20 economics program. Nine months of studying is insane overkill. When I took it, I bought a standard study book (Princeton Review's I believe), did some vocabulary practice, took 3-4 practice tests over a couple weeks, and then took it.

Yea, getting into one of the very top schools is very difficult, and there's no reason to count on it when applying to more schools is relatively cheap. If you're the type of person who is definitely going to get multiple top-5 offers, you probably know it. Great letters are letters from reputable, known researchers (i.e. actively publishing in good econ journals) who can speak credibly and in specific detail about your research potential in economics. Bonus points if your recommender has connections in top departments, is a well-known and highly respected economist, or regularly writes recommendations for students who go on to top departments and can favorably compare you to them. I don't think one letter from a mathematician is a bad thing, mathematical skill and rigor is an important part of a lot of economics research, but two is a bit borderline and three would definitely be detrimental.

You're in a good place, but it all depends on your letters. If you have great letters I think you'd get a couple top-10 admits. Mediocre or average letters would probably put you somewhere in the top 20-30. The fact that you don't already have a good idea of where any of your letters are coming from is a concern. That's probably what you want to focus on, either by working hard as an RA and/or excelling in classes and building relationships with professors. If you don't end up getting good enough letters to get into top-10 schools, I also think that taking a couple years to work as an RA would almost certainly push you into that tier. I think you would get into a solid program with "just okay" letters though, so whether waiting is worth it or not is up to you.

A publication would be great, but that doesn't happen in 6 months. Unless you are currently working on research then there simply isn't going to be time to get anything out, especially considering that a single review can easily take 3 months. If you want any tangible results from a paper submission for next admissions cycle then you need to be preparing the manuscript for submission right now. Honestly, if you applied to top 10 schools and didn't get into any of them, there's pretty much nothing you can do in order to strengthen your profile for next admissions cycle. There just isn't enough time. If you're willing to wait another 2-3 years then I would suggest RA work, and I know at least one person who went from getting into 30-40 ranked programs to having several top-10 acceptances after three years of working as an RA (pretty much best-case scenario). But there's almost nothing that you can accomplish in 6 months. In terms of profile, I think that almost all top-10 domestic admits will have at least two very strong recommendation letters from reputable and active economics researchers (preferably with connections to top departments) who can discuss your research potential in specific and concrete detail, as well as no other obvious red flags or knocks (e.g. lack of important coursework, low grades, unknown undergrad institution, low GRE scores). I imagine that the vast majority of admits who don't have that are math undergrads who are switching tracks and have the math pedigree to make up for it. At that level, grades and courses are mostly about not giving them a reason to eliminate you. The only classes that I think would really help you are A's in graduate courses at a good econ PhD program or exemplary grades in upper-level math courses (i.e. the math major track). I think that research experience on it's own counts for very little (unless you're publishing papers, which is extremely rare), it's mostly valuable because of the recommendation letters that tend to come with it. Another thing to note is that, with very few exceptions, there are no guarantees. Competition is very tough and only gets tougher every year, there's a lot about your own application that you can't see or evaluate properly (mostly recommendations), and there's significant variance due to how many incredibly well qualified applicants top programs get. Unless you have multiple famous faculty telling you otherwise, it would be foolish for anyone to limit their applications to top-10 schools.

To me, this is the most concerning part of your profile. You can probably take and excel in enough math classes over a year or two to be competitive (make sure you get Real Analysis or an equivalent class in there if at all possible though), but your access to recommendation letters is very limited. Remember that recommendation letters are a huge part of your application, probably the most important part if you have the math classes and GRE scores to not get auto-rejected. To be entirely honest, I think getting into a top-50 PhD program with letters like that would be an extremely long shot. If you have three math professors as recommenders, then you better be a math major switching fields, they better have taught you in upper-level or graduate math classes, and you better have done research with at least one of them. Absent that, you want at least one (really probably two) recommendation from PhDs who are actively publishing in reputable economics journals. And if you are outside of academia, that can be hard to find. You mentioned that you've worked with economists, did you do any research with them and would they be able to vouch for your research potential? Are they opportunities to switch to a more research-oriented role in your current job? Otherwise, if you really want to take this path you might want to consider going back and getting a masters in economics before applying (assuming it's financially possible). I normally don't recommend them, but a masters would give you a great chance to catch up on coursework and develop some good connections (and hopefully good recommendation letters) in a couple of years. A cheaper (but longer) alternative could be to take classes and then work as an RA for 1-2 years.

ODEs or PDEs will probably be the most useful to you in the future, especially if you want to do macro or finance. Honors Algebra will probably look the best on your application if you excel in it.

Note that all the following is assuming that you're talking to professors in-person (or on the phone). I've never taken up a professor on the offer to answer questions via email, and I doubt it would be nearly as helpful. If you can't visit for any reason, I recommend asking the program coordinator or whomever you're in contact with if it is possible to set up a phone or skype call with a professor. I'm not sure if it's always possible, but it's worth a try. The most productive questions I've asked professors (especially those that you might want to work with): 1. What kind of research do you do/what are your research interests/etc. 2. Are you currently advising any students? 3. What kinds of projects are your students currently working on? I'll often ask if there are any areas that they are just starting to or might want to get into in the future, though this I usually save for newer professors who might still be exploring new research areas or professors who indicate somehow that they are transitioning their research topics. I've also often found it useful to ask who else in the department is doing work similar to my interests. Sometimes you miss people going over faculty rosters, and this is also very useful if there are new or incoming faculty that I might be interested in working with. At one school, they had three first-year APs (two of whom were doing work related to my interests) who hadn't yet been added to the faculty roster, so I only knew of them because of conversations with other professors. Professors will often ask where else I am considering, which opens up the obvious program comparison (conditional on your interests). Take advantage of this. In my experience, professors are sometimes reluctant to directly compare their program to other similar programs - they try too hard to stay neutral - but if you're deciding between 3 or more then they're usually willing to compare the other two. For attrition rates, I find it's usually better to find an upper-level grad student and ask them what proportion of their entering class is still in the program and why those who dropped out did so. On a side note, if you have a funded offer then don't worry about how the questions you ask might make you look. Also, don't worry about at all about impressing people (I personally find the "what do successful students do" questions useless as they don't help me actually pick a school, but they can be good for filler/small talk if you have time to kill). As long as you don't do anything egregious, no one is going to remember this visit day in 6 months. When it comes to questions, focus on those that you actually want to know the answers to and that might affect your decision. If you think it's important and that they might have an answer to it, then go ahead and ask it.

Unless you (or your family) are independently wealthy enough to pay for tuition + living costs without going into significant debt, I would never recommend that you accept an unfunded offer. UCLA is a solid department and is definitely worth going to.

If you can't visit schools in person, ask the graduate program coordinator or whomever you've been in contact with to connect you with a current student. Most schools are happy to do so, and a short email exchange or even a Skype call would be much better at answering these questions.

I would never recommend that anyone go a school where they don't have funding unless they (or their family) are independently wealthy enough to pay for it without going into debt. I think that the risk is simply too large. Better to go to a lower-ranked school and excel there without that hanging over you (and Rochester is a fine department).

I think it's a bad idea if you have guaranteed funding at the original school. Best case scenario, you start your career with some bad relationships with people at the original school. Worst-case scenario, professors at the schools you're applying to learn that you have a previous commitment and that factors negatively into your decisions, and you're forced to go to the original school where they now know that you reneged on your agreement (or they even retract it). If you don't have any funding guarantee then it's probably more okay, but I still wouldn't recommend it.

This isn't even close to enough information to make any kind of judgement. At the least you'd need some indication of what school you're at, grades in specific classes, an idea of the amount/type of research experience you have, and some idea of what kind of letters of recommendation you'll get. Even with all that information, it still a pretty bad way to get an idea of how competitive your profile is and where you might get in. You should really try to talk to an econ professor that you know. Many departments also have an undergrad chair or someone in a similar positions that handles a lot of admissions stuff and can give good advice.

Agreed. Also, I don't think there's really a huge difference between "all A's" and "mostly A's with scattered A-'s." The question would have been a lot closer if the first applicant had mostly A-'s and B+'s with maybe one or two B's.

To be more clear, my concern is not at all related to whether the professor will be willing to write a recommendation letter. I'm sure that the professor will write a letter if asked. It's just that I'm not sure you can get enough work done in 3-4 months to a) convince him/her that you have the potential to be a productive researcher, and b) create substantial and concrete work that can be used in the letter as evidence of that potential. My concern is more that there won't be enough supporting material to use in writing a great recommendation letter. A letter that reads like "X is a nice guy and seems very smart and hardworking" is fine, but it isn't the ideal research letter. Of course, the fact that previous assistants have placed well does a lot to alleviate that concern. Also, if your dream school is Duke then you'll have a lot longer to prove yourself, as the professor can simply talk to the adcom as they make decisions.

I think you're underselling (some) Public Policy programs. Top public policy programs often will actually share their micro and econometrics classes with the associated econ PhD program, so the classes are obviously not watered down at all. There are a lot of great faculty at those programs, and students often get access to a decent subset of the econ faculty due to joint appointments. Smaller cohorts also mean a lot more support, and the faculty often have a lot of close connections with various public sector people. That can be very helpful when you go on the job market. Admissions are less competitive because a) public policy programs don't place as well into academia and rarely place into econ faculty (where most top applicants want to eventually be), and b) there are some subfields that you simply can't do in a public policy program. But if you're targeting a public-sector placement and you can narrow down your interests to fields that public policy schools excel at (e.g. not finance, macro), then public policy schools are a great option. Just keep in mind that there aren't as many public policy schools that are really worth getting a PhD at, so try to identify the more academic/rigorous ones (you adviser should be able to help).

I think it's perfectly acceptable to ask a professor if they are planning to take on new students in the near future.

Real Analysis is basically a requirement at top 10-20 programs absent extraordinary circumstances. I'm guessing that at least 99% of admitted students at top-10 programs took and did well in Real Analysis. Math beyond that isn't required but can be very helpful.