senorfluffy

Hey, I'm going to be a first-year next year, and I was wondering if there were any people who just finished their first year and have any advice for people coming into grad school? Anything you wish you knew going in? Any tips?

I recently began listening to Planet Money on my commute, and I've been pretty pleased with it so far. I'd definitely recommend checking it out. I also get some of the big macroeconomics headlines from reddit.com/r/economics like CanadaEconomics. Just be careful if you go into the comments section. It's a dark dark place in there. I also love the EconTalk podcast for long runs. That's more kind of an economics lecture though.

The thing is though is that it doesn't seem like you're actually taking the advice from people on this forum. Yeah, I understand that you're more optimistic about your future academic performance than others here. And that's good. You should be confident in yourself. To quote the great philosopher Taylor Swift, "Haters gonna hate." But if you're looking for advice then take it. For example, mcskorates had really good advice about possibly lowering your study hours. Kaysa had good advice about thinking analytically about the real world and focusing less on the classroom economics. Econ girl had great advice w.r.t relaxing and enjoying life more. These are all ways that you could improve your grade, but you don't seem to respond to any of them. If you're looking for advice then take it.

First, 3.5 is also not an abysmal GPA if the top student at your school got a 3.8 in econ. Second, I think I'm a pretty high-strung guy like yourself. I care a lot about grades. But it seems like you need to relax a bit. Econ Girl is right. Relax. Enjoy yourself. A phrase like: is a little troubling in of itself. Don't take life too seriously. You'll never get out alive. Hell, you may get into graduate school and find out that you hate it. I'm a little worried about that myself. It seems like if you just relaxed w.r.t grades and graduate school, you would do better at least in terms of over-thinking things.

I'm a tutor in economics, and I found in undergrad that a lot of students don't really think about the world in economics way, so they have a really tough time grasping some concepts. Trying to change how you view the world is really helpful IMO for doing well in econ. This is really good advice OP. Once I started to think about the world in econ terms, my classes got a bit easier because it'll get you more familiar and more practice in applying economics ideas.

Well it obviously depends a bit on your school. It might be your school grades a lot harder than some other schools. My school was stupid easy in terms of grading. I don't want to be dickish, but it is possible that economics is just not for you if you're really having such a hard time studying and feel so far behind everyone else in your classes. I'm about to start my first year and everything I've heard about the first two years is tons of studying and problem sets. However, I've never met you or know your classes, so I could just be entirely off-base. That being said, there are a ton of schools that have really tough grading. There was a post on this forum about a month ago from a guy at Oberlin (I think) about a guy who was worried about his grades as well. If you have really good letters of rec and really great research, it might make up for lack luster grades. It might be best to ask your rec writers to address the poor grades and say that you can still be very capable in grad school despite those grades. Maybe I'm off-base. Anyone else want to correct me? I only just got through the application process myself.

It seems like you're shooting in the right area IMO. Your quant score looks pretty good for that range too. You'll definitely want to beef up on math and stats. You'll for sure need more than just one stats course. But seems like you're on the right track for t30-50 especially if you take more math and stats.

This post super sums up my worries. I want to get away, but there is the benefit of possibly working together. It's getting later and later, and I'm a little worried about not being able to find a roommate by August. I want to have a chair when the music stops. I might just bite the bullet and email some in my cohort. Thanks for the advice everyone.

I know that some of the first years in my group asked the graduate coordinator for some students' emails and sent out a mass email. You could certainly try that.

Does anyone have any experience in being roommates with people in your cohort? I'm trying to find some rooommates for next year, but I'm a little afraid to live with other econ grad students. I'm a bit worried about having my entire life being consumed with economics by living with other people in my cohort. Anyone with any experience here? Thanks

Maybe it's because I'm a pretty driven student, but my initial reaction was to study a ton of math and look at research stuff too. But after talking with a bunch of my professors, most of them suggested relaxing. I plan on doing a little bit of work over the summer though. I have one professor that I work with as a part-time RA, so I'll probably put in like 5-10 hours a week to make some money, but not much other than that. I might try and pick up some coding in my spare time, but nothing too strenuous.

Is anyone else planning on doing just about nothing? Maybe I'm just lazy, but I guess I'm trying to just frontload my relaxing. I figure if I'm not going to be working my *** off during the semester then I should at least enjoy the summer. I plan on working just enough to survive, spending the rest of my time drinking, eating, reading, and working out. Should be a good summer.

Oof. That's a lot of work for relaxing. I think we have different definitions of relaxing. :)

Can I come hang out if I'm a entering the PhD program at Texas?

Best of luck to all of y'all on the waitlist. But not too much luck, as I want in too. :p I hear Michigan takes a lot of people off the waitlist though, so hopefully it'll be good news on the 15th. I'm still pretty nervous though.

Hey, I'm also going through the process and visited at UT's visit day, so I might have seen you there! I'm going to be going to UT if I don't get off the waitlist at another school. I think part of the deciding factor for between UT and another school for me was that it seems like the current provost and soon to be president of the UT system seems dedicated to improving the Economics department. The dept. chair said that they're going to have something like $2 mil each year for a while to hire new senior faculty (he may have been lying. maybe not). I think it would probably lead to UT climbing in the rankings a bit in the future. But there's obviously some uncertainty there. However, I don't really know you. Your prof. will know you a lot better and maybe ASU is better for you. I'm also far from an expert on UT's econ dept. Figured I'd at least throw my $0.02 in.

Unfortunately, the professors that I was closest to dealt mostly with the micro fields because that's what I'm most interested in. I know though that Neil Raymon teaches a yearly class on money and banking. He's the main teaching macro/financial guy in the department. He's insanely boring, but pretty dang smart. I never had a class with Joseph Haslag, but I've heard he's really good for research in monetary policy and macro. I had Vitor Trindade for econometrics, but I think that one of his fields is also in international trade. He's really awesome and is also fairly helpful with most things. FWIW, I also had these guys as an undergraduate, so they may interact very differently with graduate students. I'm sure that doesn't necessarily help you choose between Missouri, Iowa State, or Houston, but I hope I was helpful in some way. Good Luck!

I can't say much about Iowa State or Houston, but I go to Missouri for undergrad and am pretty familiar with the faculty. There's a lot of the professors have been great to work with as an undergrad, so I figure that they'll be pretty open to working with grad students as well. What fields are you interested in?

Yeah, that's what my profs at my uni have told me. I've heard that some of their faculty like Sandra Black or Abrevaya are really good researchers and great to work with. And most of my profs have also told me to not worry that much about the money because it's not a huge difference.

FWIW, I've worked closely with a professor for a couple years at my uni, and there are times where he'll just forget to reply to an email for a week just because he gets busy. I agree with behavingmyself. It's not impolite to send a courteous email checking in. I've found that showing up to their office is also really helpful to just check in. Just don't be a **** in your email and you should be fine.

Institution: UCSD Program: Economics PhD Decision: Rejected Funding: Notification Date: 3/17/15 Notified Through: Email Comments: I'm a little salty about it, but it's a little nice getting the last decision in.

Take this for what it's worth, but one of profs went to UCSD, and he said he talked to a guy on the graduate committee and said that it should be coming soon. He didn't know when exactly, but he said soon. Hopefully it'll be before the week is over. :/

This is sort of what I was looking for. I don't care nearly that much about the difference in the money. I care more about the school's reputations and rankings. Can anyone give a sort of rundown in what Texas is strongest in?

As a former Houstonian, I can atest that the summer are brutal, but fall and winter are lovely. I'm sure the cities are secondary to your choice, but Houston is amazing and has fantastic food.

Hey all, my best two offers have come from UT (TA with $15k stipend) and MSU (TA with $18k stipend). I'm interested in applied micro, with a focus on econometrics. From what I've seen, UT is ranked a bit higher than MSU, but MSU's specialty is in those fields. Does anyone have any advice or went to one of those schools who can help me out? I'm leaning towards UT in part because I'm from Texas. Any help would be greatly appreciated.