chyu1040

Yes. Check this year's JMC website. Two JMCs had Hurst (Booth) as their committee chair.

For point 4), that is a ranking of both the econ AND the business schools, so Princeton is disadvantaged in that ranking.. The relevant econ ranking is here: Best Economics Programs | Top Economics Schools | US News Best Graduate Schools. Another ranking is the NRC ranking: Economics Rankings - PhDs.org Graduate School Guide

If you are doing your PhD in the business school, you are not guaranteed to get profs from the econ school to be your advisor.. There are a few exceptions though. ------EDIT------ Stipend-wise, business schools are (much) more generous than econ schools... From GC, Booth pays 40k and the econ school pays 26k.

Australian here, just went through the process. If you haven't, read Rachael Meager's guide: For the ambitious, prospective PhD student: A Guide – Core Economics. 1) From my knowledge, there are Australians in most top 10 programs (HMPSBY, NWU, NYU, not sure about Chicago, Columbia, Penn). However, those who got into top 10 are either uni medalists or marginal contenders for the medal. So your first goal would be getting into the honours program and doing well. If you do a search in this forum, you should be able to locate many Australian applicants (the most recent one here :) and my profile: http://www.www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/157310-profiles-results-2016-a.html#post1003504 ). I would say that a first class honours is a "necessary and sufficient" condition to get you into a top 20 program. 2) Math is a necessary condition. But if you were to have excellent recommendation letters and were to write your honours thesis in theoretical topics, math may not be necessary. It also depends on your interest. If you were to pursue theoretical econ, you naturally need more math. 3) If you are in a top 5 Go8 (I assume it's in VIC/NSW/QLD/ACT), there should be a few professors that are known in the US or have connections. I don't think it's necessary to transfer. A few people that I know took gap years after graduation, worked in the industry/RBA/Treasury and then applied. Side note: RBA has an excellent connection with MIT (our new governor is a graduate of MIT!). Anecdote: A student was in the auto-rejection pile at a top 10 place because of the lack of math on his transcript. His application was saved by his letter writer. Final note: If you are in a Go8 uni, talking to your lecturers is better than asking for advice on this forum. Your lecturers should have experience with placing/guiding students into top phd programs. Alternatively, talk to the honours coordinator, it's in their interest to place top honours graduates into top programs. It might be a bit early to decide as you are a first year student. Econ research is quite different from those that you are learning right now or those that you've learnt in high school. Take your time.. Feel free to PM me if you have any other questions.

PROFILE: Type of Undergrad: Top Australian University Undergrad GPA: 90/100 (honours program) Type of Grad: None Grad GPA: GRE: 164V, 170V, 4AW Math Courses: Honours Calculus (90), Honours Linear Algebra (89), Discrete Math (90), Vector Calculus (79), Real and Complex Analysis (78) Econ Courses (honours-level): Business Cycles and Monetary Policy (91), Topics in Development (89), Industrial Organization (87), Topics in Labor (89), Topics in International Macro (91) Econ Courses (undergrad-level): Intro Macro (90), Advanced Intermediate Micro (92), Advanced Intermediate Macro (92), Math for Econ (90), History of Economics Thoughts (84), Family Economics (87), Advanced Micro (89), Advanced Macro (88), Intro to Econometrics A (90), Intro to Econometrics B (95), Regression Modeling (87), Time Series and Forecasting (91), Econometric Theory and Methods (93), Applied Econometrics (94), Applied Microeconometrics (98) Other Courses: first year units from the Business school. Letters of Recommendation: two honours thesis supervisors (top 7% RePec and an AP), honours coordinator (top 5% RePec), head of school (top 6% RePec), Research Experience: RAed for my (three) thesis supervisors since third year (2 years of RA experience at the time of application), and honours thesis. Teaching Experience: 2 years of TA experience at the time of application Research Interest: labor, econometrics, public SOP: “Not sharp” – Recommendation Letter Writer. Details of my thesis and my RA work, and a tailored paragraph to each school. RESULTS: Acceptances: Berkeley, Northwestern, NYU, UPenn, Michigan, UCLA, UCSD, Wisconsin-Madison, Duke, LSE EME (MA program), University of British Columbia (MA program) Waitlist: Cornell Rejections: Harvard Econ, Harvard Business Econ, MIT, Princeton, Stanford Econ, Stanford Business Econ, Yale, Chicago, Brown Attending: Berkeley Comments: It was a (stipend) choice between NYU and Berkeley. And something went wrong with T5 schools.. What would you have done differently? I should have spent more time writing the SOP. I wrote my first draft 1.5 weeks before the Dec 1st deadline.. If I knew I would like to do econ phd in my first year, I would have probably taken different courses and be more active in getting better letters (exchange/RA). I stuffed in (and overloaded with) those math classes in the last two years of my undergrad, so I had few "inconsistent" grades... The letter from the head of school probably did not matter because he doesn't know me. I substituted in his letter at the last minute because one of my thesis supervisor, who didn't write the letter, encouraged me to do so. Letter writer matters. I was chatting to students from my school who are all attending a Top 2 school now. We largely had similar profiles and I had more math classes than they did, but they had stronger letter writer line-ups.. I could have worked in the Reserve Bank and obtain letters from better-connected people or have RAed in some US institution, though ex post the expected marginal gain seems to be far lower than the cost.

Nvm, there is a new post of GC -- "full funding for first four years".

From the email, "[d]ue to the unusually large number of applicants this year, we are unable to offer any first-year financial support at this time". I guess that means no one got offered?

Chiming in on this comment, there is an MIT page on how many students from each top school had attended the ReStud Tour @ MIT Economics : Graduate Program . So historically, Northwestern is surprisingly strong at producing market stars relative to its ranking. Also besides Doval, Arlene Wong (macro) from NWU is also invited to the ReStud Tour. Given these few pieces of anecdotal evidence, I would join the crowd and saw Northwestern

Thanks. :proud: I worked as an RA since my sophomore year. I guess the benefit of doing this would be the potential to obtain a really strong LOR, which might be the weaker part of my profile. Anyways, I have offers from NWU, NYU and Penn, so applying for the Chetty lab job would be a bit risky. Or put in another way, is the value added from attending T2 (MIT, Harvard) or T3 (Stanford/Princeton) much greater than attending a T10 school?

I will probably not take it as well. Conditioning on being a (potentially) good economist, there seems to be little difference in being educated at T2/3 or at T10, though T2/3 schools generally have a good lineup in almost all fields. EDIT: I think there's also the case that one could get a really strong LOR from those at the Chetty lab. And LORs (and connections) matter (perhaps the most important component) for T10 applications. Talking to few people that got into Harvard Ec. this year, my impression was that they all had RAed for a year for someone in Harvard.

Interesting... Raj Chetty had just sent out an email to invite rejected applicants (?) of Stanford to apply for the SIEPR RA job. What would the value added of this job be conditioning on offers from few top 10 schools (not top 5).

Records on GC show that Berkeley did send out early offers (usually a week before the major round). It is possible that these two offers are genuine, but these two offers are unusually early... EDIT: Also Berkeley tends to send out acceptances and rejections concurrently... I guess there's still hope.

Two Berkeley offers are posted on GC. Seem like early offers?

Or the waitlist... Let's hope for the best :) Even though results should reach you via email or phone, I cannot resist the temptation to constantly refresh the GC page.

True. It could also be the case that some applicants do not wish to share on GC. Take the example of Wisconsin, the unofficial email was sent to 43 people, and there are 11 posts on GC. The sharing rate is approx. 1/4. Suppose this is an unbiased estimate (no way to account for the variance though...). Then the sharing rate of those Chicago acceptances...... :crushed:

Weird though, my previous reply requires checking by the moderator.. Anyways, let's keep our fingers crossed. From previous year's entries, Chicago may send out another round, though I have heard on the grapevine that Chicago is limiting its incoming students to 20...

Let's keep our fingers crossed, and judging from previous records, Chicago may send out another round (see 2014 acceptances)? But on EJMR, it was rumored that Chicago would limit itself to 20 incoming students.

Not sure what's going on today. Though one of the MIT posts says "S16", which may or may not diminish the credibility of that post. A further note: on GC, fall 2016 (F16) is listed after spring 2016 (S16). I guess someone is trolling us now. It seems to be improbable to have results sent out on a Saturday/Sunday (given past records).

Congrats to all those who received the Chicago offer. Now there is an MIT acceptance (seems like a troll though). What's going on? EDIT: And a Harvard one...

Thanks.. Guess I have to stay hopeful (wishful?).

There are two Chicago acceptance posts on GC. Really? Seems fishy...... EDIT: Three now.. Looks real now........

Interesting, that one disappeared... Anyways, I guess I am out ...:upset:

One from Stanford GSB and one from Harvard Ec. on GC, could anyone confirm them??

Institution: Wisconsin Madison Program: Economics PhD Decision: Accepted Funding: Tuition Waiver + Fellowship 22k first two years + TA/RAship last three years Notification date: 02/10/2016 Notified through: Unofficial Email Comments: First positive result :)

John Kennan cc emailed 43 people (including me), not sure about the acceptance rate, and they are still working on it.