ecomath

Hey, that post was me. A couple of my friends have also received admissions so I'm not sure if there's a second round.

With a rejection from Berkeley that ends my application season. Looks like I'll be starting my PhD in Biostatistics in the Fall. Goodbye Economics. :sorrow:

Also keep in mind that my range of programmes was very limited. I applied to 7 of the very top ones and then Toronto. Nothing in between. I may have had a better outcome if I'd spread my applications more evenly, but my location preferences are strong and I'd only move to the US if I had a very good offer. My application strategy was probably a bit atypical in that sense.

I don't think it's the letters -- I was told in no uncertain terms that they were very strong. I didn't retake the GRE (Q 165 for the person above). It's possible I was below cutoffs -- I hated writing that thing so much I was hoping I'd just scrape by with what I got.

The publication is co-authoured and I suspect it got discounted heavily for that reason. It sends a signal that I'm a good RA but it also says I worked for generous profs who were willing to put my name on the paper. People just as good as me may not be that fortunate. Other than that, I have good grades from a good university, but so do many other people. It's tough to dissect what exactly locked me out, but I'm glad I tried. At least I won't be wondering what would've happened. I actually had much more luck with my statistics / biostatistics applications and I'll probably accept one of them.

That's nice of you to say, but my profile wasn't air tight by any means. I'm not that surprised that I've been locked out of the top 10. And given that I only applied to the top 10 + Toronto, it's not too unexpected that I'd get a lot of rejections. I did get into Toronto at least. :encouragement:

Same here, but I've been rejected everywhere else so I am remaining resolutely pessimistic. :sorrow:

Institution: University of Toronto Program: PhD Decision: Accepted Funding: 36K Notification date: 23/02/17 Notified via phone, snail mail, or email: Email Comments: Only Canadian place I applied to.

Congrats to those admitted! Radio silence on my end so I'm going to take that as bad news. Although I checked the admissions site and apparently they are missing my GRE score report. I have a receipt of sending it to them with the correct codes so I don't know what's up with that. Sent out an email to double-check.

Not really sure. Mid-level jobs in government or finance would be my guess. Since the doctoral stream decidedly doesn't offer more industry-related training, I doubt our industry placement record is much better or worse than the regular stream.

Just in case anyone thinks it changes my chances in any significant way, as a quick update I got A+ in masters Math Stats I, A+ in masters Micro and A in PhD Econometrics I. I'm planning to send my updated transcript to all universities that are interested.

I did a BSc in Math and Econ at U of T, so I took math up to real analysis, and also took a few third and fourth year electives. You can find my full profile posted on this website. I didn't ask around too much, but I think my math background is slightly above average for the DSMA -- not that many people have taken real analysis. I think your math background is sufficient, and that's probably enough, since the admissions committee is simply asking itself whether you are capable of surviving a core PhD sequence.

Looking at your profile, I don't think your chances are very high for the doctoral stream. You may have a shot for the regular stream, but the quotas are indeed very strict.

I'm at U of T right now. I've found the course load to be heavy, but that's mostly because I enrolled in a pretty intense set of courses, and I also had a paper I'm co-authoring that needed to be conference-ready by mid-October, and I also had all of my TA hours this semester. It's not been fun at all, but I think my experience is atypical. The PhD sequence I'm taking (Econometrics) is a very big jump from undergrad, but it's certainly doable. I think the two most helpful things for PhD Econometrics are a really firm grasp of linear algebra and a familiarity with proofing techniques. Sometimes we will invoke real-analysis-style proofs, such as when we're proving the extremum estimator is consistent, so a bit of point-set topology wouldn't go awry. I'm not sure how many people move on to U of T's PhD from the DSMA. I think there's a few each year. Some people enter the DSMA with the explicit intention of starting U of T's PhD the following year (these people often just take the 3 first year PhD courses). Others, like me, intend to go somewhere else. And others want to go work in industry afterward.

It's a heavy workload but it's manageable. If Brenner is teaching Mathematical Statistics your year, then be ready for a wild ride of analytic geometry and measure theory way beyond the stated prerequisites. He's an amazing guy and I've learned a lot from him, but he barely covers any of the material in the syllabus and his problem sets are something else. If I could do it over, I would take his course again (it did end up being my highest grade after all), but I'd want to have a measure-theoretic probability course behind me first. If the course is taught the way it's meant to be taught, then it's possible that there will be a lot of overlap with PhD Econometrics. That's not been my experience, though.