Where To Go

Depending on the university, there may be (potentially guaranteed) on campus housing.

US: depends also on whether the university uses a quarter or semester system,... You may try to get into PhD level courses. Since class sizes are typically a lot smaller, contact to the professor is easier to establish.

People I talked to at T5 seemed to have higher GPA and not the occasional "slip up" in math courses. I didn't talk to all current and prospective students, of course, but this is just to warn you that your overall GPA seems to be on the lower end for top programs, so T10 might be difficult. (But it might be that your poorish grades were in some courses that don't matter at all and will be rightfully ignored - you never know) What's your time series analysis grade? The course might be considered relevant. (textbook?) Were any of your courses grad level? Much more important will be what your letter writers actually say. Do they think of you you as truly excellent, best of the year, past few years? Did they write letters for students in the past? If so, where did they end up? How do you compare to these previous students? That said, you can make it into great programs (which also exist outside T20), I just find the previous poster's opinion potentially too optimistic.

Your decision should not affect it. My programs said they'd send a check by mail. Details will depend on the program. One of my programs mentioned that they send the checks at the end of the semester. You can just send another email to whoever is in charge of that process and ask whether they received the complete forms, etc. or whether anything is missing.

If you have a TOEFL writing score of 21, could it be that TOEFL in general pretty much shut you out? If I remember correctly, several schools mentioned something like >100 overall, >26 or >27 in certain parts...

Would it be before you apply or the summer before you start?

I assume you are doing well in your master program right now as well. If you have some official looking document for your Real Analysis, I would think it's fine. I guess you are taking econ grad courses at the moment. I think the only thing that really helps is outstanding letters of recommendation. For that, doing research with a professor over the summer should be more useful. Personally, I don't think (summer) courses will really help you, since you must have done really well in the relevant ones already. From my visit days, I don't remember anyone talking about great summer schools that really helped them, and I never looked into it. Maybe someone else knows of a program that places well.

Your math background looks sufficient, I don't think more math adds much. But we have very little information here (grades, other parts of the profile), so it's hard to make recommendations.

I just thought that most people have been busy researching universities these past weeks already and would have collected all the information there is by now.

I wonder why some people ask for information now and not earlier. Is there some way that would help students next year avoid the last minute stress?

The last two questions are quite program specific. Unless someone here is actually at Clemson or seriously considered it AND comes online every day, you won't get an answer. Have you considered emailing the grad secretary or similar person at Clemson? The are typically the ones knowing these statistics the best, and they might be relatively prepared to respond quickly on / before April 15, since they know of the deadline. (This last point is just a guess.)

what's your goal? Do you want to continue with a PhD afterwards? What range of school would you be happy with? How well would you have to do in the masters to be one of the students that gets send to such a place?

What's the distribution of grades?

Maybe give a link to which of their many rankings you mean.

You speak positively about Wharton's low RA/TA load. Doesn't NYU usually make offers without any RA/TA requirement? Which means, I guess, that if you DO work, you end up with quite a bit more money, that SHOULD compensate for the COL differences and more.

You might want to find out what kind of GRE your universities expect and consider retaking. Many better schools would automatically reject you based on it. (So you might want to check for your universities) Also check in time whether all your schools accept the IELTS. Among the top, I think all accepted TOEFL, few accepted IELTS and the MIT was the only one to prefer IELTS (but accepts TOEFL as well).

Whatever you are told to bring. Your university might also have a website for international students, telling them about each step in the visa application process. Among else, you could bring a copy of your offer letter, etc.

A question mostly to those who already have the experience: Do you consider RA later on (say 3rd year and beyond) worse than TA? I guess that is the relevant question for many of us as funding requires some kind of work (If you allow me to expand the topic from summer to the entire year)

I think the question was not so much where employees come from but where interns go to :)

Grad econ seems to be the most useful. Some programming experience (not necessarily from a course) doesn't hurt either. Have your letter writers placed students into PhD programs in the past? What do they say / think? How would they compare you to past students? You'll have to decide for yourself whether spending the a good part of your 20s in grad school misery is worth it if you have good other options and are not set on a life at university. It's a decision to make, and no-one should judge you either way. :) What was your RA position like? How long, what did you do / what were your tasks? Personally, I think you should have a good shot at T10, but I preferred to apply to a wider range (say T20) to be "safe."

What exactly is your question?

If you provide more info, preferable similar to this: http://www.www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/152806-roll-call-2015-a.html it is easier to give advice. GRE should not cause problems, mostly the Q section is relevant.

They are waiting because people like myself and yourself have not accepted / declined the offers that were made. Hence they do not yet know who will attend their program. To avoid having fewer / more students than they wish to have, they wait rejecting / accepting you until they know what the people they made offers to do.

Depends on how extreme it is, on funding, the reasons why people leave, and what they do after the leave. The secretary or grad adviser / administrative person of a program is usually happy to supply such statistics. (It also means they didn't collect it in vein ;)) That is usually faster and more precise than asking here. But with the weekend just having started and the 15th coming up soon, you might be out of luck, depending on how busy they are. My recommendation: Send all requests for information as soon as possible.

I heard those two are good programs, I hardly heard anything about the other programs. Look at the faculty working in your fields if that is what you want to base your decision on. I can't tell you what you find interesting, and you can count names just as well as I can. Keep in mind that interests often change. I cannot be more specific about the programs in question because I was fortunate enough to be able to focus on other programs. So only take it for what it is: The comment of one person who certainly does not know it all. Some basic research could include looking at rankings as well, to get a general idea. (The consensus seems to be that further down the rankings, differences are not as important as among the top. But differences remain differences.)